21 Comments
In negative sentences such as this, you can drop the हैं.
Most people in spoken Hindi don't do so. I suggest you not to drop it.
"Most people in spoken Hindi don't do so." And yet it's dropped in most of the Duolingo examples. Hmm...
when spoken colloquially, people often drop the 'hain' from the end of the sentence... it's just quicker and less formal (and usually understood)
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It's a matter of subject-verb agreement. In English, you would say "The boy does not drink tea" for a single boy. Once you have multiple boys, it becomes "The boys do not drink tea".
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How does one tell the difference between 'boys don't drink tea' and 'the boys don't drink tea' in Hindi? For the record both English statements are accepted as correct answers by Doulingo.
Both statements should be accepted because both are correct. There's no explicit "the" in Hindi, it's assumed. For example, लड़के नाच रहे थे (ladke naach rahe the). The translation would be "THE boys were dancing" and the literal translation would be "boys were dancing". लड़कियां गा रही थी (ladkiyan gaa rahi thi) would be "THE girls were singing".
Hello, I do not think you understood exactly what I intended to ask.
Observe the following to note the distinction:
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Boys do not drink tea.
This states a rule, or a generally accepted truth. In this case, it could be that all boys in a hypothetical location do not drink tea. -
The boys do not drink tea.
This states the preference of a specific set of boys. So, those boys in question do not drink tea but other boys drink tea.
My question, therefore, is as there is no explicit the in Hindi, how does one tell the difference between (1) a generally accepted truth and (2) the situation/case for a subset.
NB: I know and have confirmed that both of the English statements are accepted by Duolingo.
As it was explained above, there's no explicit "the" in Hindi (as in many other languages with no sets of definite articles). Which means the distinction between definiteness and indefiniteness is somehow less relevant in Hindi, it is disambiguated from the context.
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I was so distracted by the lack of "हैं" that I translated "चाय" as "chai" instead of tea. Marked wrong! (Yeah, I reported it. If this course isn't going to use "chai" interchangeably with "tea", I may have to bow out.)
But thanks, all, for explaining where the "hain" went.
How can we understand whether it is present past or future.... Can anyone help me.. please
