Lower Sorbian to Mexican Spanish: plural address and conversational relative clauses
Addressing a group does not require vosotros in Mexico
A Lower Sorbian message can distinguish a pair through the dual identified by the Sorbian Institute’s documentation project. Mexican Spanish does not reproduce that contrast by choosing vosotros instead of ustedes. The Spanish academies explain that vosotros belongs to informal address in much of Spain, while American usage employs ustedes for informal plural address as well. The choice between these Spanish forms is therefore not a way to distinguish two recipients from several.
For a message to two friends in Mexico, preserve the pair through the wording where needed and use the appropriate American address pattern. Do not interpret ustedes as proof that the source’s friendly tone has become ceremonious. Conversely, the fact that the source addresses exactly two people does not justify a singular target verb. Number, regional usage and social relationship are separate decisions that need to remain compatible.
Conversational Lower Sorbian can build a relative clause differently
Andreas Pankau’s primary study explicitly limits its data to colloquial Lower Sorbian and distinguishes that variety from the standardized written language. In the spoken variety he describes, relative clauses use ak or ako with resumptive pronouns, rather than the relative-pronoun system of the written standard. That scope matters when translating a personal message or a passage transcribed from speech: a construction should not be rejected merely because it differs from a school grammar’s written pattern.
Nor should every source pronoun be copied into the same place in Spanish. A resumptive element helps connect the colloquial Lower Sorbian clause to the person or thing it describes. The target must express that connection using a Spanish construction, rather than preserve the number of separate reference words. First establish which person or object the clause modifies and what role that participant has inside it. This avoids reading a grammatical link in the source as an additional individual in the translation.
Possessive relatives need their own Spanish solution
The Spanish academies describe cuyo, cuya, cuyos and cuyas as possessive relative determiners. They agree with the following possessed noun, not with the person who owns it. Their examples include el plan cuya aprobación, the plan whose approval. When a colloquial Lower Sorbian relative expresses an ownership or association relationship, a Spanish solution cannot be chosen simply by matching a source resumptive pronoun to su.
The same reference notes that cuyo is uncommon in informal conversation, where a relative clause with que and a possession verb is often preferred. That offers a practical distinction for Mexican Spanish messages: retaining the relationship does not require turning an everyday source into formal prose. At the same time, the academies advise against mechanically combining que with possessive su in the criticized pattern. The choice is between complete grammatical constructions, not between keeping and deleting an isolated source word. Identify the ownership relationship first, then select a target clause that matches both its meaning and conversational register.
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