{"id":7667,"date":"2018-05-24T21:11:06","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T21:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/?p=7667"},"modified":"2018-05-25T23:09:19","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T23:09:19","slug":"conversational-hindi-common-questions-and-answers-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/conversational-hindi-common-questions-and-answers-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversational Hindi: Common Questions and Answers (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog is the second part to my first blog<\/a> on this topic. As a student of Hindi myself, I would sometimes become frustrated with the sheer volume of “formal Hindi” I was being taught. Of course, this Hindi was overly formal and outdated, but I wasn’t being told that\u2013\u2013instead, this Hindi was described as “standard.” While it’s important to learn standard Hindi (meaning the most easily understood form of the language to the greatest variety of people) and formal Hindi (that is, Sanskrit-influenced forms of the language), more colloquial forms are also important too. Additionally, formal language is only appropriate in certain spaces and amongst certain people and is a far cry from the colloquial language of everyday conversation. So, in this blog, I will share with you a continuation of the colloquial questions and answers I tackled last time.<\/p>\n

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Image by Dennis Jarvis on Flickr, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u0938\u092c\u0938\u0947 \u092a\u0939\u0932\u0947 “\u0927\u0928\u094d\u092f\u0935\u093e\u0926\/\u0936\u0941\u0915\u094d\u0930\u093f\u092f\u093e” \u0915\u0947 \u092c\u093e\u0930\u0947 \u092e\u0947\u0902 \u090f\u0915 \u091f\u093f\u092a\u094d\u092a\u0923\u0940<\/h2>\n

First, a comment about the phrase “Thank You”<\/p>\n

Recently, a reader asked how to say “thank you” in Hindi, which is a very interesting question indeed. As English speakers, we may take the words “thank you” for granted as an accepted (and some would say required) mode of politeness, even in a casual setting. Yet, a language like Hindi is different enough from English that is has an entirely different set of cultural norms and, thus, codes of politeness. Thus, a phrase or even word in English can’t always be translated into Hindi and still make sense culturally and\/or socially or even mean the same thing.<\/p>\n

In the English-speaking world (and in much of the Western world, including in other Germanic and Romance languages) saying “thank you” and “you’re welcome” are de rigueur but, in Hindi, this is not usually the case. The Hindi language has its own codes of politeness, but saying “thank you” and “you’re welcome” aren’t considered requisite in casual conversation or, for example, while dining in a restaurant. On the opposite end of this argument, cracking one’s knuckles to ward off the evil eye and being careful to use one’s right hand (and not left hand) for eating and most transactions are not considered common codes of politeness in the English-speaking world, yet they are common usages in a Hindi-speaking environment.<\/p>\n

Although things are quickly changing with educated urbanites becoming more and more exposed to Western culture and adopting the “\u0925\u0948\u0902\u0915 \u092f\u0942” code, in general it’s not considered necessary to say “thank you” and “you’re welcome” as often as we do in the West. In fact, it may make some people uncomfortable and might even seem a bit awkward. If you really want to say “thank you” in the sense that we use this phrase in the English-speaking world, saying the English phrase with Indian pronunciation is probably your best bet. Other than that, there are some Hindi options that do not exactly approximate the English phrase, but they come fairly close to some usages:<\/p>\n