"Were you going?"
Translation:क्या तू जा रही थी?
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In Hindi, verb form also changes according to the subject as in Spanish.
Here, the verb is 'जा रही' which is feminine so it is compatible only with either 'थी' or 'थीं'. Since the subject is informal and singular 'तू', so there is only one correct option left that is 'थी'. 'थीं' is used when a feminine subject is either formal or plural.
Some more examples demonstrating how the verb forms change according to the subject-
1- 'She used to sing.' = 'वह गाया करती थी।'
'He used to sing.' = 'वह गाया करता था।'
2- 'She is eating a mango.' = 'वह एक आम खा रही है।'
'He is eating a mango.' = 'वह एक आम खा रहा है।'
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They only seem to accept 'tu' for this one, and I make a point of trying not to use tu....
तू and तुम can be used interchangably. तुम is not necessarily used to indicate plural ,if we want to use तुम to indicate plural we use तुम लोग / तुम सब .
थी is usually used when we are talking informally & singular and थीं is used when we are talking to someone elderly or many people.
In the sentence क्या तुम जा रही थी? / क्या तू जा रही थी? We are asking to one female (singular).
We would've used थीं if it was something like - क्या आप जा रही थीं? Or क्या आप सब कही जा रही थीं? However you can use थीं in the first case but it would give a typo because it's not used or maybe rarely used (I've never heard) and many native Hindi speakers will take it as an error.
To conclude तुम is not necessarily used to indicate plural. I can ask you if you understood it - क्या तुम ये समझे? . Here I've used तुम to ask you a question (singular) or I can also say क्या तु ये समझा?
See how there's a difference of the Matra तुम > समझे and तू > समझा. We don't use the latter one with elders at all. And I'd say don't use तुम too with elders.
तुम (singular second person /informal)
तू (singular second person /super informal)
तुम लोग / तुम सब (informal plural)
आप (formal /singular /sometimes plural )
आप लोग /आप सब ( formal /plural)
थी (informal/singular / female)
थीं (formal/ plural or singular)
Informal you ( तुम ) and formal थीं can't be used together.
I said grammatically plural, I know it can refer to a singular person. Just like आप is also grammatically plural even if talking to one person.
It seems it does conjugate without the अनुस्वार though: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BE#Conjugation.