Lower Sorbian to Amharic: you may require a gender distinction the source leaves open
A Lower Sorbian question need not identify the listener’s gender
Pankau’s Lower Sorbian material includes a question about how many raspberries the speaker had, introduced with wěš, glossed as second-person singular know. Another question uses ty with a second-person verb while asking about shoes. Those source forms identify the listener as a single addressee; their glosses do not select male or female.
The Amharic UD reference distinguishes አንተ and አንቺ as masculine and feminine singular you. Its verbal paradigm likewise shows separate singular addressee forms. A translation of a Lower Sorbian question can consequently make an additional person-reference choice even when the source’s question word and main verb seem straightforward.
For an original Lower Sorbian message asking one person whether they know an address, establish who receives it. The grammatical gender of the address, house or other object cannot identify that person. Nor should a nearby feminine noun automatically cause the target to address a woman: it may name the thing being discussed rather than the listener.
The distinction can appear inside the predicate
The Amharic reference illustrates separate forms for you told with masculine and feminine singular subjects. It also distinguishes subject-agreement material from genuine object clitics attached to verbs. A gender-bearing part of the target predicate can therefore concern the actor or the person told, depending on its grammatical role.
An original Lower Sorbian reminder meaning you told me assigns the telling to the addressee and the receiving to the speaker. A target that swaps those references can sound like a plausible account of telling while reversing responsibility. Locate the target subject information independently of the attached object reference.
Pankau’s source examples also demonstrate why the first personal-looking word cannot always settle attachment: colloquial Lower Sorbian permits certain degree and noun-modifier material to be separated. Although that phenomenon is not Amharic object morphology, it reinforces the need to reconstruct the source clause’s relationships before distributing them across the target verb.
One target word can retain two participants
The Amharic overview gives ነገረኝ for he told me. Its verb and attached object expression together retain the teller and the person receiving the information. A Lower Sorbian reader expecting a separate visible word for each participant should not conclude that one person has disappeared simply because the target packages the reference together.
For an original Lower Sorbian exchange about whether the listener informed the speaker or another colleague, keep that recipient contrast explicit in the interpretation. Correctly choosing the listener’s gender does not compensate for changing who received the information. The two references answer different questions.
This guide uses Pankau’s colloquial evidence without assuming it describes every standardized Lower Sorbian construction. The practical translation problem is narrower: recover the addressee and the other participants from the actual source exchange, then interpret Amharic subject agreement and object clitics separately. A short source question may leave gender open, while a compact target predicate can specify gender and participant roles at the same time.
Language references