The Oblique Form for Nouns

Today we'll cover oblique form for nouns. If you missed the last few lessons, I recommend covering them first since the material is somewhat incremental. Just to summarize, the oblique form of a pronoun, noun, adjective, or verb is the special form that it takes on when followed by a postposition (such as "men", "se", and "par").

Recall that many masculine nouns end in "a" and many feminine nouns end in "i". Let's first talk about masculine singular nouns that end in "a". When followed by a postposition, such nouns replace the "a" suffix with an "e".

• larka = the boy
• larke se = from the boy

Masculine singular nouns that end in some other letter remain unchanged when followed by a postposition:

• ghar = the house
• ghar se = from the house

For feminine singular nouns that end in "i", the oblique form of the noun is the same as its direct form:

• larki = the girl
• larki se = from the girl

Feminine singular nouns that don't end in "i" also remain unchanged when followed by a postposition:

• sarak = the street
• sarak se = from the street

That covers all of the singular cases. Now let's look at the plural cases. Masculine plural nouns that end in "e" replace their "e" suffix with "on" for the oblique form; note that the "n" has a soft, nasal pronunciation.

• larke = the boys
• larkon se = from the boys

Masculine plural nouns that end in any other letter simply add the suffix "on" for the oblique form:

• ghar = the houses
• gharon se = from the houses

Recall that some feminine plural nouns have the suffix "ian". For the oblique form of these nouns, the suffix is replaced with "ion"; the "n" here is also pronounced softly.

• larkian = the girls
• larkion se = from the girls

And lastly, feminine plural nouns that end in "en" have their suffixes replaced with "on" for the oblique form:

• saraken = the streets
• sarakon se = from the streets

Fortunately, the endings are similar enough as not to make you incomprehensible in case you accidentally use the wrong ending, so don't stress about it too much in conversation.

Due to the technical, grammar-heavy nature of this lesson and the last, we'll go back to covering simpler phrases for the next few lessons before diving into oblique adjectives and verbs ... so you can breathe a sigh of relief. Till then, below are a few examples of what we learned.

Examples:

• Main ghar se aa raha hoon = I am coming from the house
• Voh un ke gharon men hain = They are in their houses
• Yeh larkion ko deiye = Give this to the girls
• Jumme ko chutti hai = There is a holiday on Friday

Masculine vs. Feminine Nouns

In Urdu, all nouns are said to be either masculine (which we will denote by an (m)) or feminine (which we will denote by an (f)); we saw this briefly in our lesson about the present habitual tense. Nouns that describe males are masculine, and nouns that describe females are feminine.

• aadmi (m) = man
• aurat (f) = woman
• sahib (m) = gentleman
• sahiba (f) = lady

Nouns that can refer to either males or females often have two forms:

• larka (m) = boy
• larki (f) = girl
• beta (m) = son
• beti (f) = daughter

But sometimes a single word can be used to refer to either a male or a female:

• daaktar = doctor

There's no simple way to determine whether a noun is masculine or feminine. Fortunately, if you choose the wrong gender, people are likely to have no trouble understanding you ... they might even find it cute! But if you do plan on learning gender associations nouns, here's one starting point: nouns that end in an "a" (such as "larka" and "beta") usually refer to masculine objects, and nouns that end in an "i" (such as "larki" and "beti") usually refer to feminine objects. We've already seen some exceptions to the rule ("aadmi", "sahiba"), but you can trust this rule for the most part. Words that end in neither "a" nor "i" may be either masculine or feminine -- the only way to learn these is by practicing.

The gender association of a noun can affect the grammatical structure of a sentence in several ways, all of which we'll gradually cover here. In our lesson tomorrow, we'll relate what we learned here to pluralizing nouns. See you then!