Fòram na Gàidhlig

My course has reached possessives. All seems straightforward enough, just one thing I was wondering. If you look at this sentence:

Càite a bheil am baile?

This to me means - Where is the town?

But if "am" is the possessive for "their" when used in conjunction with labials, then couldn't the same sentence also mean:

Where is their town?

If so how do you know which is meant?

From context only.

GunChleoc wrote: From context only.

I feared that would be the answer, but thanks anyway

There's a lot of that happening in English too - you just don't notice, because you're used to it

With third person possessives which don't show the distiction between alienable and inalienable clearly though lenition etc, it's very common to resort to aige/aice/aca irrespective of whether the object theoretically falls into one or the other category of posession. So for clarity, càit a bheil am baile aca is not going to raise eyebrows from any native speaker.

I think it may be also "am baile-san" or "am baile fhèin" in the case of "their town".
But in the case of "the town", context is the only help: Càit' a bheil am baile as fhaisge?