Hindi Lessons/Lesson 9

Lesson 9: Numbers up to 20. Wh-questions and other question-words.

Here is a table of the numbers up to 20:

Number	Hindi	Transliteratoin	Number	Hindi	Transliteration
1	एक	ek	11	ग्यारह	gyarah
2	दो	do	12	बारह	barah
3	तीन	thin	13	तेरह	terah
4	चार	char	14	चौदह	chaudah
5	पांच	panch	15	पन्द्रह	pandrah
6	छः	chha (chhe)	16	सोलह	solah
7	सात	sath	17	सत्रह	satrah
8	आठ	aath	18	अठारह	athharah
9	नौ	nau	19	उन्नीस	unnis
10	दस	das	20	बीस	bis

Next come the question words:

• क्या (kya) = What?
• कौन (kaun) = Who?
• कहां (kaha~) = Where?
• क्यों (kyo~) = Why?
• कैसा / कैसे / कैसी (kaisa/kaise/kaisi) = How?
• कितना / कितने / कितनी (kitna/kitne/kitni) = How much?, How many?

So, basically, that was the lesson, but I forgot something to tell you about. It's concerning the numbers. The Devanagari script even possess its own letters for writing the numbers, but those are not used much in our time. However I'll give them here too:

• १ = 1
• २ = 2
• ३ = 3
• ४ = 4
• ५ = 5
• ६ = 6
• ७ = 7
• ८ = 8
• ९ = 9
• १० = 10

As you can see they resembles the ""Arabic"" ciphers we use, and it should be so, since actually the Arabic ciphers are INDIAN ciphers. The writing system, on base 10, developed in India, where people used to write numbers with the letters you see above... Later Arabs adopted that system and brought it all over the word, thus it became known as "Arabic numbers"... By the way, written in Devanagari, the year, in which I'm writing these lesson will look as २०१०...