# Hindi, Urdu: using jitnaa ... utnaa ... to compare adjectives



## MonsieurGonzalito

Friends,

 If I want to say that "The man is as tall as the boy", are these expressions correct?

_aadmii jitnaa lambaa hai utnaa laRkaa (hai).

aadmii laRk*e* jitnaa lambaa hai._


Thanks in advance.


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## Qureshpor

Urdu:

mard utnaa hii lambaa hai jitnaa lambaa laRkaa hai.

mard laRke jitnaa lambaa hai.

mard kaa qad laRke jitnaa hai.


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## desi4life

Qureshpor said:


> Urdu:
> 
> mard utnaa hii lambaa hai jitnaa lambaa laRkaa hai.
> 
> mard laRke jitnaa lambaa hai.
> 
> mard kaa qad laRke jitnaa hai.



Why is aad(a)mii unacceptable in these expressions in your view?


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## Qureshpor

desi4life said:


> Why is aad(a)mii unacceptable in these expressions in your view?


I have not said "aadamii" is not acceptable in Urdu. "mard" is much more common word for "man" vs "laRkaa" than "aadamii" (a human being/a person) vs laRkaa.


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> If I want to say that "The man is as tall as the boy", are these expressions correct?
> 
> _aadmii jitnaa lambaa hai utnaa laRkaa (hai).
> 
> aadmii laRk*e* jitnaa lambaa hai._



The first one is wrong. Rather, "aadmii utnaa (hii) lambaa hai jitnaa (ki) laRkaa hai" or "aadmii utnaa (hii) lambaa hai jitnaa ki laRkaa (hai)." The second one is fine and would be rather the usual way of saying this (it's less of a mouthful).


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## Pokeflute

As Littlepond-ji and Qureshpor-ji have said, the first sentence is flipped.

aadmii jitnaa (hii) lambaa hai utnaa (ki) laRkaa = the boy is as tall as the man (i.e. as much tall as the man is, the boy is that much tall)

aadmi laRke jitnaa lambaa hai = the man is as tall as the boy

This holds for other relative-correlative constructions too. For comparison:

aadmi jaisa hai vaisa uska beta -> a man’s child is just like him

aadmi **apne** bete jaisaa hai -> a man is like his child

EDIT: fixed uske -> apne


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## MonsieurGonzalito

What called my attention in the "shorter" versions:



> _aadmi *laRke *jitnaa lambaa hai_


is the fact that the second term is in oblique case. 

What makes me think (just as a point of grammatical curiosity) that that _jitnaa _is not really the result of successive elissions from a complete correlative construction, but something different. 
Perhaps it is acting more like a conjunction?


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## Pokeflute

I’d say it’s a postposition more than a conjunction. It triggers the oblique case and behaves like “jaisaa” (which textbooks IME call a post position).

I’m curious too how it developed. Hindi definitely develops new postpositions (e.g. “ke against”), but IMO they tend to be complex postpositions via “ke”.


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## marrish

.مرد لڑکے (کے) جتنا لمبا ہے
  مرد لڑکے (کے) اُتنا لمبا ہے۔ (کم بولتے ہیں)۔​


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## MonsieurGonzalito

Pokeflute said:


> I’d say it’s a postposition more than a conjunction. It triggers the oblique case and behaves like “jaisaa” (which textbooks IME call a post position).


_jaisaa _is also a conjunction. Or an adjective/adverb working as such.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

I was wondering if the case of the term connected via _jitnaa _is used to differentiate between:
-  comparing the adjective proper
versus
- comparing full sentences that involve the adjective.

Let's imagine a family making snowmen. And I want to express the following concepts (in a deliberately concise and equivocal way, not using clarifying circumlocutions).

