Shireen: As salaam alaikum; Welcome to the second episode of the Urdu Seekhiye podcast. We’re your hosts Shireen and Wajiha.

Wajiha: As salaam aliakum everyone! In today’s episode we’ll demonstrate how to ask someone how they’re doing.

Shireen: Yes – so let’s jump right in.

                                                                                 DIALOGUE

                                                           part 1  - just the Urdu Dialogue

Shireen: Now we listen to the translation

                           part 2  - Line by line.  Wajiha reads Urdu Lines  Shireen translates to English

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

Shireen: Okay so the dialogue begins with the question. Ap kaisi hain? That means, how are you? One thing to note about this question is that the word Kaisi changes depending on who you’re talking to. So if you’re talking to a female, you’ll say ap kaisi hain – but if you’re talking to a man, you’d ask ap kaise hain?

Wajiha: Right, and we already should know what ap means. You. Kaisi or kaise means how? And hain is our to be verb meaning “are”.

Shireen: Exactly! And to that question, you responded main theek houn. Aur aap? Ap ka kya haal hai? Main theek houn means I am fine. Main means I, theek means fine, and houn is our to be verb meaning am. Main theek houn. If you recall from the first podcast, aur aap means … and you? So if I only said main theek houn, aur aap? That would have been enough, but we wanted to show you another way to ask “how are you” so we forced in the question, aap ka kya hal hai? (2x) and that literally means what is your condition? Ap ka is our possessive adjective and it means “your” kya as you may remember means “what” and hāl means condition. So ap ka kya hāl hai means, how are you? That entire line, once more is maiṅ ṭīkh hūṅ. aur āp? āp kā kyā hāl hai? To which I responded:

Wajiha: maiṅ bhī ṭīkh hūṅ. xuš huṅ ke āj jum’a hai. And you probably can guess what the first line means because there is just one new word in it. maiṅ bhī ṭīkh hūṅ means I am also fine, or I am fine too. Remember, bhī means too or also. Next sentence – xuš means happy. hun – means am. ke – that. Aj – today – jum’a – Friday and hai means is. xuš huṅ ke āj jum’a hai. It’s an incomplete sentence and it means happy that today is Friday. the [I am] is implied. maiṅ bhī ṭīkh hūṅ. xuš huṅ ke āj jum’a hai. I am fine too – happy that today is Friday. Then I inquire about why she’s happy that it’s Friday by saying …

Shireen: acchā? kyā kuch xās kar rahī haiṅ? so from the first lesson we learned that accha meant ok or good. But when it’s used as if it were a question then it means “really” or “oh?” – and kuch means something – xas means special … kar is a verb meaning “do” the infinitive of this verb would karna … which means to do and rahi is a word that indicates either the present continuous tense (what’s happening right now) or the future tense (something that is yet to happen). kar rahi together means doing. So kya kuch xas kar rahi hain means “are you doing something special”? And again, because it’s being asked to a female we use rahi. If we were talking to a man we’d say “rahe” kya kuch xas kar rahe hain?

Wajiha: So you responded with … nahīṅ, bas souṅgī. and that means, no, just sleeping. So nahin, means no. bas could mean enough, or in our case only or just. And soungi is what a female would say to mean I am going to sleep. The complete way to say I’m going to sleep would be main soungi but that –ungi ending is added to the root verb making it equivalent to adding the-ing to a verb. So the infinitive verb “to sleep” in Urdu is sonā. Soungi means I’m going to sleep. If a man were saying it, he would say “sounga”. So Shireen says “bus, soungi” and I responded with …

Shireen: acchi bāt hai. And here, acchī is the feminine version of accha. Because bat is a feminine noun, I need to use a feminine adjective. And we know that accha means … good. bāt means matter. It could loosely mean story and it could mean thing. I think, here, it best means thing. So acchi bāt hai means, that’s a good thing. That’s great/good!

Wajiha: Wow, is that it?

Shireen: I’m afraid so. For now anyway. Thank you very much for listening. Remember to check out our facebook page.

Shireen & Wajiha: Phir milengey. Khuda Hafiz!

As salaam alaikum. You’re listening to the tum version of the dialogue covered in the second episode on how to ask someone how they’re doing. In that dialogue we used ap or ap ka wherever we needed to say you or yours. So now we’ll replace those with tum and tumhara. But before diving into the explanation let’s hear the dialogue first.

                                                                         *Dialogue*

The dialogue begins with – tum kaisi ho. So previously it was ap kaisi hain … now it’s tum kaisi ho. And this would only be asked to a female. To a male when speaking formally, you would say ap kaise hain … so informally we’d say tum kaise ho. To which the answer would be … main theek houn. Aur tum? Tumhara kya hal hai? And of course the translation remains the same. We’ve just changed ap to tum, and ap ka to tumhara.

So the response to that question (Aur tum? Tumhara kya hal hai?) would remain the same as well … main bhi thīk hun. xuš hun ke aj jum’a hai. Again, no change in meaning. The response: acha? kyā kuch xas kar rahi ho? Oh are you doing something special … so that’s of course being asked to a woman … to a man we’d ask … kya kuch xas ker rahe ho?

So kya kuch xas ker rahi ho or kya kuch xas ker rahe ho mean … are you doing something special?

The response: nahin, bus soungi. That’s what you’d say if you were a female wanting to say … no just will sleep … a man would say … nahin, bus sounga. No just will sleep.

Next we have, achi bat hai which means that’s good. And there you have it … now you can ask your Urdu speaking friends how they’re doing and whether they’ve got special plans

Shukriya aur khuda hafiz … phir milengey!