Lower Sorbian to Brazilian Portuguese: a group, a grammatical person and an owner
A first-person group can have singular-looking agreement
Ciberdúvidas recognizes nós vamos and a gente vai as legitimate Portuguese alternatives. The second refers to the speaker’s group while using a third-person singular verb. For Lower Sorbian input, a target a gente therefore does not necessarily turn a source we into a single outsider. The grammatical agreement pattern and the real people referred to are different questions.
The source’s number still matters. Lower Sorbian has an active dual, documented by the Sorbian Institute. If a message concerns the speaker and exactly one companion, neither nós nor a gente alone states that there are precisely two participants. Preserve that count where it matters instead of expecting a Portuguese agreement ending to reproduce the source dual. A singular-looking target verb and a two-person source group can be compatible without making quantity irrelevant.
Plural address can change grammatical person without changing the listeners
The same Ciberdúvidas consultation distinguishes the syntactic behaviour of vós and vocês: the latter refers to plural addressees but takes a third-person plural verb. This is useful when a Lower Sorbian message directly addresses several recipients. A third-person target verb does not by itself mean that the translation now talks about absent people.
Stone adds an important source complication: Lower Sorbian wy can address one person or two respectfully, as well as functioning as a plural. Determine the real number of listeners before comparing the target address. A respectful singular source must not become an announcement to several people merely because a source form looks plural. For Brazilian Portuguese, use the source relationship to establish the recipients; the target pronoun and verb then need to express a coherent address construction together.
The target possessive may leave the owner less clear than the source
Stone describes the Lower Sorbian reflexive possessive swoj as a resource for linking a possession to the subject, while some nonreflexive alternatives can be ambiguous. Portuguese seu can introduce another ambiguity: Carla Marques’s Ciberdúvidas explanation notes that it may refer to the person being discussed or to an addressee treated through a third-person address form. Dele can clarify reference to a male third party in the relevant context.
For a source report about returning a personal item, identify the owner independently of the person returning it and the person receiving the message. A Portuguese possessive that sounds natural is not sufficient if the source makes those roles distinct. Likewise, do not replace every seu mechanically with dele: when the intended owner is the listener, that replacement would select a different person.
This pair therefore benefits from reading group size, addressee and owner separately. Lower Sorbian inflection may make one distinction explicit while Portuguese communicates another through a pronoun phrase. The target should preserve the original relationships even when its verb appears in a different grammatical person or its ownership expression uses more words.
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