Learn how to ask "When?"
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| namasTe meraa naam preranaa hai. aap se milkar khushi hui. |
| Hi, My name is Prerana. Nice to meet you. |
| Welcome to HindiPod101.com’s HindiPod101.com’s “Hindi in 3 Minutes.” The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Hindi. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to ask "Where" questions in Hindi. |
| This time, we are going to ask questions with the word "When?" |
| Let’s start! chaliye shuru karen! |
| Imagine you want to ask friend when is he coming home. You will ask him Tum ghar kab aa rahe ho? |
| [slowly] Tum ghar kab aa rahe ho? |
| So let’s break down this answer: |
| First we had: |
| Tum which is the informal “you” |
| ghar means “home” |
| kab, which is the basic translation of "When" in Hindi. |
| Then, aa rahe is the verb "to come", rahe in Hindi is the 2nd person of present indicative. |
| And finally ho is the to-be verb “are” which is always used with the informal you tum. |
| So, all together it is Tum ghar kab aa rahe ho? |
| "When will you come home?" |
| So in Hindi, "When" is generally translated as the word kab. For example, if you want to ask "When did you go?" Tum kab gaye? |
| The question word is placed in the 2nd position, and the verb comes at the end of the sentence. |
| So let’s have a look at another example: |
| How can you say "When did you arrive?" |
| It is really simple since it is exactly the same pattern: Tum kab aaye? |
| First we have Tum which is the informal “you”. |
| Then is kab, which is "When" |
| And finally aaye which is “arrived”. |
| 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? |
| Here too, it’s exactly the same as in English, because "since" is se. So kab se means "Since when?" |
| Let’s see how to ask "Until when?" in Hindi. It is very easy as you simply say 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?" will be |
| Tumne kaunse saal se padhna shuru kiya tha? |
| - "Which day is better for you?" will be Tumhare liye kaunsa Din achha hai? |
| - "What time can we meet?" hum kaunse samay mil sakTe hain? |
| Now it’s time for Prerana’s Points. |
| 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, we learned how to correctly use the question word for "When", kab, but also its different variations. |
| Next lesson we’ll learn more about asking questions with "Who" in Hindi. |
| I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next lesson of Hindi in 3 Minutes lesson. |
| Phir milenge. See you then! |
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