Lower Sorbian to Xhosa: a possible action is different from an instruction
Keep a conditional proposal separate from a command
A Lower Sorbian message can describe what someone would do, ask the recipient to act or direct another person to do something. These meanings may involve the same activity but create different expectations. A Xhosa translation should preserve whether work is proposed, requested or already being reported.
Stone describes the Lower Sorbian conditional with an invariable particle by. His examples include ja by źełał, I would work, and wej by źełałej, you two would work. The unchanged particle does not mean that the participants are unchanged: the personal reference and the rest of the construction still matter.
For a discussion about assigning a task, a statement that two people would work is not automatically an order addressed to them. Keep any condition or proposal in the exchange. Shortening the target to a direct command could make a tentative arrangement sound like a settled instruction.
Xhosa distinguishes the recipient of an instruction
The SADiLaR grammar portal illustrates Funda! for an instruction to read and Fundani! when addressing more than one person. Its discussion identifies -ni as a plural imperative ending. The number concerns those receiving the instruction, rather than the number of books or pages involved.
This matters when a Lower Sorbian source addresses a pair. Two readers are more than one addressee, but the Xhosa plural ending does not itself establish exactly two. If the source’s pair distinction is important to organizing the activity, keep that information recoverable instead of assuming the ending carries a dual meaning.
A classroom instruction might ask two students to read one passage, while another asks one student to read two passages. Those are different assignments. Check the people independently of the material: a plural instruction form should not be interpreted as evidence that several passages have been requested.
A request concerning someone else needs its own construction
The portal also gives Makathethe! as an instruction that he or she should say something, and Khawundijonge! as a request to look at the speaker. These are not merely longer spellings of the same direct imperative. The construction helps establish who should act and how the request is presented.
Stone separately identifies Lower Sorbian daš or dasi in a construction with a meaning like letting people talk. That source pattern is useful evidence that an instruction-related message need not address its intended actor directly. Identify whether the writer is speaking to the actor or asking someone else to allow or arrange the action.
For a meeting message, distinguish asking the chair to speak from asking the chair to let other participants speak. Both concern speaking, yet the chair has a different responsibility in each. A translation containing a recognizable speaking verb can still reverse that relationship.
Read the finished exchange by assigning each action to a person and each request to its recipient. Then ask whether the source made a proposal, issued an instruction or sought permission for another person. Preserve that distinction before polishing the tone. This keeps a conditional Lower Sorbian contribution from becoming an unintended Xhosa command and keeps an instruction about another participant from being redirected to the reader.
Language references