Lesson #85: चाहिए caahie - Want / Need Something
In today’s lesson we’re just going to cover one very simple Hindi word. How easy does that sound? The word is (quite unsurprisingly!) चाहिए caahie and it’s used to show that someone ‘wants’ or 'needs’ something. To make our lives a whole lot easier we’re going to recap something first…
Can you remember right back to Lesson #63 where we learnt how to talk about Likes and Dislikes in Hindi? How would we say 'I like tea’ in Hindi? That’s right, we say…
मुझको चाय पसंद है mujhko caay pasand hai
- I like tea.
Hopefully now you remember that we use this different sentence structure, we use the Oblique Form of the pronoun with the Postposition को ko to mean 'to me’. So in this sentence we are literally saying “To me tea is liked (pleasing)”.
Why have I brought this up now? Well saying 'I want tea’ in Hindi is very similar to saying 'I like tea’! We actually say…
मुझको चाय चाहिए mujhko caay caahie
- I want tea
Literally 'to me tea is wanted / needed’. Can you see the similarities and differences here? Note first that when using चाहिए caahie we don’t use हूँ hoon, है hai, हैं hain etc.
Think you’ve understood? Ready for another example?
हमको फल चाहिए hamko phal caahie
- We want fruit
Can you see how easy this is? There’s nothing difficult here at all! So do you want to see some more examples?
उसको क्या चाहिए usko kyaa caahie
- What does he want? (Or she!)
उसको दूध चाहिए usko doodh caahie
- He wants milk
क्या तुमको चावल चाहिए?
kyaa tumko caaval caahie
- Do you want Rice?
नजमा को किताबें चाहिए थीं
najmaa ko kitaaben caahie theen
- Najma needed books
(Literally this is 'To Najma books were wanted / needed’). Here we’ve changed need / want to the Past Tense needed / wanted by adding थीं theen - ’were' to the end. We use थीं theen because it agrees with the Feminine Plural word किताबें kitaaben - books.
मेरे भाई को केला चाहिए था
mere bhaaee ko kelaa caahie thaa
- My brother wanted a banana.
And here we use था thaa to agree with the Masculine Singular word केला kelaa - Banana.
Do you think you’ve understood this? It’s been quite an easy and straight forward lesson don’t you think? Hopefully now you know how to use the Hindi word चाहिए caahie!
Note 1! If you want to say 'I want to do something’ (ie using 'want’ with another verb) then you have to do something a little different - see this lesson here! We only use चाहिए caahie when it’s wanting or needing an object.
Note 2! Be aware that sometimes चाहिए caahie is spelt चाहिये caahiye - both are perfectly correct but चाहिए caahie is more common.
