"A rat is small."

Translation: चूहा छोटा होता है ।

[kibasha]

Shouldn't it be चूहे छोटे होते हैं to get the general statement that all rats are small?

[sagittaur]

What is the difference in meaning between चूहा छोटा होता है and चूहा छोटा है ?

[sajay64]

from another discussion, i understood this one.
चूहा छोटा होता है = 'all rats are small'(general statement)
चूहा छोटा है = 'a rat is small' (more like talking about one in particular. may be like 'The Rat is Small')

[Sunny1221]

I did not get why this is correct

[zeebo7]

What are you finding confusing?

[RowanM.1]

Not sure what's confusing him, but what's confusing me is: why is there no "एक"? Is that not needed for general statements or something?

[ElaBader]

एक (one, a, an) is not used in Hindi nearly as regularly as it's used in English. Because Hindi uses verb endings to denote masculine/feminine and singular/plural, the ek really isn't necessary to determine whether we're talking about one thing, or multiple things.

That being said, as a non-native Hindi speaker, I have noticed through listening to Hindi speakers that the use of एक is generally reserved for situations where emphasis is needed on the fact it is only one thing.

I don't know the Hindi translations, but some English examples to explain what I mean by that.

"My birthday is in ONE day!"

"I ran for AN ENTIRE hour today!"

"I study for AN hour each evening."

Etc.

The ONE is important to the meaning/importance of the sentence and, consequently, is added into the sentence using ek.

As for the main purpose of why you commented, no this sentence would not require "ek" in it. As general statements are not talking about ONE thing, they are referring to ALL parts of that ONE thing. So, adding an emphasis on it being just one thing (when we're actually talking about multiple things) wouldn't make much sense, I imagine.

[RowanM.1]

Many thanks for that extremely helpful and informative reply - I greatly appreciate it. The Lingot is from me.

[ElaBader]

I just realized your original comment was from 2 years ago lol (app vs website).

I'm happy to hear it was still helpful though! Hopefully others going through it now will find helpful information in it too :)

[sajay64]

may be it is implied.