Danish to Yoruba: a future negative may not display a separate third-person pronoun
Han and hun identify a distinction Yoruba need not spell out
Danish subject pronouns distinguish han and hun, and also use den and det for grammatical reference to things. The Yoruba course Yorùbá Yé Mi presents a third-person singular future pattern whose regular pronoun covers he, she, and it. A Yoruba rendering can therefore retain the intended participant without reproducing the Danish gender distinction in a separate word.
For a Danish schedule update meaning “She will go tomorrow,” the female referent may already be known from the preceding sentence. A target third-person form does not have to become a gendered noun merely to look as explicit as hun. If the conversation mentions both a man and a woman, however, the translation must still make clear which one is expected to go. The absence of grammatical gender in the pronoun is not permission to exchange the participants.
Negating the future changes the target pattern
The University of Texas lesson introduces máa in affirmative future expressions and contrasts them with negative patterns containing kò nì í. It does not teach the negative simply by retaining the affirmative sequence and adding one isolated equivalent of Danish ikke in the same position. In the regular third-person singular negative row, the pattern begins with the negative construction rather than a separately written affirmative third-person pronoun.
This can surprise a Danish reader because a sentence denying someone’s future journey still normally gives an explicit source subject. A Yoruba translation may nevertheless identify that subject through its established reference and the appropriate target construction. Treating the missing independent pronoun as proof of a missing person, or inserting the affirmative pronoun pattern automatically, could interfere with the negative form the target actually requires.
The source participant and the prediction must be checked independently
Compare the meanings “He will go,” “He will not go,” and “They will not go.” The second changes polarity; the third changes the participant group as well. The Yoruba lesson’s negative paradigm retains distinctions among persons and numbers even though not every row presents them in the same visible way. A translation must therefore do more than preserve a single negative word. It must deny the journey of the intended person or people.
The course also distinguishes regular from emphatic pronoun forms. A Danish correction meaning “She will go, not I” makes the identity of the traveller part of the contrast. That is different from a neutral itinerary in which the traveller has already been established. Do not add personal emphasis everywhere simply because a longer Yoruba form seems easier to align with a separate Danish subject word. Equally, do not flatten a deliberate Danish participant correction into an unmarked future prediction. Across these sentences, the crucial decisions are who travels, whether the trip is affirmed or denied, and whether the traveller’s identity is being contrasted. The Yoruba future and negative constructions distribute those decisions differently from a Danish subject-plus-auxiliary sequence.
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