Finnish to Rundi: an elative topic is not the place where speech began
Politics can be the subject of conversation, not its origin
A Taste of Finnish gives He puhuvat politiikasta for people talking about politics. The -sta ending here marks what they discuss. Although Finnish elative also has spatial uses involving movement out of somewhere, this sentence does not say that the speakers come from politics or are leaving a political location.
For Rundi, the translation must express the relation between speaking and its topic. Choosing a target origin expression solely because a Finnish case is often glossed “from” would change the message. The people are engaged in discussion, and politics is its content; the source gives no point of departure or travel route.
A question about a person is not a question to that person
The Finnish lesson asks Kenestä Aino puhuu? and answers with a person’s name or the teacher in the same topic-marking case. The question asks whom Aino is discussing. It does not establish that this person hears Aino, speaks with her, or supplied the information she is repeating.
That distinction matters in translating a conversation report into Rundi. A person named after a speaking verb can occupy several roles in ordinary communication: topic, addressee or source of information. The Finnish topic ending in this construction identifies the first role. Turning the teacher into the listener would introduce a different interaction, even while retaining the same two people.
Rundi has a documented “about” use of a postpositional construction
Zorc and Nibagwire’s comparative grammar includes Rundi twookuvugakó ikí, asking what should be said about it, in its class-17 discussion. Its accompanying notes distinguish the Rundi kó pattern from a more usual Rwanda hó counterpart. This is useful evidence for the target relation without treating every form in the comparative book as interchangeable across its two languages.
The example demonstrates speaking about a referent; it is not supplied as a complete translation of the Finnish politics sentence. To build that translation, the target expression still has to fit the particular referent and predicate. A single “about it” example does not establish that all Finnish elatives share one Rundi replacement or that every discourse topic belongs to the same noun class.
The Finnish verb determines how the ending is read
The same Finnish lesson uses -sta forms with liking, such as Hän tykkää pizzasta. In that construction the marked item is what someone likes, not necessarily a subject they are discussing. Reusing the speaking-about analysis there would substitute a conversation for an attitude toward food. The suffix’s visible sameness does not erase the predicates’ different meanings.
In this direction, read the Finnish verb and its marked complement together. With the cited speaking construction, retain a topic; with the liking construction, retain the liked item. That separates a statement’s content from its geographical origin and from its listener, while leaving Rundi grammar to express the particular relation rather than forcing one spatial gloss onto every -sta ending.
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