Today we’re going to begin to go through question words in Hindi, these are words that are going to be essential in building real conversational phrases. In fact we’ve already seen a few of them, so it should be a nice easy lesson! For each word we’ll see one example question. I’ll be posting more questions and conversational practice in another lesson soon. It might be useful to recap over Lesson #26: Yes, No and simple Questions first before reading on.  

क्या            kyaa       what?

We saw in Lesson #20: What is your Name? the question आपका नाम क्या है? aapka naam kyaa hai - meaning ‘what is your name?’. 

कहाँ           kahaan      where?

आप कहाँ जा रहे हैं? aap kahaan jaa rahe hain - this translates to where are you going? The रहे rahe is used to show that the verb (in this case 'to go’) is continuous and happening now. Don’t worry if this confuses you, I have a lesson planned on it for later this week!

क्यों           kyon        why?

A good question using this word is;  क्यों आप हिन्दी सीखते हैं? kyon aap hindee seekhte hain - why are you learning Hindi? (when addressing a male)

कौन          kaun        who?

For example we have; वह कौन है? voh kaun hai - who is he/she? (Remember in Hindi he and she are the same). You could reply to this question by saying something like वह मीना है voh meena hai - She is Meena. 

And that’s it for today; we’ve learnt 4 new question words! Practice writing and saying them so that you really remember it. I do believe that it’s best to keep lessons 'short and sweet’, that is why lessons are often broken into 2 parts. 

If you have any questions about Hindi or anything we’ve learnt please feel free to ask them here.

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