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- "We give them food."
"We give them food."
Translation:हम उन्हें खाना देते हैं।
10 Comments
336
उन्हें is the plural dative of वे - 'to them'.
उनके is the masculine (indirect singular, or plural) inflection of the plural genitive of वे - 'their [masculine things]', or 'to their [masculine thing[s]]'.
Hi OJFord, thanks you for your reply! Could you please give me some examples in sentences, my knowledge of grammar is not up to date... Thanks in advance!
- 336
Sure, so like I said above, उन्हें is 'to them', that's in the sense of 'give sweets to them'.
Wikipedia describes the dative better than I could as being used 'to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action' - it needn't be a 'to' preposition in English, but it's any case (no pun intended) where there's some kind of giving or other movement torward the receiving noun. That noun is then in the dative case. If that noun is वे in Hindi, and plural, then it's उन्हें।
उनके takes a bit more breaking down - it's an 'inflection' of उनका, which is itself the plural genitive case of वे.
So, starting there, उनका in it's various inflections means 'of theirs' - remember plural - marking something possessed-by or originating-from them. 'Their coat', 'their children', 'their car', 'their morale'. (Where 'their' is refererring to plural people here.)
उनके is used for 'their' when the object being 'possessed' is itself in the direct case, and masculine, and plural - 'their sons are tall' - or in indirect cases (vocative or oblique) regardless of whether the object is singular or plural, but is masculine - 'give sweets to their son(s)'. (That's oblique, a vocative example is hard to contrive... 'James & Mary, were my great friends; their son - you shall be too', perhaps... I'm not confident in that. But hopefully you get the idea.)
Hope that helps!
- 336
It's हैं, 'haiñ'. Neither है nor हो - as for why it isn't हो, that might be easier for someone to explain if you said why you think it should be?
हम उनको खाना देते हैं is rejected. If उनको is to उन्हें what मुझको is to मुझे (i.e. the exact same thing) it should be accepted. Right?
