Shireen: As salaam alaikum; Welcome to the first episode of the Urdu Seekhiye dialogue series. While all the other lessons are in video format, these will be in the form of podcasts. Thank you very much for joining us! My name is Shireen and today I am joined by Wajiha. Wajiha is …

Wajiha:  As salaam aliakum everyone**!**

Shireen:  Welcome to Urdu Seekhiye Wajiha and Shurkria. If you heard the introductory episode, you already know a little bit about the format of this series, and if you didn’t – no worries. Wajiha and I will have a short conversation in Urdu. The conversation will demonstrate how you can introduce yourself to someone.

The teacher in me wants to go on and on about the benefits of repeated practice, especially when you’re learning a new language, but I’ll spare you. So with that let’s hear our first dialogue.

Wajiha: Let’s.

                                                                                        **DIALOGUE**

part 1  – just the Urdu Dialogue  (2X)

Shireen: Let’s hear that dialogue one more time before we move on to part 2.

Okay so in part 2, we’ll provide the translation.

part 2  – Line by line.  Wajiha reads the Urdu lines and Shireen reads English translation

Shireen: Let’s move to the third part – where we discuss each line in more detail.

Part 3 – (2 or three words at a time)  break up /explanation of each line.  CONVERSATIONAL

We started off the dialogue with asalaam alaikum.  What does that mean, Wajiha?

Wajiha: Well – it’s a common greeting in the Muslim world, though you don’t have to be Muslim to use it.  In fact it’s not even in Urdu, it’s in Arabic, but again most muslims use it, despite their native tongue. So as salam ‘alikum means May peace be upon you. And the response is va alaikum as salaam which is pretty much saying the same thing back.  “may peace be upon you also.”

Shireen:   That’s right!  A friend of mine once told me that he sees this as if two people were praying for one-another – essentially, they’re wishing each other well.  What better way to start a conversation?

Wajiha: Definitely! You’ll see as we continue these dialogues … that we’ll come across other phrases which are said conversationally but have religious connotations, and are simply phrases that wish the other person well.

Shireen: Right … so after you said … asalamu alaikum you asked … ap ka nam kya hai – ap ka naam kya hai means …

Wajiha: “What is your name” … so aap means, you, and ap ka, together, means your  it’s our possessive adjective… naam means, name — kya means what, and hai is our to be verb and in this case it means is. So together we’re asking what is your name – ap ka naam kya hai?

Shireen: And before we go on, you might be thinking what the heck is a be verb? And if you want to learn more about be verbs, because they will keep appearing in our sentences – take a look at the handout available for this episode on our website. So returning to āp ka nām kyā hai – this is a question that stays the same always, despite the gender of the person asking or the person being asked.

Wajiha: Good point! Sometimes certain words change based on gender, and of course we’ll point them out when that happens.

Shireen: Right! Okay so to your question, ap ka naam kya hai, I responded “merā nām Shireen hai.”  Again, it remains the same despite the gender. So if my name were Ali, a common male south Asian name, I’d say mera naam Ali hai. So the only new word in this sentence is merā … and it means my.

After saying my name is Shireen, I asked you what your name is by saying “Aur āp kā?”

Wajiha: So earlier we talked about how “āp kā” means your or yours, so the new word here is “aur” – can you guess what that might mean? [Pause] It means “and” … so this phrase translates to “and yours?”

Instead of asking the complete question “āp kā nām kyā hai” you can shorten it by simply asking “aur āp kā?”

Shireen: Speaking of āp kā, you chose to address me using āp. But how else could you have addressed me, Wajiha?

Wajiha: Well, I could have addressed you using tum or tu. There are three cases of respect, so there are three ways in which you can say you in Urdu. First, let’s look at āp. āp is the formal case. You’d use āp to talk to someone who is older than you or someone you don’t know well.

Shireen: So like, someone you’re meeting for the first time.

Wajiha: Right. Next we have tum. tum is the informal case and used in a casual setting. For example, with family an friends and those who may be younger than you. tū is the impolite case, and we recommend that you don’t use it at all but we wanted to include it so you recognize it if you hear it.

Shireen: But you know, my dad uses tū to address my mom and we don’t want to offend anyone who uses tū in their home.

