Welsh to Polish: when ownership refers back to the sentence’s subject
Welsh ownership can need a Polish choice about the subject
Welsh possessive forms tell you who owns something, but their translation into Polish can also depend on the sentence’s subject. The Foundation guide distinguishes fy, dy and third-person ei through different noun mutations and accompanying pronouns. Polish swój is selected for a different reason: it can refer ownership back to the subject.
The University of Warsaw language advisory service recommends Potrzebuję internetu do swojej firmy in its discussion of careful standard usage. The company belongs to the speaker who is also the subject of need. Its explanation contrasts this with mojej and notes that ordinary conversational usage permits variation. The recommendation is therefore about a particular standard, not a ban on every occurrence of my.
For a Welsh statement about obtaining something for the speaker’s own business, retaining first-person ownership does not necessarily mean inserting a first-person Polish possessive. The subject already supplies the person reference. A reflexive possessive can link the business to that subject without repeating a lexical equivalent of Welsh my.
Institutional owners can be subjects too
The University of Łódź discusses a commission publishing an opinion adopted at its own last meeting. It accepts swoim because the meeting belongs to the institution that functions as the sentence’s subject. The relevant relationship is not limited to a person possessing a physical object.
This is useful for Welsh minutes, notices and organizational reports. A possessive referring to a committee’s meeting or a school’s activity can need the same Polish subject-oriented analysis as a personal possession. Asking whether the owner is male or female misses the issue: the key question is whether the owner is the institution performing the main action.
If a Welsh report instead describes a commission publishing another institution’s opinion, the ownership link changes. Automatically using swój because the sentence concerns an organization could wrongly make the opinion the commission’s own. Identify the owner in the source before choosing the Polish reference. Institutional subjecthood does not erase the distinction between its work and somebody else’s.
A Welsh third-person possessive is not always reflexive
The Welsh course contrasts ei gar e with ei char hi, his car and her car. This makes the owner’s gender recoverable in those examples. It does not, by itself, say whether that owner is also the subject of a larger sentence. Polish translation requires that additional relationship to be established.
A statement about someone inspecting their own car and a statement about someone inspecting another person’s car may use superficially similar Welsh possessive material. The Polish choice must preserve the difference between the actor and the owner. Treat the Welsh mutation as evidence about the possessive construction, not as a ready-made instruction to select swój.
The Warsaw and Łódź answers together show why a short dictionary substitution is insufficient here. First locate the action’s subject; then locate the owner of the dependent noun. When they coincide, consider the Polish reflexive possessive under the appropriate register. When they differ, keep the other owner identifiable. This preserves the Welsh relationship rather than merely reproducing its visible pronoun.
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