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- "क्या आमिर हर दिन आता है?"
33 Comments
183
One of the English translations offered for हर दिन is "everyday". This is wrong. "Everyday" means "mundane", "usual", "not special", etc.
Confusing the adverb "every day" and the adjective "everyday" is a common mistake among both native and non-native English speakers. It should not be perpetuated by a language learning app.
- 431
Ah thanks, I knew that one :) I thought hippietrail was referring to the various responses that one could give. There are various answers accepted as correct, but I don't think user have access to see what they all are.
It should be right, since Amir is often written that way in English. But I guess Aa is used to indicate long A in Hindi, whereas A by itself would sound more like "uh" (schwa sound).
In the translation of कया it may help to think of it as 'whether', which in the actual English translation needs to be left out. It helped me to understand and internalise this way of forming a question. In government forms this construction is literally used in, what I assume now are, forms translated from hindi to English (whether you live in India? Whether you are married?)
- 1816
"Whether" wouldn't make any sense here. I imagine it may have entered Indian forms in the nineteenth or early twentieth century because of translators who had read some medieval or early modern philosophy, which uses that. I tend to think of words like this (Japanese has "ka" and Polish has "czy" and Esperanto has "cxu," for instance) as just a sort of verbal question mark.
- 219
Think of it as similar to the 'cxu..?' in Esperanto or the 'est-ce que..?' in French... They don't affect the word order of the statement afterwords, and require a yes/no/maybe answer.
Yes, similar to 'do you' or 'is it' being at the start of a question in english
- 820
Amir or Aamir is proper name and both should be accepted. There are many notable Amirs living in Indian sub continent
I couldn't agree more! In some of the other duolingo taught languages the name Anna is used and in another language Ana is used; they mark it wrong if you use the wrong spelling of An(n)a. I get that its imprtant to spell someone's name correctly but maybe they should pick names that dont have common alternative spellings; Like Julia and Peter, but no Derrick/ Derek/ Darrick/ Derik/etc.
So here I understand that क्या (kyaa) is a yes/no question marker, just like 吗 (ma) in Mandarin? But "तेरा नाम क्या है?" there is also क्या but this is not a yes/no question, how does this work?
Kya is only used for yes/no when placed at the beginning of a sentence. It's only purpose when at the beginning is to indicate that it's this type of question. If it's in the middle of a sentence it means "what".
I see. Is there an intuitive or etymological explanation behind it? How does a native think about it? As in it is just two words with the same sound or is there another logic behind it?
I'm not really sure what you're asking. I don't know the history of the word or anything, it's just how it is. It's the exact same word, same pronunciation and everything. It just depends on word order.
Your example: tera naam kya hai. This means - what is your name.
However, switch the order to kya tera naam hai and it means "do you have a name".
Kya at the beginning only shows it's a yes/no question and its exact meaning would change depending on the question.
Kya ye yahan hai - IS it here
Kya tera naam hai - DO you have a name?
Kya mai ja skti hu - CAN I leave?
Kya in the middle of a sentence always means what.
Tum kya kr rhe ho - WHAT are you doing?
Tera naam kya hai - WHAT is your name?
Tumko kya hua - WHAT happened to you?
so the kya is just a question marker, rather than actually meaning "what", correct?
I hope this doesn't get deleted immediately, but does the verb come आता in this sentence have the other, sexual (taboo) meaning sometimes spelled with "um" instead of "ome" in English, too?
Amir is pronounced ameer, which is a different male name. It actually means king or ruler in Persian/Arabic/Urdu. It is also used as an adjective for someone who is wealthy and or powerful.
Aamir is the name in this sentence. It is pronounced Aaamir, with a long A and a short i.
- 699
If so, Raj wouldn't be coming. [Refer earlier lessons on the relation between Raj and Aamir].
Please leave the Aa/Ā vs. A thing out of the course, this is not a course in transliteration!
- 1816
I cannot think of an example in Hindi, which I am just beginning, but in many languages, vowel length is just as important as vowel quality. You could not do a Latin, Japanese or Hungarian course of any value, for instance, and leave out the aa vs a thing. Now, when it comes to a name like Amir, I would suggest that the developers accept the name as it is usually written in English, i.e. when an Aamir moves to the US, UK, Canada, etc, he usually writes his name Amir. When learning the word for mango, though, I would suggest that Aam still be the only acceptable answer.