Wajiha: So here is the thing about tū. If you use it with someone who you don’t know very well, then it’s extremely rude, but if you use it with someone you know very well then it’s seen as a sign of closeness. It’s often reserved for people who are extremely close to one another.

Shireen: So it sounds like there is a certain understanding between the two. That’s sweet, but I’m still not a fan of tū. I don’t speak Urdu too often with people who are my age, so I find myself only using ap for the most part but I know in the south asian region, social class comes into play in this equation. I see people who are dining at restaurant refer to waiters to the waiters using tu and people address their drivers using tu. Also another factor that comes into play is gender. Men, particularly husbands, will refer to their wives using tum, and women will address their husbands using ap. It’s a cultural thing and it’s what I noticed while growing up. What have you noticed Wajiha?

Wajiha: I think you’re right shireen. Among the older generations most men address their wives as tum, whereas the women call their husbands using ap. But this has changed recently, especially in Pakistan with both the husband and wife using the same case … either tum or ap. However, I think it depends on the couple and their relationship.

Shireen: Fair enough. But if you’re ever in doubt about whether to use tum or ap, I’d go with ap. Let’s keep moving. So to the question, aur ap ka? You replied, mera nam vajiha hai. and that means?

Wajiha: My name is Wajiha. Then I asked you, ap kahan se hain? So the new words here are kahan se hain … kahan means “where” and “se” is a postposition, which means “from” So in English we have prepositions like in, on, from and they come before the words they modify … like in Houston or from Iran but in Urdu they come after the word they modify as you’ll see in the response to the question ap kahan se hain. So se is our postposition meaning from. Our be verb here is hain … which in this case means “are” Where are you from? Aap kahan se hain?

Shireen:  That was a good explanation.  So the response to “aap kahan se hain” is simply, mein Houston se houn and that means I’m from Houston. The new word here is hun which is our be verb in this sentence and it means am … So the question was ap kahan se hain, the response was mein Houston se houn. Then I asked kyā āp bhī houston se haiṅ? Which you might be able to guess means …

Wajiha: Are you from houston too? So the new words here are kya and bhi. kya here doesn’t mean “what”, here it’s used as a word to indicate that whatever is being said will be a question. It’s a question indicator. So commonly questions begin with our questions words like what, where, who, when, etc. so if the question you’re asking doesn’t contain a question word, then adding “kya” to the front confirms that it is a question. Kya ap bhi Amrika se hain? Are you from America too?  And bhi, means also or too – and we see this word again towards the end of the dialog. To the question: kyā āp bhī houston se haiṅ? I respond…

Shireen:  nahīṅ, maiṅ hiuston se nahīṅ hūṅ. maiṅ Islamabad se hūṅ. You can guess that nahin, means “no” – to say I am not from Houston, I say mein Houston se nahin houn. And to say I am from Islamabad, I say main Islamabad se houn. Since there are no new words here – lets move along – then I say “acchā. āp se mil ker xušī hūī.  phir mileṅge.” Which means …

So – accha, in this context, means okay. But accha also could mean I see, or good – it depends on the context.

Wajiha: Right, if I wanted to say He is a good boy. I’d say – “yeh accha bacha hai.” But in the context of this dialogue, it means okay or I see.

Shireen: So let’s better examine the sentence, āp se mil ker xušī hūī. Aap se means “from you”.  In this case the postposition “se” means “from”  & “mil” means meet – it is the root verb of milna (to meet). “ker” means “do” and the infinitive form of this verb is kerna … meaning to do. So whenever I say a verb with to in front of it, that’s just the infinitive form. So some of the verbs we’ve talked about (in their infinitive form) are to be, to meet, and to do. Their Urdu equivalents are hona, milna, and kerna.  In Urdu, when we have two actions happening one after another, we add kar to the root of the first verb. For example mil kar. So the literal translation of ap se mil ker xusi hui is, having met you, I became happy. In that sentence we’ve got two verbs, two actions … the meeting and the becoming happy. That’s why we say “mil kar” and as we progress I’ll provide more examples of this type of structure – but if this grammar stuff is not making any sense to you don’t even worry about it.

Wajiha: Yes – just know that ap se mil ker xusi hui means It was nice to meet you. Keep it simple Shireen.

