Verbs, verbs, verbs. Verbs really are the most important thing when learning grammar rules. The problem though is that you probably think verbs and grammar rules are really boring and completely useless right? We’ll you’re wrong! Verbs are simply the most important thing if you want to speak fluently. 

Verbs (for those of you who didn’t pay attention in English lessons!) are ‘doing words’, words that show some action of some sort is taking place. For English, generally a word is verb if you can put ’-ing’ or ’-ed’ at the end. 

The 'main’ form of a verb is called the Infinitive. This infinitive is what you will see when you look up a verb in a Hindi dictionary. In English the infinitive of a verb is always be 'to ___’, ie to read, to speak, to walk etc. 

Every single Hindi verb in it’s infinitive form ends with ना naa. Blah blah blah, this is all very nice but when do we get to see some examples? Well right now actually! 

Key - Hindi  transliteration English

पढ़ना    parhnaa    -     To Read (or To Study)

बोलना    bolnaa    -    To Speak

सोना    sonaa    -    To Sleep

Are you getting the hang of this? Ready for a few more?

खाना      khaanaa     -    To Eat

सीखना    seekhnaa  -  To Learn

जाना    jaanaa    -    To Go

Of course there are hundreds and hundreds more but hopefully you now get the idea!

Ready to learn one final thing? The Root of a verb is simply it’s infinitive form with the ना naa at the end removed. For example, the root of सीखना seekhnaa is सीख seekh and the root of आना aanaa is आ aa. This 'root’ will come in really useful when we start using verbs in sentences. 

You can continue learning about Verbs in Lesson #28: The Present Tense

Back to Beginner’s Grammar.