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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Manasi: [namaste hindipod101.com mein swagat hai]
Maya: Hi everyone and welcome to hindipod101.com’s all about lesson 3. Painless Hindi Grammar.
Manasi: Oh no, Hindi grammar!
Maya: I am sure some listeners are having that very same reaction right about now but we are here to tell you, there is nothing to worry about. We’ve made Hindi grammar so simple that you will wonder what the fuss was all about.
Manasi: You will be surprised to learn that in comparison with English or other foreign languages, some parts of Hindi grammar are amazingly easy.
Maya: Easy you say. How can that be possible? Well we are about to show you.
Manasi: Okay so let’s get started.

Lesson focus
Maya: First, what we want to do is to take a look at English. English is what we call an SVO language.
Manasi: Maya, what does SVO stand for?
Maya: Subject, verb, object SVO. That means that in an English sentence, the subject always comes first followed by the verb and then the object. That’s how English sentences are put together.
Maya: Can we have an example…
Maya: Like I eat bread. I here is the subject or the one doing the action. Eat is the verb or the action that’s taking place and lastly Bread is the object that receives the action.
Manasi: So now I understand. That’s SVO.
Maya: Another example would be I read the newspaper, I watch TV. These are all SVO sentences.
Manasi: Well Hindi uses a different sentence order than English. Hindi is subject, object and verb. That means SOV.
Maya: For example
Manasi: [shyam patr likhta hai.]
Maya: Shyam [patr likhta hai.]
Manasi: Which means Shyam writes a letter.
Maya: Okay so here Shyam is the subject S, [patr] is the object O and [likhta] is the verb V.
Manasi: Yes so hindi is an SOV language.
Maya: I see. So here, it differs from English.
Manasi: Yes. Now we will go through and show you what some of them are.
Maya: What we’ve decided to do is compare Hindi grammar Examples to English grammar examples so that you can really see the differences. First, let’s talk about gender.
Manasi: Sure. In Hindi, there are two genders for nouns.
Maya: And they are?
Manasi: Of course masculine and feminine.
Maya: That means similar to many other Indo-European languages such as Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. So can you give us an example?
Manasi: Okay. I will give you the word one time at natural native speed and then Maya, you can give the English translation and I can give you again the same word syllable by syllable followed by the word again at natural native speed. Is that okay?
Maya: Yeah. That sounds good. Let’s have a listen. First we have
Manasi: [beta]
Maya: Son.
Manasi: [be-ta]
Maya: And next
Manasi: [beti]
Maya: Daughter.
Manasi: [be-ti]
Maya: And next
Manasi: [aadmi]
Maya: Man.
Manasi: [aad-mi]
Maya: And next we have
Manasi: [ladka]
Maya: Boy.
Manasi: [lad-ka]
Maya: And next we have
Manasi: [ladki]
Maya: Girl.
Manasi: [lad-ki]
Maya: So in Hindi, it seems like you just add E to the word to make it feminine.
Manasi: Yeah that’s correct and for masculine words, you just put [aa] at the end.
Maya: That should make things pretty simple.
Manasi: Yes Maya, that’s correct but there are exceptions but of course that’s the general rule.
Maya: I see. Let’s now have a look at singular and plural.
Manasi: In Hindi, the verb to be is [hai]. It is always placed at the end of the sentence.
Maya: Just like in English, do Hindi words also change to reflect plurals?
Manasi: Yes. Let us see some examples.
Maya: Okay so what we are going to do is give you the word one time at natural native speed. Then we will give you the English translation after which we will break down syllable by syllable and then give you the word again at natural native speed. Manasi, can you start?
Manasi: [ladka]
Maya: Boy.
Manasi: [ladke]
Maya: Boys.
Manasi: [lad-ke]
Maya: Next.
Manasi: [ladki]
Maya: Girl.
Manasi: [la-d-ki]
Maya: And next, plural
Manasi: [ladkiyan]
Maya: Girls.
Manasi: [la-d-ki-yan]
Maya: Next.
Manasi: [kitab]
Maya: Book.
Manasi: [ki-tab]
Maya: And next.
Manasi: [kitaben]
Maya: Books.
Manasi: [ki-ta-ben]
Maya: And next we have
Manasi: [mahila]
Maya: Woman.
Manasi: [ma-hi-la]
Maya: And finally
Manasi: [mahilayen]
Maya: Women.
Manasi: [ma-hi-la-yen] So Maya, what do you think? Do you have the pattern already?
Maya: Yes it seems pretty simple only if I practice more.
Manasi: Yes Maya. You will definitely get more of it in our more advanced lessons. Let us see how Hindi verbs conjugate according to the subject.
Maya: It depends on who is doing the action, the verb conjugate. Can we hear some examples?
Manasi: Sure. [main jata hoon] When the subject is masculine
Maya: That means I go right?
Manasi: Yes. Now [main jati hoon] when the subject is feminine.
Maya: Which again means I go.
Manasi: Yes. Depending on if you are a man or a woman will determine the verb you add [ta] or [ti] at the end of the verb.
Maya: That’s really interesting. The next one we will be talking about is tense.
Manasi: Tense but first what is tense?
Maya: Good question. Tense refers to time, past, present and future. There are tons of tenses in English with scary names like present perfect continuous and things like that.
Manasi: Well I think it scares a lot of English listeners too.
Maya: Yes and that’s why you will be glad to know that in Hindi languages, words are modified or conjugated for tenses the same as English.
Manasi: That’s correct.
Maya: That means there are past, future and present tense.
Manasi: Yes same as in English.
Maya: Let’s hear some examples. How about a simple sentence?
Manasi: [Shyam patr likhta hai] which means Shyam writes a letter.
Maya: So that sentence is in the present tense. How do we change it to the future? Shyam will write letter.
Manasi: It should be a very similar sentence. [Shyam patr likhe ga.]
Maya: How do we do it?
Manasi: Simple. To make it simple future tense, we just need to add [ga] and remove [ta] from the end of the verb.
Maya: Okay what about past tense?
Manasi: For past tense, it’s very simple. We just modify our stem verb [likhna] as [likhta] by just adding the matra [aa] to the verb.
Maya: For example,
Manasi: [shyam ne patr likha]
Maya: So you only add [aa] at the end of the verb and this sentence becomes past tense.
Manasi: Isn’t that simple?
Maya: Shyam wrote a letter.
Manasi: Yes.

Outro
Maya: Well this is all for this lesson.
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Manasi: Instantly access them all right now at hindipod101.com
Maya: See you again next time and we are going to be practicing the pronunciation.
Manasi: Phir milenge goodbye.
Maya: See you.

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