Danish to Lower Sorbian: two participants, motion and borrowed words
Two people need more than an ordinary plural
A Danish message can use vi or I while the context establishes that exactly two people are involved. Lower Sorbian has an actively used dual, as the Sorbian Institute’s documentation project explains. The translation therefore needs to distinguish a pair from a larger group, even if the Danish pronoun itself does not make that distinction. A message from two visitors and a message from an entire visiting party need not use the same target number forms.
This is especially consequential when a short Danish reply is detached from its earlier conversation. The Language Council lists vi and I among the plural personal pronouns, without a separate dual entry. If the earlier exchange establishes two speakers or two addressees, keep that information available when translating the reply. Otherwise the target may flatten a meaningful Lower Sorbian distinction that Danish expresses only through context or an added number.
Going somewhere to do something
Lower Sorbian retains a supine, a special nonfinite verb form normally associated with verbs of movement. A Danish construction describing movement followed by an intended activity therefore needs to be read as a whole. Do not assume that the ordinary dictionary infinitive is automatically the right form for the second verb. The relationship between going and the purpose of going determines the target construction.
Danish clause structure helps separate a purpose from a second independent event. The Language Council shows how an embedded clause belongs to a larger clause and how its extent can be tested by replacing it with a single constituent. In a longer Danish account, establish whether the activity is the goal of the journey, something merely reported afterwards, or a separate condition. These are different readings before any Lower Sorbian ending is selected.
A recognizable German loan still belongs to Lower Sorbian
The documentation project records substantial German borrowing and explains that borrowed words commonly take Lower Sorbian inflectional endings. A Danish reader may recognize a German-looking item in the result, but recognition does not authorize removing its ending. The target sentence still requires Lower Sorbian grammar. Equally, bilingual code-switching recorded among speakers is not a reason to substitute German for an otherwise available Lower Sorbian expression throughout a translated Danish message.
Ó is not a Danish vowel with an accent added
The Sorbian Institute’s pronunciation resource gives kóńc and bósy among its examples of ó. Away from j, it documents several accepted realizations, including sounds represented as [ɛ], [ɨ] and [ʊ]. The spelling does not mean a Danish reader can simply pronounce an ordinary o and add stress. A familiar Latin alphabet conceals different sound-to-letter conventions.
Before j, the same resource gives a different range and examples including mój. It recommends consistency in a speaker’s chosen pronunciation within a text. For a Danish speaker reading a translated message aloud, variation between recorded Lower Sorbian voices may therefore reflect accepted pronunciation rather than different spellings or words. Keep the written ó intact instead of altering it to imitate whichever recording sounds closest to Danish.
Language references