Persian to Irish: belonging to someone differs from having their book in hand
Persian can state ownership explicitly
The Texas Persian possessive lesson uses in xāne māl-e man ast to say that this house is mine. The māl-e construction explicitly identifies belonging. An Irish translation should preserve that claim rather than reduce it to the fact that a house, book or other object is temporarily available to the speaker.
This matters when someone distinguishes a borrowed item from their own. A person can have a book with them while acknowledging another owner. If a Persian reply states whose property it is, changing the reply into a bare assertion that the speaker has it would leave the ownership question unanswered.
Irish ag and le can coexist without a contradiction
Ó Dónaill’s dictionary illustrates Tá leabhar leat agam: I have a book of yours. The same short sentence identifies one person as having the book and another as the person to whom it belongs. That provides a useful model for interpreting a Persian exchange where physical custody and ownership are discussed separately.
The entry for ag includes possession and availability among its uses, while the le entry includes property relationships. These are constructional meanings, not a universal rule that every occurrence of ag means temporary borrowing or every le means legal title. Both prepositions have many other functions, so the complete Irish clause determines the reading.
In the borrowed-book application, the Persian owner must not be overwritten by the person who currently carries the item. A translation can legitimately mention two people without introducing a second book. The object remains one item; the two relationships to it are what differ. The Persian ownership assertion must therefore survive even when the item is elsewhere physically.
A family relationship is not an ownership dispute
The Texas lesson cautions against using māl as ordinary identification of a family member. Persian my father belongs to a family relationship construction rather than the same belonging expression used for an owned house. Translating a relative’s identification as if it settled property rights would misrepresent the source’s ordinary meaning.
Irish ag likewise appears in the dictionary with family relationships, including having sons, as well as with objects in someone’s possession. The presence of that preposition alone therefore cannot establish legal ownership. For a Persian family introduction, the target should preserve who is related to whom, rather than import the ownership interpretation appropriate to an explicit māl claim.
A useful distinction across a longer exchange is consequently among identifying a relative, stating that someone has an item available, and stating whose item it is. Persian and Irish distribute those meanings differently across their constructions. Keeping the relationship type explicit in the interpretation prevents an apparently simple have or mine substitution from changing what the speaker actually asserts.
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