Filipino to Northern Kurdish: two pronouns can still name one person
Why wanted to can contain two different forms of I
Thackston illustrates Kurmanji min xwest (ku) ez bibêjim for wanting to say something in the past. Both min and ez refer to the same person. Their different forms belong to different grammatical positions: the past transitive wanting predicate and its subjunctive complement do not use the same case pattern. A Filipino-to-Kurmanji translation should not introduce a second person merely because the target repeats a reference in another form.
The grammar explicitly requires the two pronouns in this construction even when their referent is shared; ku is optional in the cited pattern. Removing the second pronoun to make the result resemble a more compact Filipino expression is therefore not a reliable improvement. The target construction has its own requirements for representing who wanted and who would perform the intended action.
Filipino gusto does not require an ordinary actor-subject pattern
The Hawaiʻi Filipino lesson shows Gusto ni Dan na kumain ng litson with Dan as the person wanting to eat. In the lesson’s analysis, an actor-focused complement in this kind of gusto expression does not require an ang subject. The absence of that phrase does not mean that the intended eater is unknown or different from Dan. The construction supplies the interpretation.
This is a useful contrast with Kurmanji’s repeated pronoun example. A source can communicate one person’s desire and intended action without looking like the target’s two-clause case pattern. What must remain constant is the identity of the participants, not how many times the source names them. A translator should not take a difference in grammatical marking as evidence that the desirer and the intended actor are different people.
The Filipino lesson also contrasts indefinite and definite objects with gusto. The form of the object expression therefore provides information separate from the person who wants it. A Kurmanji rendition of wanting something must preserve which object is intended instead of treating every change in the Filipino marker as a change of actor.
A form glossed my can have another job in the event
NIU’s NG-pronoun lesson gives ko a possessive use and also uses it for the buyer in a sentence about purchasing clothing for Rosa. Likewise, a Kurmanji oblique pronoun is not exclusively an owner expression: Thackston lists min both in possession and in other grammatical roles. A word list pairing each form only with my would conceal the event structure in both languages.
In a Filipino message describing a past wish about a purchase, the person wanting, the buyer and the beneficiary may need to be identified separately. If the source makes the desirer and buyer the same person, that identity should survive the target’s different pronoun forms. If the beneficiary is somebody else, that person must not be absorbed into the first-person reference.
The Kurmanji example describes a desire, not proof that the desired action occurred. Preserve that distinction when the Filipino message reports an intention that was abandoned. Correctly repeating the same person is only part of the meaning: making the intended event sound completed would turn an account of wanting into an account of doing.
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