Learn how to ask "When?"
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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, we learned how to ask "Where" questions in Urdu. |
| This time, we are going to ask questions with the word "When?" |
| Let’s start! |
| Imagine you want to ask friend when is he coming home. You will ask him Tum ghar kab aa rahe ho? meaning “When are you coming home?” |
| [slowly] Tum ghar kab aa rahe ho? |
| Let’s break down this question: |
| First we have Tum which, as you know, is the informal “you” |
| Next is ghar meaning “home” |
| After that we have kab, which is the basic translation of "When" in Urdu. |
| Then, aa rahe is the verb rahe meaning "to come", in the 2nd person of present indicative. |
| And finally ho is the verb “to be”, which is always used with the informal tum. |
| So, all together it is Tum ghar kab aa rahe ho? |
| meaning "When will you come home?" |
| So in Urdu, "When" is generally translated as the word kab. For example, if you want to ask "When did you go?" It would be Tum kab gaye? Or if you want to say "When did you arrive?" It is Tum kab aaye? |
| Have you noticed a difference between the sentences Tum ghar kab aa rahe ho? and Tum kab aaye? |
| The first one is talking about a future action – "When are you coming home?" Whereas the 2nd one is referring to the past "When did you arrive?" |
| The point is that you can use the question word kab to talk about any moment, whether past or present. |
| If you want to ask a question about duration as in "Since when have you been teaching?" Then you will simply have to add the word se after kab. So you’d say Tum kab se padhaa rahe ho? |
| So, kab se means "Since when?" |
| And how do you ask "Until when?" in Urdu? It is very easy, as you simply add Tak after kab. It becomes kab Tak? |
| So for example, if you want to ask a friend "Until when are you going to stay?" It will be tum kab Tak rukoge? |
| But of course there are other ways to ask about time. You can even be more specific by asking about the year, the date, or the hour. |
| For example, you can ask: |
| - "Which year did you start studying?" which will be Tumne kaunse saal se padhna shuru kiya tha? |
| - "Which day is better for you?" will be Tumhare liye kaunsa Din achha hai? |
| - And "What time can we meet?" will be hum kaunse waqt mil sakTe hain? |
| Now it’s time for Afrah’s Advice. |
| In Urdu, question words are doubled when expecting multiple answers. For example, Tum kab jaaTe ho? and Tum kab kab jaaTe ho? both mean “When do you go?” But if you ask Tum kab kab jaaTe ho?, you are expecting multiple days or times as an answer. |
| Ok, so in this lesson, you learned how to correctly use the question word for "When", kab, and also its different variations. |
| in the next lesson you’ll learn more about asking questions with "Who" in Urdu. |
| I'll see you in the next 3 minat mein Urdu lesson. Phir milenge. |
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