Estonian to Upper Sorbian: a case ending does not select a preposition by itself
Estonian can put a relationship in the noun ending
EKI’s grammar tables distinguish interior location, movement into a place and movement out of it. The noun tuba appears in forms including toas and toast. An original Estonian account of waiting in a room and one of leaving a room therefore need different relationships preserved, even if neither source phrase contains a separate preposition.
Upper Sorbian teaching materials organise location-related phrases through prepositions with case requirements. The Witaj worksheet identifies w with the locative and bjez with the genitive. These are attested grammatical pairings, not interchangeable translations of the Estonian room forms. A source suffix and a target preposition belong to complete constructions rather than a single substitution table.
A familiar preposition can require more than one case
The worksheet explicitly notes that some Upper Sorbian prepositions can take two cases. Its examples include z with genitive or instrumental and several prepositions with accusative or locative. Recognising the visible preposition is consequently insufficient to establish that a target phrase expresses the intended relationship.
For an original Estonian message describing a visit with a colleague and a later departure from a place, the source relationships remain distinct. A target preposition that occurs in more than one construction must be read together with its noun form. Selecting a familiar short word while leaving an unsuitable case can obscure the difference between accompaniment and another relation.
The worksheet also explains agreement of accompanying adjectives with nouns in case. If an original Estonian phrase describes a particular room, the target descriptive phrase must form a coherent unit. Preserving the noun’s relationship while attaching an unrelated adjective form does not reliably preserve which room is being described.
Pronoun endings need the same attention
EKI’s personal-pronoun table distinguishes minuga, minust and mulle. These source forms are related to the first-person pronoun, but they do not describe the same relationship: accompaniment, a relation from or about the person, and a relation to the person must be interpreted in the actual clause. Their common stem does not make them equivalent.
An original Estonian message asking a colleague to travel with the speaker is different from asking the colleague to bring something to the speaker. A target phrase that changes accompaniment into a recipient relationship changes the arrangement. Determine what the verb and inflected pronoun jointly express before choosing the Upper Sorbian construction.
The source grammar also gives both long and short Estonian pronoun forms. A shorter spelling need not indicate a different person or a missing participant. The relevant information is the role carried by the form in the complete sentence, not the number of letters retained.
This direction therefore requires two connected readings: interpret the Estonian case relationship, then check the Upper Sorbian preposition and noun or pronoun form together. The languages both encode grammatical roles through inflection, but the names and shapes of their cases are not a guarantee of equivalence. Keep location, source, accompaniment and recipient distinct so that the translation preserves the intended movement or interaction.
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