Shireen: Yes that’s something I’m working on, heh. Okay let’s keep going, we’re almost done. So I want to make sure that I have covered every word in that previous sentence – “kushy” means happiness with “hui” it means “became happy” so kushy hui roughly translates to “became happy” But again, just know that ap se mil ker xusi hui means it was nice to meet you.

Wajiha: And phir milangey means see you later… Phir can either mean then, later, or again and milangey is the future tense of “to meet.”   So it literally means we’ll meet later.  And now to finish it off … I responded with “mujhe bhi”; knowing what bhi means, what do you think mujhe bhi means?

Shireen: It means, me too. So I said it was nice to meet and you responded, me too.

Wajiha: I personally don’t recommend that you get too attached to learning the grammar, just focus on speaking for now and the pronunciation and with time the grammar will start making sense on its own.

So finally – Khuda Hafiz, more commonly said as khudfiz is another one of those well-wishing phrases. And as before, khudafiz isn’t Urdu, it’s in the Persian language. It literally means “may God protect you,” and it’s commonly said when two people are parting and just like the greeting in the beginning it is not limited to Muslims.

Shireen:  Very true .. okay so you should be very proud of yourself as you finished a very lengthy lesson on how to introduce yourself in the Urdu language. As a thank you for tuning in, we’re including the handout for free for anyone who is learning with us. I highly recommend you download it if you’re interested in learning how to read and write Urdu – and if you’re interested in the grammar.

That’s it for now, please be sure to visit our facebook page and let us know what you thought. You can also email us your thoughts or questions at UrduSeekhiye@gmail.com

Thank you very much for joining us!!

Wajiha & Shireen: Phir milengey! Khudahafiz!

Salaam. You’re listening to the tum version of the dialogue covered in the first episode on how to introduce yourself in Urdu. In that dialogue we used ap and ap ka wherever we needed to say you and yours. In Urdu, there are several levels of respect – we have three different ways of saying you. ap, tum, and tu – so for every dialogue in which we use ap, we’ll also have that same dialogue but replace all the “aps” or ap kas with tum or tumhara so you can learn how to have that conversation more informally – with family or friends. I highly advise that you listen to the ap version before listening to this version because this segment won’t go into as much detail. Also, please note that in the future, we’ll only have the tum version of each dialogue available to our Patrons, so please visit our patreon site to learn more.

Let’s have a listen to the same dialogue but in the more informal tone using tum and tumhara.

                                                  Part 1: Go through the dialogue as normal

So first we’ve got the greeting – as salama alaikum and wa alaikum asasaalm. You should know from the ap version of the episode that that’s a common greeting in the Muslim world. And both basically are saying “may peace be upon you.”

Then we’ve got tumhara kya nam hai? So previously we had ap ka nam kya hai … and now we have tumhara. Of course it means the exact same thing, what is your name – but I’m more likely to use tumhara with my friends (or people who are younger than me – like children) whereas I use ap ka with my parents.  So the response to tumhara kya nam hai  was – mera nam Shireen hai, aur tumhara?

So previously it was aur ap ka … and yours? So again, ap ka becomes tumhara.

Moving right along, then we have mera nam vajiha hai … tum kahan se ho. Ap kahan se hain becomes tum kahan se ho.  Ap hain  tum ho.

So the question was where are you from tum kahan se ho? the response … main Houston se hun. (no change) Kya tum bhi Houston se ho? Are you from Houston too?

Nahin, main Houston se nahin hun. Main Islamabad se hun.

Acha. Tum se mil ker xusi hui. Phir milenge.

So a note about mujhe bhi which I meant to explain in the ap episode, is mujhe bhi means I too, or me too. So in English we say, “It was nice to meet you.” And the response normally is you too. But here the response is me too because what we’re actually saying is tumse mil kar xusi hui – which means, having met you, I became happy, right? So if you think about the literal meaning, then the response to that would be me too. Right? Having met you, I became happy.

Oh me too! So that’s why it’s mujhe bhi, and not something that’s equivalent to “you too” in English. So the response is Mujhe bhi. Xuda hafiz. And if you recall … xuda hafiz means …? goodbye … literally, may God project you but it’s said to mean goodbye.

And there you have it. As always post your questions to the community on our facebook page or send them to Urduseekhiye@gmail.com. Until next time, khuda hafiz!