Dogri to Romanian: distinguish counting, ranking and the grammar around a number
Numeral agreement is familiar, but its categories are different
A Dogri source can already contain grammatical information on a numeral. Sawhney describes cardinal forms changing when their noun is oblique and ordinals agreeing with the noun’s gender, number and case. Romanian also makes distinctions around numbers, but familiarity with agreement does not make the two systems interchangeable. A source ending is evidence about the Dogri phrase, not an instruction to copy that ending’s category into Romanian.
Romanian introduces a particularly useful distinction when counting neuter nouns. Gönczöl-Davies illustrates one pencil with un creion and two pencils with două creioane. The noun belongs to the neuter class, yet its numeral follows the masculine pattern in the singular and the feminine pattern in the plural. Dogri’s masculine–feminine classification does not supply this Romanian singular/plural behavior automatically.
A quantity may require a linking word
The Romanian grammar contrasts 18 mere with 40 de mere: eighteen apples and forty apples. The additional de does not change what is counted. It belongs to the Romanian construction linking that quantity to its noun. A Dogri count translated by substituting only the numeral and noun can therefore omit a necessary part of the target phrase.
The book further contrasts numbers whose final component falls below twenty with those whose final component exceeds nineteen. Consequently, the decision is not simply whether the whole quantity is large. In a Dogri inventory containing several hundred items, translating every large written number by one identical surrounding pattern can produce inconsistent Romanian. Establish the complete quantity and its ending component before applying the target construction.
This is distinct from the Dogri oblique change described by Sawhney. There, the grammatical environment of the noun can affect the numeral. In the Romanian examples, the form of the numerical expression itself helps determine the connector. Confusing those triggers would make an accurate count depend on an unrelated source case ending.
The first item and one item make different claims
Dogri ordinals express rank, with Sawhney’s first-rain and first-dance examples showing different agreement forms. Preserve that ranking when the message becomes Romanian. A numbered stage, first arrival or first occurrence is not merely a quantity of one. Removing ordinal information can change an instruction about sequence into an instruction about amount.
Romanian has position-sensitive alternatives for first. The grammar distinguishes forms used before the noun from întâi after it and illustrates clasa întâi for first class or first grade. A Dogri ordinal does not select the Romanian form solely through its own gender ending: the target noun and the target phrase’s arrangement must also be considered.
Repeated actions are not plural objects
A further Romanian construction uses de plus a numeral plus ori to express repetition. A Dogri message describing an action done twice needs this kind of frequency interpretation, rather than a phrase identifying two things or the second thing. Quantity, repetition and ordinal rank may share a numerical value while making different claims about the event.
For this pair, a useful reading order is therefore semantic first and morphological second: identify what is counted or ranked, decide whether the number describes objects or occurrences, and only then rebuild the Romanian phrase. This addresses the specific risk created by superficially comparable agreement systems whose numeral constructions differ.
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