Spanish to Chhattisgarhi: separate the owner from the number of belongings
Spanish possessive number usually counts the possessed things
Spanish possessive forms can express two different kinds of information: the person associated with something and agreement with the thing possessed. Universal Dependencies distinguishes the possessor’s number from the inflectional number agreeing with the noun. A Spanish plural possessive should therefore not automatically be interpreted as evidence for several owners. One person can have several belongings.
Flueckiger’s linguistic introduction gives Chhattisgarhi mor and tor for first- and second-person possession, contrasting them with Standard Hindi forms. These are useful target reference points, but they do not license a mechanical conversion of every Spanish possessive ending. First recover who possesses or is associated with the noun, and then establish how many entities the noun identifies.
A plural group can be the owner of one thing
The same introduction illustrates laikaman as a plural expression for boys and laikaman ke for something belonging to the boys. The group’s plurality belongs to the owners in that phrase. It does not by itself establish that several objects are owned. A Spanish source describing the boys’ ball and another describing their balls must retain that difference even when the same group appears in both.
The converse is equally important: a phrase about one boy’s belongings can contain a plural possessed noun without identifying a group of boys. Read the Spanish possessor and possessed expression as separate participants in the relationship. Translating all visible plurality into the same part of the Chhattisgarhi phrase can change either the size of the group or the number of objects.
Su can refer to the addressee as well as somebody discussed
The RAE explains that Spanish usted takes su and suyo as its possessive forms. A phrase containing su can therefore refer to the current recipient rather than an absent third person. This matters before selecting a Chhattisgarhi person form: determine whether the message discusses somebody else’s property or directly identifies the recipient’s property.
A Spanish instruction to collect your documents should not become an instruction to collect somebody else’s documents simply because the source uses third-person grammar with usted. Conversely, a report about a third party’s documents should not become direct address. The source’s actual conversational reference remains more reliable than assigning grammatical person from one isolated possessive.
Related-language familiarity is not target evidence
Flueckiger discusses how Chhattisgarhi forms differed from the Standard Hindi she later studied. Her account also reports that a noun before a postposition need not undergo the Hindi-style decline in the usage described. A translation should therefore not be corrected toward a familiar Hindi form solely because the target looks different.
These observations come from the linguistic introduction to her fieldwork-based study; they are not an exhaustive paradigm for every present-day Chhattisgarhi speaker. The short examples establish concrete distinctions useful for reading a possession phrase. For Spanish-to-Chhattisgarhi translation, preserve the owner’s identity, the owner group’s size and the quantity of possessed things independently. That prevents a seemingly small possessive adjustment from changing whose documents, equipment or belongings the message concerns.
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