Learn how to use Urdu adjectives
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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 lesson, you learned how to make a sentence negative using nahin. In this lesson, you will start to learn about Urdu adjectives and how to use them properly. |
| You will see that for adjectives, things in Urdu are a little more complicated than in English, but don’t worry - it will still be easy. |
| Let’s start with a concrete example yah ek badaa ghar hai meaning "It is a big house." |
| [slowly] yah ek badaa ghar hai. |
| To break down this sentence, we have |
| yah which means “it” or “this,” |
| ek, which is like the English “a” |
| badaa which means “big” |
| ghar, which means “house” |
| and finally, hai, which means “is.” |
| Now, let’s look more closely at badaa, which means “big”, and ghar which is “house” |
| In Urdu, all nouns -- and not just people -- are either masculine or feminine. |
| Here the subject ghar, or “house” is a masculine word, so the adjective badaa, or “big” also has to be masculine. |
| Let’s see the same sentence with a feminine word. We’ll use gaadii or “car”. It becomes: |
| yah ek badi gaadii hai meaning "It’s a big car." |
| Here we have to change the ending of badaa to an “ee” sound to make it feminine. |
| [slowly] yah ek badi gaadii hai |
| Now, if an adjective is masculine, it will also change depending on whether the noun it’s modifying is singular or plural. Note, this only happens to masculine adjectives, not feminine ones. |
| Let’s start with an example of the standard pattern. We’ll use ladkaa meaning “boy” as the noun and chota, the masculine version of “small” as its corresponding adjective. |
| yah ladkaa chota hai. This means "This boy is small". |
| Now, when talking about more than one boy, the sentence becomes yah ladke chote hain. “These boys are small.” Let’s see what changes. |
| Yah remains the same but now it would mean “these.” |
| The noun ladkaa changes to ladke to mean “boys” |
| The adjective needs to follow the noun, so chota also changes and becomes chote, the plural version of “small” |
| Finally, hai also changes to hain because the subject is now plural. |
| Basically, the rule is to put an “ae” at the end of the adjective to make it masculine plural. Remember, though, that we only do this for masculine adjectives. |
| Again, the singular - yah ladka chhotaa hai |
| and the plural - yah ladke chhote hain. |
| Fortunately, not all adjectives are like this! |
| khoobsurat, which means beautiful, never changes. It is the same whether it’s masculine or feminine. Isn’t that helpful? |
| So, to say "My sister is beautiful" it would be meri bahan khoobsurat hai. |
| And to say "My sisters are beautiful,” you will say meri bahanen khoobsurat hain. While some words in the sentence did change, khoobsurat itself stayed the same. |
| Here are a few more examples to show the difference between the masculine, masculine plural, and feminine forms. |
| acha is the masculine for "nice", "good", |
| achay is the masculine plural, and |
| achi is the feminine version. |
| chota is the masculine for "small" |
| chotay is the masculine plural, and |
| choti is the feminine. |
| thanda is the masculine for "cold", |
| thanday is the masculine plural, and |
| thandi is the feminine. |
| Now it’s time for Afrah’s Advice. |
| If you want to emphasize an adjective in Urdu, you can use the words kaafi or bahuT. As in kaafi acha, which is "really good" or bahuT sunDar, meaning "very beautiful." |
| In this lesson, you learned how to properly use adjectives in Urdu. In the next lesson we’ll learn the basic uses of the verb jana, which means "to go." Is there somewhere you want to go to in Pakistan? We’ll tell you how to talk about it in the next “3 minat mein Urdu” lesson. Phir milenge. |
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