Welsh to Punjabi: recipients, possessors and the gender of the noun
A Welsh preposition can contain information that Punjabi puts elsewhere
The Welsh Foundation guide distinguishes at Sam from personal forms such as ato fe and ati hi. In the course’s writing and sending contexts, these forms identify the person toward whom something is directed. Do not translate the final pronoun alone and discard the relationship expressed by the whole prepositional form.
Columbia University’s Punjabi lesson lists ਮੈਨੂੰ for to me and ਸਾਨੂੰ for to us. These are recipient expressions, not possessives. When a Welsh message says something is sent to a person, the Punjabi expression must preserve that recipient role. A word meaning my would instead attach ownership to the item and change the message.
The contrast becomes particularly useful when Welsh repeats a short form after a verb. A translator cannot assume that every personal reference is a free-standing subject. Identify whether the person is writing, receiving the writing, or merely being discussed. Punjabi has different resources for those roles, even if the Welsh spelling keeps the pronoun visibly next to a preposition.
My child does not mark the parent’s gender
The Punjabi lesson gives ਮੇਰਾ and ਮੇਰੀ with masculine and feminine singular child nouns, followed by corresponding plural forms. The choice concerns the noun described, not the gender of the parent speaking. A Welsh writer’s fy therefore does not settle which Punjabi possessive ending is needed; the target noun does.
Welsh instead shows a distinctive mutation pattern after fy. The official guide illustrates fy nhad i, my father, and fy nghar i, my car. Those changed noun beginnings do not provide Punjabi masculine or feminine endings. Translate the relationship first, choose the appropriate Punjabi noun, and apply that noun’s grammatical agreement.
This prevents a common interpretive trap in family messages. A woman can use a masculine Punjabi possessive form when referring to a masculine noun, and a man can use a feminine form with a feminine noun. Inferring the speaker’s identity from that ending would add information that neither the Welsh possessive nor the Punjabi agreement supplies.
His and her are distributed differently across the two systems
Welsh distinguishes ei dad e from ei thad hi in the Foundation guide: the possessive construction and following pronoun distinguish his father from her father. Punjabi’s Columbia table groups his and her together under the same possessive series. It separately changes the form according to the following noun.
Thus a Punjabi possessive ending should not be read as a direct code for the Welsh owner’s gender. A Welsh feminine owner and a feminine target noun are two different pieces of information. Only the latter determines the agreement distinction shown in the Punjabi lesson.
Where a family account contrasts two owners, preserve that contrast through an appropriate explicit reference if the Punjabi possessive alone leaves it unresolved. Conversely, do not add an explicit owner merely to reproduce every Welsh pronoun when the participants are already clear. The task is to keep the recipient, possessor and person described distinct while allowing Punjabi agreement to follow its own noun.
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