- Forum >
- Topic: Hindi >
- "वह दस मिनट से यहाँ है।"
36 Comments
This is a good English translation at last in this unit, great! Its the present perfect progressive tense, if you’re a grammar geek, which "indicates a continuous action that was initiated in the past and continues to happen."
Judging by the translations offered by duo when you click the words it seems like its tryinf to say "he is ten minutes from here"
178
Assuming that sort of phrase works in Hindi (it doesn't necessarily, measuring distance in time could easily sound bizarre to a speaker of a different language) then it would be यहाँ से 'from here', the post-position से (immediately) following that which it modifes.
से often means since. When since isn't available 'for' can also be used. Try translating से as well.
so it does in spanish, from= de and desde; since=desde (as a preposition) and pues (as a conjunction), so in Spanish from sometimes means since. I guess it is the same with Hindustani
"He has been here ten minutes" is also a grammatically correct English translation.
"Has been here" indicates past tense, but the verb is only है. Is this correct? Perhaps it is some sort of special expression?
Many native english speakers taking this course have been demanding English translations that correspond to the most natural/usual way to convey the meaning of the Hindi sentence in uk/american English. That creates confusing mismatches between the verbatim of the two sentences, like this one, with a present tense being rendered using a past tense. I personally prefer literal translations, even if the English is somewhat "broken": "he is here since/for ten minutes", in this case. Since I want to learn Hindi, not English, that would serve my purpose much better.
- 1053
The trouble in this example is that 'He is here for ten minutes' and 'He has been here for ten minutes' don't mean the same thing. The meaning of the Hindi sentence is much better conveyed by the latter.
Exactly! There's no other way but to go after the correct meaning, even if it means using a different tense or what not. It would be nice though if we had an option to also get the literal translation like in the Memrise courses just to see the logic behind the sentence.
Translations aren't always 1:1. English might consider it a past tense because you started doing it in the past, while Hindi considers it present tense because it is still ongoing.
English is not my native language but I think 'has been' indictes present continuous tense, which is also what the Hindi sentence indicates. Correct me if I'm wrong.
"Has been" is present perfect = has/have + past participle. Present continuous = am/is/are + present participle aka verb+ing = is doing
If you're speaking of a distance as in "this place is ten minutes from here" then it would be "वह दस मिनट की दूरी पर है।”
- 1053
I was marked correct for writing 'He is here for ten minutes', which has a different meaning to 'He has been here for ten minutes'. Which is closer to the meaning of the Hindi sentence?
One trouble with using Hinglish and incorrect English is losing hearts on the mobile app.
Since we have learned से often means from, how can we know this isnt "he is 10 minutes from here"?
से often means since. You've to notice the arrangement of words too. है often means here or is. As in he's still here. When से and है are together it would be has been here. While writing how far someone is from you you'd mention the word distance so the sentence "he is 10 minutes from here" would become "he is at a distance of 10 minutes" which you can translate literally to "वो दस मिनट के दूरी पर है।"
- 178
Yes, these seem sometimes missed, but you can click the 'report' button when it happens so it can be reviewed and accepted.
I don't think so. Hota is used for things that don't change, such as how many minutes there are in an hour.
An example would be "It happens" would be "होता हे" here it is a literal translation of the word "happen" another example would be
"if he loved you, he must've been changing" that would be "अगर वो तुमसे प्यार करता, तो वो बदल रहा होता।" Here होता tranlates to must've been.
- 128
Also gives "He is here since ten minutes" as correct. It's not grammatical English. A lot of the English translations in this lesson are incorrect and the requirements seem to jump between literal (grammatically incorrect) answers and the English that native speakers would actually use. Another example in this lesson was that the 'correct' answer was "He is here since an hour." But 'से ' was translated as 'for' in a previous answer. There isn't any consistency here. (Leaving aside the tense issues also discussed.) I'm grateful for the free lessons and appreciate the work that has gone into them. I will have some free time in a few months and will happily give some to reviewing English grammar. Is there anywhere to sign up for this?
I think I'm addressing the same issue as others, but why is the sense of time used at the beginning of most sentences (Eng: "He ten minutes for here has been", but in this case, it is at the end?
- 178
I don't follow, in this case it's 'वह दस मिनट से यहाँ है', which is pretty exactly your literal translation? Unless you mean why is वह in front? That's because 'he' is the subject, but that's consistent with all the examples with time (incl. हर दिन etc.) I've seen on Duolingo.
- 178
We can't really 1:1 translate, but generally 'for' = के लिए and 'from' = से ।
You can either say that से is 'for' in this case, or that Hindi just uses different words to construct the idea of time that's passed, it doesn't really matter.
