Fijian to Arabic: when two-person reference matches and when it does not
A shared dual category does not make every pronoun equivalent
Joseph Hong’s Fijian survey distinguishes a dual referring to exactly two from a limited-group category traditionally called trial and a broader plural. The trial label needs care: its use can encompass a few people rather than an exact group of three. A Fijian report about a small party must therefore not acquire a precise three-person count solely because that label appears in a grammar.
The same account distinguishes first-person forms including the listener from forms excluding the listener. Those membership choices occur in the non-singular system, including the dual. A two-person Fijian we can consequently identify the speaker together with the listener, or the speaker together with somebody else. Knowing that there are two people is not enough to decide which two people the source describes.
Arabic dual pronouns preserve second- and third-person pairs
Hana Kassas’s Arabic lesson presents أنتما for addressing two and هما for referring to two. Its table explicitly lists both forms as covering masculine and feminine reference. Where the Fijian source actually identifies a pair of addressees or a pair of third persons, Modern Standard Arabic thus offers a dual category rather than requiring that pair to be absorbed into an undifferentiated plural.
These Arabic pronoun forms do not themselves tell the reader whether the pair consists of male or female people. Conversely, feminine plural pronouns listed in the lesson apply to groups, not to the dual merely because both people are female. Select number and gender categories separately. The Fijian limited-group category also should not be converted to the Arabic dual just because its group happens to be small: two and a few are different claims. This discussion concerns the standard written system, not a promise that every spoken Arabic variety retains identical pronoun categories.
Arabic first-person reference needs the membership supplied elsewhere
The independent-pronoun chart in Bassam K. Frangieh’s Arabic for Life gives one first-person singular entry and one first-person plural entry. It supplies dual entries for second and third persons, but no separate first-person dual pronoun or inclusive-versus-exclusive first-person pair. Fijian source information about speaker-plus-listener versus speaker-plus-another-person is therefore not reproduced by substituting an Arabic dual we. That is not an available counterpart in the chart.
For an announcement involving two participants, preserve any explicit names or coordination that identifies the other person. For a proposal addressed to the listener, preserve wording that establishes joint participation. These are different applications of the same first-person limitation: an Arabic we can remain appropriate while the rest of the sentence carries membership. The useful translation question is whether the target still identifies the intended participants, rather than whether every Fijian pronoun has received one visibly matching Arabic word.
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