Japhug and English/Lexical selection

jya → eng

at least two cases of a one-to-many mapping (2 sentences minimum for each word):

1. There are three locative postpositions in Japhug, zɯ, tɕu and ri. All three can be used to express location ("at", "on", "in"), motion into ("into"), motion towards ("to"), or motion away from a place ("from"), irrespective of semantic details like relative location (on top, below, inside, etc.). Thus all three might be ambiguously translated to any of a number of English prepositions.

1. The standard third person pronouns in Japhug do not distinguish for animacy or semantic gender. For one example, in English, the third person singular pronoun is "it" for inanimate (or nonhuman) referents, but "he"/"she"/"they" and their conjugations "him"/"her"/"them" for animate referents depending on the perceived semantic gender of the referent. In Japhug, "ɯʑo" (in the Kamnyu dialect) or "mi" (Tatshi dialect) is the third person singular pronoun always.

Example sentence: tɕeri ɯʑo ndɤre, qajdo cʰo ra kɯ ndɤ tú-wɣ-ndza ɕti

but 3sg advers crow comit pl erg advers ipfv-inv-eat be.aff:fact

This sentence could be translated as "But it is eaten by crows and other [animals]", or as "But she is eaten by crows and other [animals]", etc.

1. The particle tɕe serves as the optional topic marker of a sentence. Generally, when it is at the beginning of a sentence, it can be translated as "as for ...", while it doesn't have corresponding translation in other places.

1. kɤntɕhaʁ → street; village
   1. kɤntɕhaʁ rɤʑi-a (I'm on the street)
   2. a-jɤ-tɯ-ɣɯt tɕe, aʑo cʰo [...] tɤɕime nɯ kɯ nɯnɯ kɤntɕʰaʁ ɣɯ ɯ-pɕi nɯtɕu ku-ta-nɤjo. (When you bring [the bird], the princess and I will be waiting for you outside of the town.)
2. kha → house; original place
3. khe → stupid; cloudy day
   1. kɯ-khe ci ɲɯ-ŋu (He is a fool)
   2. tɯ-mɯ ɲɯ-khe (The sky is cloudy)

eng → jya

1. The second person pronoun "you" in English does not distinguish singular, dual, and plural referents. In Japhug (Kamnyu dialect), the 2p singular pronoun is nɤʑo or nɤj; the 2p dual is ndʑiʑo; and the 2p plural is nɯʑo, nɯʑora, or nɯʑɤra.

To select these, one generalization we came up with is that "you" with a dual or plural referent in English is often followed by another noun that carries that meaning. For example, the phrases "you two" or "you both" unambiguously refer to a dual referent. "You all", "you guys", or "you" followed by a plural noun (e.g "you people", "you musicians", etc.) unambiguously refer to a plural referent.

Example unambiguous sentences:

- "I enjoy spending time with you all."

- "I think that you two need to stop causing trouble."