Spanish to Bodo: su libro does not reveal whether the owner is the listener
A Spanish possessive can point to different people
Spanish su libro can mean his book, her book, their book, or your book with usted or ustedes. Its singular form describes the book count rather than proving that there is only one owner. Bodo distinguishes personal-pronoun person and number, so resolving the owner is essential before forming the target possessive construction.
Bridul Basumatary’s study gives Bodo second-person nɯŋ and third-person bi, alongside honorific and plural forms. It also illustrates a genitive construction with bi-ni for his or her. A Spanish su addressed to a listener should not become third-person possession simply because Spanish usted uses third-person grammatical agreement.
A book owner is not identified by the recipient
Compare the original Spanish requests Traiga su libro, bring your book, addressed to someone with usted, and Ana dice que su libro está aquí, Ana says that her book is here, in a context establishing Ana as owner. The same source possessive can point to the listener in one message and a person being discussed in another.
The Bodo study’s genitive example concerns bringing a person’s book to the speaker. The owner of the book and the person receiving it are separate participants. A translation should not identify the owner as me merely because the request ends with a phrase equivalent to to me.
That distinction can arise in a classroom collection: a teacher asks one student to bring another student’s book to the desk. Spanish su may need interpretation from the earlier sentence naming the owner. The target must preserve that owner even though the student performing the delivery and the teacher receiving it are more prominent in the request.
Plural books do not prove plural owners
Spanish sus libros changes the number of the possessed items. It can still refer to one person’s books. The Spanish grammatical overview distinguishes features of the possessor from agreement with the possessed noun; those two layers should not be collapsed into a single plural decision in Bodo.
Basumatary lists distinct Bodo singular and plural personal forms, including bi and bisɯr for third-person reference. Moving from one book to several books does not by itself authorize replacing a singular owner with a plural owner. The source must establish that more people own the items before that target distinction changes.
Spanish regional usage can provide helpful context. The Academia Canaria de la Lengua describes a traditional Canary Islands preference for su meaning de usted, with explicit de él or de ella for other owners. This is a scoped account of one variety, not a rule that su always addresses a listener across Spanish.
The Bodo paper also distinguishes honorific forms from ordinary ones. Respect and participant reference are separate decisions: a respectful reference to somebody absent is still third person, while addressing one listener is second person. For this pair, identify who owns the book, whether that owner is being addressed, and how many owners there are before selecting the target personal and genitive forms.
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