"मेरी दादी सड़क पर बैठी हैं ।"
Translation:My grandmother is sitting on the road.
28 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Well, that particular grandmother doesn't seem to be in a very safe situation in any case...
Shouldn't this say: My grandmother sits on the road...sitting would be: bait rahi hai.....right?
'My grandmother sits on the road' would be मेरी दादी सड़क पर बैठती हैं।
मेरी दादी सड़क पर बैठ रही हैं is 'My grandmother is sitting down on the road' as in she is in the process of sitting down
मेरी दादी सड़क पर बैठी हैं is 'My grandmother is sitting on the road' as in she is seated
Thank you for these examples. I've been studying them but I'm still a bit confused.
If I compare मेरी दादी सड़क पर बैठी हैं 'My grandmother is sitting on the road' with मेरी दादी सड़क पर चल रही हैं 'My grandmother is walking on the road' why are the two sentences structured differently when, in English, they appear so similar?
It seems there is some difference between the verbs बैठना and चलना that one requires रही and the other doesn't but I am unable to see why.
The Hindi verb बैठना refers to the action of sitting down, not of being seated.
So, the sentence मेरी दादी सड़क पर बैठ रही हैं (which looks like मेरी दादी सड़क पर चल रही हैं) means 'My grandmother is sitting down on the road' (as in, she was standing on the road and is now in the process of sitting).
Being seated is a state in Hindi and not an action. So, it is talked about using the 'adjective' बैठा, which is actually the past participle of the verb बैठना.
Note: For 'standing' too, we use an adjective (खड़ा) in Hindi. But this is a true adjective that's not derived from a verb.
Sometimes Indians do a bandh (demonstration) by sitting on (or in) the road to obstruct traffic. Perhaps grandmother is a social activist.
What does this mean? I don't immediately comprehend "sitting on the road."
It's a weird sentence to be sure but not incomprehensible.
Imagine you're driving on a highway. You stop and get out of the car. You sit down right there. Voilà, you're sitting on a road now. Not very smart, I know but it is what it is.
Thanks, in my variety of English at least "on the road" tends to mean "by the side of the road" (apart from the common idiomatic interpretation of "to be travelling").
Sounds like in my dialect this Hindi sentence means "sitting in the road" :)
2473
Hi Adam,
There is at least one instance when this expression looks valid:
In our case, maybe someone wanted to get rid of grandma or use her as a decoy !!-( Unfortunately, some elderly people would do that on their own...
Not saying this is impossible in every English dialect. (I assume it's possible in Indian English for the obvious reasons!) But when I came upon this sentence "in the road," which is what I assumed the sentence meant (disturbing though the situation be) wasn't accepted, so I wanted to verify what this sentence meant.
That article doesn't seem the best of references given that newsner appears to be a less-than-journalisticaly-credible Swedish site, and it also includes the unusual word "softwares," which Wiktionary lists as "Generally an error by non-native speakers." The source article it links to uses the expected "in the road."
Maybe she's just really tired. Or staging a sit-in to protest access to an environmentally sensitive bird sanctuary.
"Sitting on the road" is quite common in India. Usually not "in the middle of the road" (although I have seen that) ; but by the edge of the road but still on the road (the actual pavement where you drive). Also, people sit "by the side of the road" (not on the pavement).
