Persian to Polish: respectful you can require a third-person verb
Šomā does not by itself tell you how many customers are addressed
Persian Online explains that šomā serves both plural address and respectful address to one person. A question directed to a single customer can therefore use the same pronoun as a question directed to several customers. Translating every occurrence as an ordinary plural Polish you would lose the distinction between respect and head count.
Oscar Swan’s Polish lesson illustrates Gdzie pani mieszka? for asking a woman formally where she lives and Czy pan rozumie? for asking a man formally whether he understands. The verbs have third-person forms, although the questions address the listener. They do not ask about an absent third party.
For Persian into Polish, grammatical person and conversational role must therefore be separated. The person listening remains the addressee when the target uses a third-person form. A back-reading that converts such a question into where does she live would misidentify the conversation’s participants.
The polite noun and its verb belong to one address decision
Persian to contrasts with šomā as a familiar singular address form. However, choosing a Polish expression is more than replacing that source pronoun with a polite-looking noun. In the documented Polish pattern, pan or pani and the third-person verb work together; preserving a source second-person verb shape is not the goal.
Swan also distinguishes these address expressions from on and ona, the third-person pronouns for he and she. Recognizing a third-person verb does not license replacing a respectful target address with an ordinary reference to somebody else. The source can be speaking directly to one respected person throughout.
The Persian lesson further notes a respectful singular use of išān in colloquial speech, while its written use can correspond to a plural they. That is another reason to establish who is being addressed or discussed before treating a formal-looking source form as an uncomplicated count of people. Register and grammatical form interact in the source too.
A question about your property still addresses you
The Polish lesson illustrates pana and pani in expressions asking about the addressee’s car, house or other possession. These possessive forms retain respectful address rather than changing the owner into somebody absent. A Persian request involving your item must preserve that direct relationship even when the target phrase no longer resembles an ordinary second-person pronoun.
Persian ezāfe supplies an instructive comparison: ketāb-e man links a book to the speaker, while a linked description can serve a different function. Identify the relationship first. In a question to a customer about their book, the addressee is the person consulted and the book is the item discussed; the target must not merge those roles.
This direction consequently requires two connected decisions: whether the Persian form addresses one person or several, and whether it addresses them respectfully. Once those are resolved, the Polish address expression, possessive form and verb can preserve the same interaction despite using different grammatical person patterns.
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