Persian to Nepali: the person who likes something is not its recipient
Persian like does not have to become a literal have statement
The Texas Persian compound-verb lesson lists dust dāštan as like or love. Interpreting its have-related component separately would miss the construction’s preference meaning. A Nepali rendering of a Persian taste or preference should preserve the person experiencing it and the thing liked, rather than state that the person owns or currently holds the thing.
This matters when a guest describes what they enjoy eating. Liking a dish is compatible with not having any of it at the moment. A translation that turns the preference into possession could imply that the guest has already been served, even though the Persian message merely describes their tastes.
Nepali can mark the person experiencing the preference with lāī
The Nepali textbook by Shrestha, Lama and Turin gives मलाई चिया मन पर्छ, I like tea. Malāī identifies the person experiencing the preference, while tea is the thing liked. In this example, it identifies a feeling rather than an unfinished act of serving. The lāī ending does not make the speaker a recipient waiting to be handed tea; its role belongs to this preference construction.
This is an important directional adjustment from a Persian expression in which the person who likes something can be the subject of dust dāštan. The Nepali experiencer phrase can look different grammatically while referring to the same person. Changing its case does not change who has the preference.
The textbook also describes a subject-style alternative with man parāunu. Thus, the dative pattern is not a reason to condemn every Nepali preference expressed with a different construction. The target predicate determines which participant form it requires. Keep a coherent construction rather than borrowing the person marking from one and the predicate from another.
Liking differs from wanting something now
The same textbook contrasts general preference with चाहिन्छ, needed or wanted in the immediate situation. Its example मलाई पानी चाहिन्छ concerns wanting or needing water. This is distinct from the tea preference example even though both can contain a lāī-marked person. The ending alone does not identify which of those intentions is present.
For a Persian menu conversation, translating a statement of liking as a request could unintentionally place an order. Translating a request as a general preference could fail to ask for anything. Determine whether dust dāštan actually expresses a taste in that sentence, or whether the wider construction and exchange establish a particular request.
The translation should therefore preserve three separate relationships: who experiences the preference, what they like, and whether they are asking for an item now. Nepali can encode the experiencer differently from Persian without turning that person into an owner or recipient. Once the predicate’s meaning is settled, its own grammatical frame should organize the target participants.
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