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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Afrah: Assalam u alaikum Urdupod101.com mein khush amdeed.
Eric: Hi everyone, and welcome to Urdupod101.com. This is All About lesson 3, Painless Urdu Grammar. I’m Eric.
Afrah: Oh no, Urdu grammar!
Eric: I am sure some listeners are having that very same reaction right about now, but we’re here to tell you that there’s nothing to worry about. We’ve made Urdu grammar so simple that you’ll wonder what the fuss was all about.
Afrah: You’ll be surprised to learn that in comparison with English or other foreign languages, some parts of Urdu grammar are amazingly easy.
Eric: Easy, you say. How can that be possible? Well, we’re about to show you, listeners!
Afrah: Okay, so let’s get started.

Lesson focus
Eric: First, what we want to do is to take a look at English. English is what we call an SVO language.
Afrah: Eric, what does SVO stand for?
Eric: 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.
Afrah: Can we have an example?
Eric: For example, “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.
Afrah: So now I understand. That’s SVO.
,
Eric: Some other examples would be “I read the newspaper,” or “I watch TV.” These are all SVO sentences.
Afrah: Urdu uses a different sentence order than English. Urdu is a Subject, Object, Verb language, or SOV.
Eric: What’s an example?
Afrah: shyam khat likhta hai.
Eric: Which means “Shyam writes a letter.”
Afrah: Here, Shyam is the subject, khat is the object, and likhta is the verb.
Eric: I see. So here, it differs from English.
Afrah: Yes. Now we’ll show you some more points.
Eric: What we’ve decided to do is compare Urdu grammar examples to English grammar examples so that you can really see the differences. First, let’s talk about gender.
Afrah: Sure. In Urdu, there are two genders for nouns – masculine and feminine.
Eric: That means Urdu is similar to many other Indo-European languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. So can you give us an example?
Afrah: Okay. I’ll give you the word one time at natural native speed and then Eric can give the English translation. Then I can give you the same word again syllable by syllable, followed by the word again at natural native speed. Is that okay?
Eric: Yeah. That sounds good. Let’s have a listen. First we have...
Afrah: beta
Eric: “Son.”
Afrah: be-ta. beta
Eric: And next
Afrah: beti
Eric: “Daughter.”
Afrah: be-ti. beti
Eric: And next we have
Afrah: ladka
Eric: “Boy.”
Afrah: lad-ka. ladka.
Eric: And next we have
Afrah: ladki
Eric: “Girl.”
Afrah: lad-ki. ladki.
Eric: So in Urdu, it seems like you just add an [e] sound to the word to make it feminine.
Afrah: Yeah, that’s correct. And for masculine words, you just put the [aa] sound at the end.
Eric: That should make things pretty simple.
Afrah: Well, there are exceptions, but that’s the general rule.
Eric: I see. Let’s now have a look at singular and plural.
Afrah: In Urdu, the verb “to be” is hai. It’s always placed at the end of the sentence.
Eric: Do Urdu words also change to reflect plurals, like English?
Afrah: Yes. Let us see some examples.
Eric: Okay so what we are going to do again is give you the word one time at natural native speed. Then we’ll give you the English translation, after which we will break it down syllable by syllable and then give you the word again at natural native speed. Afrah, can you start? Here’s a word we heard before.
Afrah: ladka
Eric: “Boy.”
Afrah: lad-ka. ladka.
Eric: And next?
Afrah: ladke
Eric: “Boys.”
Afrah: lad-ke. ladke
Eric: Next.
Afrah: ladki
Eric: “Girl.”
Afrah: la-d-ki. ladki.
Eric: And next, the plural.
Afrah: ladkiyan
Eric: “Girls.”
Afrah: la-d-ki-yan. ladkiyan.
Eric: Next.
Afrah: kitab
Eric: “Book.”
Afrah: ki-tab. kitab.
Eric: And next.
Afrah: kitaben
Eric: “Books.”
Afrah: ki-ta-ben. kitaben.
Eric: And next we have
Afrah: Aurat
Eric: “Woman.”
Afrah: . Au-rat Aurat.
Eric: And finally,
Afrah: Aurataen
Eric: “Women.”
Afrah: aw-ra-taen. auraten. So Eric, what do you think? Do you have the pattern already?
Eric: Yes, it seems pretty simple, I just have to practice.
Afrah: You’ll definitely get more of it in our more advanced lessons. Now let’s see how Urdu verbs conjugate according to the subject.
Eric: The verb conjugation depends on who is doing the action. Can we hear some examples?
Afrah: Sure. main jata hoon. Here the subject is masculine
Eric: That means “I go,” right?
Afrah: Yes. It’s main jati hoon when the subject is feminine.
Eric: Which again means “I go.”
Afrah: Yes. Your gender will determine whether you add [ta] or [ti] to the end of the verb.
Eric: Good to know. The next point we will be talking about is tense.
Afrah: First, what is tense?
Eric: Good question. Tense refers to time, so the past, present and future. There are tons of tenses in English with scary names like present perfect continuous and things like that.
Afrah: Well I think those scare a lot of English listeners too.
Eric: Yes, and that’s why you will be glad to know that in Urdu, words are modified or conjugated in the same way as English.
Afrah: That’s correct.
Eric: That means there are past, future, and present tenses.
Afrah: Yes, the same as in English.
Eric: Let’s hear some examples. How about a simple sentence?
Afrah: Shyam khat likhta hai
Eric: which means “Shyam writes a letter.” It’s in the present tense. How do we change it to the future tense? “Shyam will write a letter.”
Afrah: It will be a very similar sentence. Shyam khat likhe ga.
Eric: How do we form this sentence?
Afrah: Simple. To make it simple future tense, we just need to add [ga] and remove [ta] from the end of the verb.
Eric: Okay, what about past tense?
Afrah: For past tense, it’s very simple. We just modify our stem verb likhna as likhta by adding the [aa] to the verb.
Eric: For example,
Afrah: shyam ne khat likha
Eric: So you only add [aa] to the end of the verb and this sentence becomes past tense.
Afrah: Isn’t that simple?
Eric: I think so! Now, this sentence means “Shyam wrote a letter.”
Afrah: That’s right.

Outro
Eric: Okay, that’s all for this lesson. Thank you for listening, everyone, and we’ll see you next time!
Afrah: Phir milenge, goodbye.

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