"He has been here for ten minutes."

Translation: वह दस मिनट से यहाँ है।

[whimslcott]

Does voh yhaa das minet se hai also work?

[deactivated user]

Yes it's right

[deactivated user]

Why is the person saying 'voh' for 'vaha'? It's kinda wrong...

[da864606]

My professor told me that वह is usually pronunced vo, and यह is pronounced ye (making it indistinguishable from ये). People will understand you if you pronounce वह as "vaha" but it'll sound stiff and formal.

In general, ह has a tendency to mess up the vowels around it. There are some patterns you can memorize (I can't recall them at the moment) but you'll learn to pick them up. Examples:

• बहन - behen
• वह - vo
• यह - ye
• बहुत - bohat

Some exceptions: कहाँ, वहाँ, यहा‍ँ are still pronounced as expected. I don't know if the nasalization has anything to do with that.

(India is a big country so this may not be the case everywhere; my professor is from Jaipur.)

[vinay92]

Regarding your point on exceptions, it's not just because of nasalization. The pronunciation change happens only when ह is surrounded by the vowels अ or उ on both sides. The words महीना (month) and आहट (sound of footsteps), for example, are pronounced like they're written.

[Turnips1]

I really wished Duolingo had a grammar page. So far, I am having serious trouble with grammar.

[Prema805349]

Why yaha is on the bottom of the sentence and ib the previous one it was on the top ??

[da864606]

What was the previous sentence?

[Algunillo]

Why not वह दस मिनटों से यहां है?

Since "minutes" is plural and in the oblique case... But it was marked wrong.

[vinay92]

It should have been accepted. You can report if you see the sentence again.

However, दस मिनट से is also used because some people don't apply case endings to units borrowed from English.

[Algunillo]

Thanks! In Tamil it is also common to omit case endings in words borrowed from English.