"How much tea do you drink?"

Translation:तू कितनी चाय पीता है?

November 5, 2018

16 Comments
This discussion is locked.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Misha614207

Why is the female version of 'how much' used?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/zeebo7

When the object is female. Here it is चाय which is female.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/maz1269

The confusion is because in the "lightbulb" to the Numbers lesson, it states that adverbs do not change form by sex or number, yet कितना is an adverb. More specifically, in the English Wiktionary कितना is classified as an adverb, yet the English "how much" is broken down into either determiner or adverb, depending on use. So, when used to modify a verb, then "how much" is an adverb, and this agrees with the lesson here that कितना must not change with verbs and that adverbs don't decline (change form).

This gets a little trickier when "how much" is a determiner. "How much cheese is there?" uses it in conjunction with a noun, so here everything is clear — it would decline in Hindi, exactly as in this example with "tea". Wiktionary also gives the examples "How much is left in the fridge?" and "How much is it?" under "Determiner", though one could assume "how much" modifies "is" here and is therefore an adverb. This is where it gets tricky in drawing parallels to Hindi. I wonder how a sentence like "How much is left in the fridge?", where there is no explicitly stated object, would translate in Hindi.

Really, I hate determiners. They are a headache in German too, where sometimes "ihr" is classified as a determiner, sometimes as a pronoun.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Alessandro510333

A lot of confusion in your explaination


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/CalystaRose

My confusion is why female for "how much" but male for "drink"


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/maz1269

that's because they're unrelated. just like in most languages, "how much" agrees with the object (the tea) while the verb "drink" agrees w/the subject (the drinker)


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/atishay922360

Tum kinti chai pete ho is correct !!! Answer given above is wrong


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Nikhil66930

Is "kitnee chae tu pita hae" also correct?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Meghan1991

The normal word order in Hindi is subject-object-verb (and this doesn't change for questions, unlike English). You've used the order object-subject-verb.

So I don't think that's correct, but hopefully a native Hindi speaker can answer.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Gili_hindyn

Why is kitni before the chai? I thought the question is always near the verb


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Gita-ji

If the question word relates to the verb, it goes before the verb.
Here the question word relates to the noun, so goes just before the noun—with the appropriate ending.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/ThangaRang

it should NOT be कितनी right? because HE is used


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Bsdass09

Shouldn't it be tu ho?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/maz1269

no. it's tu hai, tum ho


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/MishraJi15

तू is manner less but तुम is right


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Muqut

Water is masculine and tea is feminine!!! Who defined these and how?

Learn Hindi in just 5 minutes a day. For free.