Learn how to ask about your possessions
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| Assalam u Alaikum mera naam Afrah hai. |
| Hi, My name is Afrah. Welcome to UrduPod101.com’s “3 minat mein Urdu”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Urdu. |
| In the last few lesson, you learned how to talk about age using the verb “to be”, or “hona” in Urdu. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to modify this verb with the word paas in order to indicate possession. |
| Let’s look at an example: |
| kyaa Tumhare paas gaadii hai? |
| This sentence means |
| “Do you have a car?” |
| If you were to translate it literally, though, it would be closer to “Is there a car near you?” |
| [slowly] kyaa Tumhare paas gaadii hai? |
| Let’s break this down. |
| kyaa is simply a word that makes the statement a question. |
| Tumhare is the informal word for ”you.” We use Tumhare instead of Tum when talking about possessions. |
| After this comes paas, which literally means “near”. Combined with Tumhare, it means “near you”. |
| Next is gaadii, which means “car” |
| Finally, hai is the sentence ending particle and means “is”. |
| One more time, that’s kyaa Tumhare paas gaadii hai? |
| “Is there a car near you?” It may sound a little funny in English, but this is the normal way to ask someone if they have something in Urdu. |
| One thing to remember is that the word hai changes to hain if the object in question is plural. However, paas does not change. |
| For example, if you wanted to ask someone if he or she has more than one car, you would say, kyaa Tumhare paas gaadiyaan hain? |
| Notice that hai has become hain at the end of the sentence since “cars” is plural. |
| So if you *do* have a car, how can you answer this question? |
| Just remove the question word and switch the pronoun from Tumhare to mere, the Urdu pronoun for “I” when talking about possessions. It’s really simple! You could also add “yes” or haan in Urdu at the beginning of the sentence. |
| So the answer becomes, haan, mere paas gaadii hai. |
| Say, for example, that a classmate wants to borrow a book from you. He might ask, kyaa Tumhare paas kiTaab hai? Which is “Do you have a book?” |
| If you do have a book, you can answer haan mere paas kiTaab hai. “Yes I have a book”. |
| Okay, so now let’s look at the FORMAL way to ask someone if he or she has something. It’s really very simple. |
| Instead of Tumhare, you’ll use aapke which is the polite word for “you”. For example... |
| kyaa aapke paas gaadii hai meaning “Do you have a car?” |
| [slowly] kyaa aapke paas gaadii hai? |
| Now it’s time for Afrah’s Advice. |
| Sometimes people might not specifically use kyaa at the beginning of the sentence, but indicate a question using only intonation. Tumhare paas gaadii hai? If you want to really make sure you’re getting the question across, however, you can use the word kyaa. |
| In recent lessons, you have learned about the verbs hoon, ho, hain, and hai, which mean “to be”, and how to combine them with paas to indicate possession. |
| In the next lesson you’ll learn how to make these verbs negative in order to say “I’m not” or “I don’t have”. |
| Do you know what word to use to say “not” in Urdu? I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next “3 minat mein Urdu” lesson. Phir milenge! |
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