Finnish to Māori: decide exactly who belongs to Finnish “we”
The Finnish group can contain two people or many
Finnish me lähdimme means “we left.” The Finnish UD description defines first-person plural as the speaker together with one or more other people. The sentence therefore tells us that the speaker participated, but it does not itself count the entire departing group. Two travellers and a larger party can both be described this way.
That leaves a real decision for Māori. Choosing a pronoun merely because a dictionary labels it “we” can add a number distinction the Finnish sentence never supplied. A report about two colleagues departing needs a different first-person form from a report about a whole team, even when the Finnish wording is unchanged.
Was the listener one of the people who left?
Kupu distinguishes tāua, for the speaker and listener together as two people, from māua, for two people including the speaker but excluding the listener. These forms are not two degrees of formality. They describe different membership of the group, so substituting one for the other changes who took part in the event.
Imagine the Finnish departure sentence spoken to a travelling companion who left with the speaker. Its group can include the listener. The same sentence addressed later to someone who stayed behind excludes that listener. Finnish me does not spell out this difference, whereas the Māori dual choice makes it explicit. The conversation’s addressee is therefore part of interpreting the source.
Larger groups retain the same membership distinction
For three or more people, Kupu presents tātou as inclusive of the listener and mātou as exclusive. Counting alone does not resolve the translation: knowing there were six travellers still leaves the question of whether the current listener travelled with them. Number and inclusion are two separate decisions, not interchangeable clues.
Nor should a reference to a large organisation automatically force a larger-group pronoun when the sentence concerns only two representatives. In the Finnish departure report, count the people who actually constitute “we” in that event. The number of employees in their company does not enlarge the group that left unless the source says those employees joined them.
A change of audience can change the appropriate Māori form
A Finnish speaker can repeat the same departure report first to a companion and then to a person who was absent. The past event and its participants remain unchanged, but the relationship between that group and the current listener changes. A Māori rendering must track that relationship rather than reuse the previous pronoun mechanically.
Where a Finnish excerpt contains no participant list or conversational setting, the uncertainty belongs to the source. It cannot be solved by treating first-person plural as inherently inclusive or inherently exclusive. Establish whether the group contains exactly two people or more, then whether it includes the addressee. That produces a faithful Māori membership claim without inventing extra travellers or involving someone who stayed behind.
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