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- "What have you written?"
"What have you written?"
Translation:तुमने क्या लिखा है?
16 Comments
Exactly! तुमने किताब लिखी है = You have written a book. (Since किताब is feminine.) However this rule only works in the ने form of past tense. With nontransitive verbs, the verb agrees with the subject, "You went home" translates as तुम घर गई (Said to a female), तुम घर गए (Said to a male)
In addition to what Thorsten says, even 'क्या तुमने लिखा है' would be wrong because that would mean ' Have you written?'.
When 'क्या is to be used as 'what', it must come directly before the verb. 'तुमने क्या लिखा है' -'What have you written'.
With transitive verbs the gender of the verb follows the object, which is "kya" in this case. As this has no specific gender, it defaults to the male gender. Also see the answer of Zerenei above.
Different tenses.
Simple past: तुमने क्या लिखा? - What did you write?
Present perfect: तुमने क्या लिखा है? - What have you written?
Why is तू क्या लिखा है not accepted? "writing" can also be intransitve ("I write"), so the forms for intransitive pasts should be applyable. Or is the "kya" the reason, that ask for an object and therefor makes it transitive?
By now I can answer myself: If a verb is transitive is not determined by the actual use but a principal property of the verb. So if it can in principle be used with a direct object, then it is transitive and needs the transitive form of the past tense.
Thank you Thorsten :-)
For yes/no questions, place the क्या right at the beginning. Basically, you can make a statement into a yes/no question by prefixing with a क्या. For example, the statement तुम सेब खा रहे हो (You are eating an apple) turns into क्या तुम सेब खा रहे हो? (Are you eating an apple?).
When क्या means 'what' in questions, place it just before a verb. For example तुम क्या खा रहे हो? (What are you eating?).
Note: When the sentence has the negation नहीं that needs to go just before the verb, place the क्या before that. Eg: तुम क्या नहीं खाते? (What don't you eat?)
