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 pronoun in Japhug do not distinguish for animacy. In English, the third person singular pronoun is "it" for inanimate (or nonhuman) referents, but "he"/"she"/"they" and their conjugations "him"/"her"/"them" (another optional distinction in Japhug) for animate referents. In Japhug, "ɯʑo" (in the Kamnyu dialect) or "mi" (Tatshi dialect) is the third person singular pronoun always.

1. Pronouns in English do not distinguish dual from plural referents. For one example, the first person dual pronoun in Japhug is "tɕiʑo" (in Kamnyu) or "tsəʒo" (Tatshi), and the first person plural pronoun is "iʑo", "iʑora", or "iʑɤra" (Kamnyu) or "jiʒo" (Tatshi). In English, the first person plural pronoun is "we" (and its conjugation "us"). However, neither language makes an inclusive/exclusive distinction.