Vocabulary: Days of the Week

Today I'll tell you how to say the different days of the week in Urdu. Note that in Urdu, all days are considered to be masculine, except for Thursday.

• peer (m) = Monday
• mangal (m) = Tuesday
• budh (m) = Wednesday
• jumiraat (f) = Thursday
• jumma (m) = Friday
• hafta (m) = Saturday
• itvaar (m) = Sunday

To say "on ", we don't use the postposition "par", even though it generally translates to "on". Instead, we use a different postposition "ko":

• peer ko = on Monday
• jumme ko = on Friday
• hafte ko = on Saturday

...and so on. You may notice that in the examples above, the words "jumme" and "hafte" end in an "e" instead of "a" as they do in their direct translations. In Urdu, pronouns, nouns, and adjectives sometimes change their form when followed by a postposition; this is known as the oblique form. We'll cover obliques in our coming lessons.

Prepositions and Postpositions: In, On, and From

In English, words such as "in", "on", and "from" are called prepositions because they come before the word they modify. In Urdu, they're actually postpositions -- that is, they come after the word they modify. Below are the Urdu translations for the aforementioned prepositions:

• men = in
• par = on
• se = from

Note that the "n" in "men" is a soft "n". Occasionally, you'll run into some unintuitive uses of these words:

• ghar par = at home
• kaam par = at work

But in most cases, the translation is straightforward -- see below.

Examples:

• Ham Pakistan men hain = We're in Pakistan
• Iskool men, ham basketball khele = In school, we played basketball
• Khaana mez par hai = Food is on the table
• Mera daftar Bay Street par hai = My office is on Bay Street
• Main Toronto se hoon = I'm from Toronto
• Baink yahan se duur hai = The bank is far from here

Vocabulary: Adjectives #1

Now that we know how to use adjectives when speaking Urdu, we can start building up our vocabulary. Just remember that the ones which end in "a" have different forms depending on the gender, and depending on whether the noun is singular or plural. Here are a few adjectives to get us started:

• acha = good
• bura = bad
• bara = big
• chota = small
  
• naaya = new
• puraana = old
• poora = full
• khaali = empty
• mushkeel = difficult
• aasaan = easy

Examples:

• Yeh bahut bari imaarat hai naa? = This is a very big building, isn't it?
• Yeh imaarat bahut bari hai naa? = This building is very big, isn't it?
• Urdu mushkeel nahin hai = Urdu is not difficult
• Poora naan leiye = Take a full naan (bread)
• Hamari puraani gaari kahan hai? = Where's our old car?

Notice the adjective/noun agreement. Also notice the word order in the first two sentences.

How to Use Adjectives

It's time to cover adjectives -- those words that describe nouns. Let's start off with the Urdu word for "good":

• acha = good

In most cases, we put the adjective in front of the noun that it describes:

• acha larka = good boy

But as with English, we can push the adjective to come after the noun in some sentences:

• Yeh acha larka hai = This is a good boy

In Urdu, adjectives that end in "a" have separate forms for masculine, feminine, and plural nouns. As you've already seen above (in the "acha larka" example), such adjectives stay the same when describing masculine objects. When describing feminine objects, however, the ending "a" is replaced with an "i":

• achi larki = good girl

Looks familiar, right? When we learned about masculine and feminine nouns, we saw that nouns that end in "a" are typically masculine and nouns that end in "i" are typically feminine. Taking this idea further, you can probably guess what the masculine plural version of "acha" should look like:

• ache larke = good boys

The feminine plural version of the adjective is the same as the feminine singular version:

• achi larkian = good girls

Not all adjectives have multiple forms though. Adjectives that don't end in "a" have only one form, regardless of the gender and number of objects that it refers to. Take the adjective "mashoor", for example:

• mashoor aadmi = famous man / famous men
• mashoor aurat = famous woman
• mashoor auraten = famous women

We'll build our vocabulary of adjectives in our next lesson, and get some practice using them. See you then!

Vocabulary: Around the Neighborhood

Since we now have a solid grasp of some basic grammar, I thought we could dive head first into some vocabulary. Today we'll cover Urdu words for things that you might find around the neighborhood:

• ghar (m) = house, home
• makaan (m) = house, building
• imaarat (f) = building
• raasta (m) = road
• sarak (f) = street
• koocha (m) = narrow lane
• hotaal (m) = hotel
• daak khaana (m) = post office
• havaai addaa (m) = airport
• kaar o baar (m) = business
• chai khaana (m) = tea shop, restaurant
• aspataal (m) = hospital
• bazaar (m) = bazaar, market
• baink (m) = bank
• iskool (m) = school
• daftar (m) = office
• kaarkhaana (m) = factory
• masjid (f) = mosque
• maqbara (m) = tomb, shrine

By the way, it might seem like a mistake to spell "iskool" with an "i" in front. I've noticed that the Matthews and Dalvi book spell it (and a lot of words that you would normally expect to start with "s") this way. Ever since reading this in the book, I've noticed that EVERY native Pakistani person I know (including my dad) actually pronounces a vowel before the "s" in words like "school" ... so I decided to follow this same convention when transliterating Urdu words.

Anyway, back to our vocabulary. Below are some examples of these words used in sentences.

Examples:

• Masjid kahan hai? = Where's the mosque?
• Mera ghar vahan hai = There's my house
• Uska iskool Montreal men = His school is in Montreal
• Ham daaktar ka daftar jaate hain = We're going to the doctor's office

Plurals

In our previous lesson, we learned that in Urdu, every noun falls into one of four categories. In the first category, we have masculine words that end in "a" such as "larka". Words in the first category are made plural by replacing the ending "a" with an "e". (From here on, the plural of a noun will be denoted by a (p).) For example:

• larka (m) = boy
• larke (mp) = boys
• beta (m) = son
• bete (mp) = sons
  

In the second category are masculine nouns that don't end in "a". The singular and plural versions of these words are the same:

• aadmi (m) = man
• aadmi (mp) = men
• ghar (m) = house
• ghar (mp) = houses

The third category consists of feminine nouns that end in "i". To pluralize these nouns, we add the suffix "an" to the end of the word; note that here, the "n" is pronounced using a soft, nasal sound. Here are some examples:

• larki (f) = girl
• larkian (fp) = girls
• beti (f) = daughter
• betian (fp) = daughters

Finally, the last category consists of feminine nouns that don't end in "i". These nouns are pluralized by adding the suffix "en" to the end of the word; again, the "n" here has a soft pronunciation. For example:

• aurat (f) = woman
• auraten (fp) = women
• sarak (f) = street
• saraken (fp) = streets

And that's all there is to it!

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!