Lower Sorbian to Inuinnaqtun: injury, illness and addressing the right person
Being ill and hurting oneself are different source events
The Nunavut Arctic College dictionary distinguishes aanniaqtuq, being sick or ill, from aanniqtuq, hurting oneself. Their visual similarity should not hide the difference between a condition and an event involving injury. A Lower Sorbian account of somebody being unwell should not acquire an assertion that the person injured themselves simply because a nearby dictionary entry looks plausible.
Lower Sorbian supplies its own reason to read complete expressions. Stone distinguishes a genuinely self-directed construction such as myś se, wash oneself, from verbs such as bojaś se, fear, where the reflexive is part of the lexical construction. A source se does not independently establish that a physical action was directed at the subject. Before selecting an Inuinnaqtun entry, determine whether the message describes illness, injury or another state rather than translating that source marker in isolation.
The cited target forms are examples, not universal conjugations
The dictionary’s illness and injury entries identify useful meanings, but they do not authorize using an unchanged entry for every person mentioned in a Lower Sorbian sentence. A report about the speaker and an enquiry directed at somebody else require different participant interpretation. Preserve who experiences the condition even when the target packages that reference within a longer word.
The dictionary also explains its community basis: it was revised for local Inuinnaqtun with speakers and elders associated with the Cambridge Bay region and neighbouring communities. Related Inuit forms from a different variety should not silently replace these examples. This is particularly relevant when a Lower Sorbian user searches for one short word: similar-looking vocabulary can belong to distinct documented varieties, and resemblance does not establish the requested target form.
A respectful plural source can still address one person
Stone notes that Lower Sorbian wy can be an honorific address to one person or two, as well as a plural form. Its shape alone therefore cannot determine the number of recipients of a greeting. Establish whether the source enquires after one person, a pair or a larger group before interpreting the target response.
The Northwest Territories government’s Inuinnaqtun conversation page gives Qanuritpin? for a greeting or enquiry about wellbeing, Naammaktunga for the response that the speaker is well, and Ilvittauq? for and you. These are distinct turns in an exchange. Replacing the source enquiry with the response would change who is reporting a condition, even though both belong to the same greeting routine. The attested examples provide a starting point for recognizing those conversational roles; they should not be extended into unverified group-address paradigms merely because the Lower Sorbian source contains an apparently plural pronoun.
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