Estonian to Chhattisgarhi: kes asks who, while keegi leaves a person unidentified
Whether someone is coming differs from asking their identity
Kas keegi tuleb? asks whether anybody is coming. Kes tuleb? asks who is coming. Although both Estonian questions concern an unidentified person, they request different answers. A simple yes can answer the first, whereas the second normally calls for a name or identifying description. A Chhattisgarhi translation needs to preserve that distinction rather than use one human question word for both.
In the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary, keegi refers to a person whose identity is not precisely known. The entry also illustrates its use in a question about waiting for anyone else. The indefinite element matters: the speaker may be unsure that another person exists in the relevant situation, rather than simply unsure which person it is.
Similar-looking Chhattisgarhi forms have different jobs
Dr Vinod Kumar Verma’s Chhattisgarhi grammar distinguishes indefinite कोन्हों/कोनो from interrogative कोन. Its examples contrast somebody going with a question about who is going. The visible resemblance of these forms does not make them interchangeable. For Estonian keegi, deleting the indefinite portion can change an unspecified participant into a request to identify one.
A message saying Keegi tuleb is an announcement that somebody is coming. It may deliberately withhold the name, or the writer may not know it. Changing it into a Chhattisgarhi who-question would make the recipient responsible for supplying information that the Estonian writer was actually reporting. A question mark alone cannot repair the choice of pronoun.
Conversely, Kes tuleb? may occur after both people already know that a visitor is expected. Rendering only the existence of an unspecified visitor loses the information being sought. In that exchange, the practical distinction is not politeness or certainty about the schedule; it is whether the reply should identify the visitor.
Negation changes how the Estonian indefinite is understood
Keegi ei tule means that nobody is coming, rather than that some particular unnamed person is not coming. The dictionary explicitly records negative uses of keegi with the meaning of no person. A Chhattisgarhi rendering must convey the absence of any arriving participant, not merely combine an indefinite-looking subject with a guessed affirmative construction.
This matters when arranging a pickup. An affirmative announcement about an unnamed person leaves the pickup necessary; a negative announcement that nobody will come can cancel it. The lexical shape keegi is shared by the Estonian messages, but the negative verb changes the whole claim. Translate the pronoun together with that predicate rather than in isolation.
Verma also distinguishes person-question forms from का for asking about a thing or matter. Accordingly, Mis tuleb? cannot automatically follow the same choice as Kes tuleb?: the source may concern what is arriving instead of who. The grammar notes regional auxiliary variants, so its quoted forms establish these pronoun contrasts without implying that one auxiliary spelling represents every Chhattisgarhi speaker.
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