Divehi to Sesotho sa Leboa: ownership links must agree with the thing being described
The owner and the agreement controller are different
Divehi marks a genitive relationship on the possessor, and Gnanadesikan describes possessive modifiers before the head noun. That arrangement makes the owner’s expression an obvious place to look for the grammatical link. In Sesotho sa Leboa, however, the connecting possessive concord belongs to the noun class of the possession. The translator must identify the thing being described before selecting that link.
A University of Pretoria grammar analysis illustrates leoto la tafola, a table’s leg. The form la connects the leg to the table, agreeing with the class of the leg rather than copying a feature of the table. Translating a Divehi part–whole expression therefore involves more than moving a genitive suffix into a separate word: the target connection depends on the head noun selected for the part.
The same analysis observes that these constructions can express a broader relationship than legal ownership. A table does not own its leg in the way a customer owns luggage. That distinction matters when a Divehi genitive connects a component, relative, institution or object: preserve the relationship without forcing every instance into a statement that somebody possesses property.
A change from one item to several can change the connecting form
The primary study Designing a noun guesser for Northern Sotho presents noun classes together with their concords. Its attested pair selepe and dilepe means an axe and axes. The associated possessive concords differ too: the singular belongs with sa, while the plural belongs with tša. A target plural is consequently not always obtained by changing only the item noun.
For a Divehi equipment list, this provides a concrete translation concern. If the source says that several tools belong to the same person, keeping that person unchanged does not justify keeping every connecting element unchanged. The target noun’s singular or plural class governs the relevant concord. The owner remains one person even when the possessions are multiple.
The noun-guesser study also cautions against recognizing classes from an initial syllable alone. Some prefixes occur in several classes, and similar sequences can begin words that are not nouns at all. A guessed target class based only on a familiar-looking beginning can therefore produce a superficially plausible but internally inconsistent possessive phrase.
Do not invent the owner’s gender from a Divehi pronoun
Gnanadesikan gives ēnage as a third-person genitive form that does not specify a male or female referent. A source phrase using it does not acquire a male owner merely because an intermediate English gloss happens to use his. The referent must remain the person established by the Divehi conversation.
The Pretoria analysis separates possessive pronouns from the possessive concord that introduces the relationship. Together with the noun-class evidence, that separation explains why agreement forms should not be interpreted as descriptions of an owner’s biological sex. Their grammatical roles are different.
In this direction, resolve three pieces of information separately: the Divehi referent, the target noun for the possession or related part, and that noun’s target class. A plural tool, a table component and an individual person’s belongings can share the same owner while requiring different grammatical links. Preserving those distinctions produces a clearer result than treating every source genitive as a single interchangeable ownership word.
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