magali
Hindi feminin / masculin form, and grammar Hi, I am now in my 3rd hindi lesson learning colors ! I need some help with feminin / masculin form, and grammar. 1) Feminin or masculin ? I have those two different sentences in my textbook. Why is one with "का" and one with "की" ? पर्स काले रंग का है। पर्स सफेद रंग की है। 2) Masculin form ? The wallet is black. बटुआ काले रंग का है। Why isn't it बटुआ काला रंग का है ? 3) Grammar ? घर लाल रंग का है। घर = noun ; लाल = adjective ; रंग = adverb ? ; का = ? ; है = verb. Thanks for your help ! magali
Jun 24, 2010 4:51 PM
Answers · 3
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Now back to your sentences. What happens in the sentence "purs kale rang ka hai"? Honestly i have no idea if the english word "purs" is considered male or female among hindi speakers. As it's an english word i can't find it in my dictionary. in any case the genitive particle agrees with it, whatever gender it may have. So if it's "purs kale rang ka hai" purs is probably male, if it's "purse safed rang ki hai" purs would be female. there is no way the ka/ki agrees with the colours because they are adjectives with specify the noun "rang". The only apology for your textbook to put up sentences like those is, that maybe as purse is an english word there is no overall agreement about its gender. Why can you also see that the colour is not the word deciding on the gender of ka/ki? Look at "kale"! Have you wondered why it's kale ending in -e when it's just one purse (hai = 3. Pers.Singular of hona)? Well, that's because "kala rang" is right in front of the genetive postposition "ka" and thus is put into the oblique case => "kale rang ka" (-a is changed to -e, rang doesn't change because it ends in a consonant). So to really understand your textbooks' sentences grammatically you'd already have to know the genitive postpositions ka/ki/ke, the rules concerning the inverted word order of sentences with ka/ki/ke (which is that the particle is tightly glued to the specifying word which take the oblique case), and you'd have to know the oblique case. I can only advise you again to change to another more reliable textbook which doesn't confront you with yet unknown grammar all the time or you might have to post a question for each and every lesson you read. i mean, shouldn't the textbook really explain what's going on in a sentence grammatically?
June 24, 2010
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2. a genitive construction is composed as follows: "bacce ka kutta" (the child's dog), "bacce ki kitab" (the child's book), "bacce ke kamre" (the child's rooms). Now you might ask, why is it bacce and not bacca if it's just one child? Well for this you would have to know the application of the oblique case in hindi already. After a postposition words before (and connected with) the postposition are put in the oblique case in which the -a ending becomes -e, and a plural -e ending becomes -on (nazalised o). Words ending in a consonant have no oblique form, just as words ending in -i! So if it were several children it would be: "baccon ka kutta", "baccon ki kitab", "baccon ke kamre" (the children's dog/book/rooms) So you see the genitive particle agrees in its gender with the object actually described (kutta, kitab, kamre), while the word that specifies the object (for example in colour, posession or connection) is put in the oblique form.
June 24, 2010
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ok, first of all i can only advise you again to get another textbook, because not only does your textbook seem to be unreliable, it also uses grammar in early lessons obviously without explaining it. if you don't trust me on this let me tell you that i've just majored in urdu which has just the same grammar as hindi. to your problem: "rang" simply means "colour". "ka" (masc), "ki" (fem and plural fem), "ke" (plur masc) are particles constructing the genetiv case. you could roughly translate them as "of", mostly you don't translate them at all but just let them compose nouns. The sentence "purs kale rang ka hai" literary translates to "the purse black colour of is". See the similarity to a similar english construction?: "the purse is of black colour". Now what's the problem here? I'll explain it step by step (which actually your textbook should be doing): 1. We have an inverted sentence here, which is necessary because the sentence is supposed to express the quality of colour of the object. If just the fact, that there is an object with that colour is expressed you could see the following sentences: "(yah ek) kale rang ka purs hai", "(yah ek) kale rang ka batua hai", "(yah ek) lal rang ka ghar hai" ("it is a purs of black colour", "it is a wallet of black colour", "it is a Haus of red colour") There is no whatsoever reason for a sentence like "purs safed rang ki hai". "rang" is male, "purse" in my opinion is also male and the genitive particle can't agree with safed because safed is no noun at all but an adjective. it simply makes no sense (native speakers please correct me if i'm wrong).
June 24, 2010
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