Hindi Lesson 10: Verbs

This lesson is going to focus on vocabulary, because after all, you can know all the grammar but if you don’t know any words, you still can’t say anything. People use verbs all the time, so let’s start here.

Some of the most common verbs are:

होना - hona - to be

करना - karna - to do

बनाना - banana - to make

लेना - lena - to take

देना - dena - to give

आना - aana - to come

जाना - jaana - to go

देखना - dekhna - to see, to look

सुनना - sunna - to hear, to listen

बैठना - baithna - to sit

हँसना - hansna - to laugh (sometimes also to smile)

सोना - sona - to sleep (in some dialects this also means to lie down)

जागना - jaagna - to wake (one’s self)

Now, Hindi has a very common thing called “compound verbs” where you take a noun or adjective and add a verb right after it (most commonly karna) to express doing that thing. The noun or adjective stays the same (you don’t have to worry about any cases or postpositions), while the verb takes the tense markings.

Some common ones are:

काम करना - kaam karna - to work

पढ़ाई करना - padhai karna - to study, to do studies

शुरु करना - shuru karna - to start

बंद करना - band karna - to close, to turn off

तय करना - tay karna - to decide

In the simple present tense it works like this:

मैं काम करती हूँ। main kaam kartee hoon. - I (f) work.

आप पढ़ाई करते हैं। aap padhai karte hain. - you (m, polite) study.

This is an extremely useful structure to know, for one reason: 90% of loan words from English are used as compound verbs with karna. Hindi speakers use a lot of English in their vocabulary, so if you don’t know the word for something, you can stick ANY English word into this structure and chances are very good you’ll be understood. In fact, you might be right and sound natural!

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn the actual Hindi words for things - you absolutely should, if only for the sake of linguistic preservation but also because many of them are used - but when you’re practicing speaking and want to express yourself? This will take you a long way.

Some commonly used words (and their slightly less common shuddh hindi counterparts) are:

dance karna डैंस करना (नाचना naacna) to dance

count karna कउंट करना (गिनना ginna) to count

cancel karna कैंसेल करना (रद्द करना radd karna) to cancel

choose karna चूज़ करना (चुनना cunna) to choose

Example: हम सब लोग रात भर डैंस करते हैं। hum sab log raat bhar dance karte hain. We all dance all night long.

Bonus words:

सब - sab - all, every

लोग - log - people (only exists in the plural)

रात - raat (f) - night

दिन - din (m) - day

भर - bhar - entire, the whole time