"The man makes a snowman as tall as his son" (just one snowman is made by the man, and it is equal in height to the boy)

"The man makes a snowman as tall as his son" (the man's snowman is of the same height as the son's snowman)

Would one be (comparing height proper):

_mard *apke beTe jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai_

and the other (comparing actions/sentences):

_mard *apkaa beTaa jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai ?_


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> "The man makes a snowman as tall as his son" (just one snowman is made by the man, and it is equal in height to the boy)
> 
> "The man makes a snowman as tall as his son" (the man's snowman is of the same height as the son's snowman)
> 
> Would one be (comparing height proper):
> 
> _mard *apke beTe jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai_
> 
> and the other (comparing actions/sentences):
> 
> _mard *apkaa beTaa jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai ?_



Both your English and Hindi sentences in the second case are wrong! (The Hindi sentence is wrong in the first case, too.)
(Meanwhile, "mard" in Hindi usually carries a very masculine man's connotation, it's better to use "aadmii."* And if you still want to use "mard," you could call the snowman also as "barf kaa mard.")

The correct English sentence when you want to say "the man's snowman is of the same height as the son's snowman":
"The man makes a snowman as tall as his son*'s*"

Now for the Hindi sentences:

just one snowman is made by the man, and it is equal in height to the boy: aadmii apne beTe _jitnaa _ooNchaa barf kaa aadmii banaataa hai
(you can't use _jaisaa_: because that would mean, a snowman like his son, resembling his son, which is not what you are saying, you are only talking of height)

the man's snowman is of the same height as the son's snowman: aadmii apne beTe ke barf ke aadmii jitnaa ooNchaa barf kaa aadmii banaataa hai

*There is a film in Hindi, titled _Mard_ (I think with Amitabh Bachchan, but I may be wrong). The title doesn't mean simply "Male." It means a particular type of man (a man who is tough, either mentally or physically or both, i.e., the usual qualities associated with a male). Again, there's a song "mard taaNgevaalaa": it would be absurd if "mard" simply meant "male" here, as "taaNgevaalaa" is automatically male (a female tonga driver would be "taaNgevaalii").


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## MonsieurGonzalito

I just used "_mard_" not to repeat _admii_.

What is wrong with:

_mard *apke beTe jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai?_


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## Qureshpor

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> I was wondering if the case of the term connected via _jitnaa _is used to differentiate between:
> -  comparing the adjective proper
> versus
> - comparing full sentences that involve the adjective.
> 
> Let's imagine a family making snowmen. And I want to express the following concepts (in a deliberately concise and equivocal way, not using clarifying circumlocutions).
> 
> "The man makes a snowman as tall as his son" (just one snowman is made by the man, and it is equal in height to the boy)
> 
> "The man makes a snowman as tall as his son" (the man's snowman is of the same height as the son's snowman)
> 
> Would one be (comparing height proper):
> 
> _mard *apke beTe jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai_
> 
> and the other (comparing actions/sentences):
> 
> _mard *apkaa beTaa jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai ?_


Urdu:

1."The man makes a snowman as tall as his son"

مرد اپنے بیٹے کے قد جتنا برفانی پُتلا بناتا ہے۔

2. "The man makes a snowman as tall as his son's"

مرد اپنا برفانی پُتلا (اپنے) بیٹے کے برفانی پتلے جتنا بناتا ہے۔

 برفانی پُتلے آپ کو کیسے لگے؟


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> What is wrong with:
> 
> _mard *apke beTe jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai?_


 
1. There are no such words as "apke" or "admii" in Hindi.

2. "jitnaa lambaa" or "jitnaa ooNchaa" rather. You are only comparing length/height, you are not making a snowman resembling the boy.


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> I just used "_mard_" not to repeat _admii_.



Well, but it isn't an appropriate choice. (Posts 2 and 4 were not from the Hindi perspective.) These words are not interchangeable at most places (in Hindi). "mard" carries a specific connotation, while "aadmii" is generic. You could use another generic word such as "purush," if you are bent on not repeating one word twice for some strange reason, but that would make the sentence very heavy.


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## aevynn

Qureshpor said:


> برفانی پُتلا


LOL! 



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> What is wrong with:
> _mard *apke beTe jaisaa* lambaa baraf kaa admii banaataa hai?_


I'm personally finding myself distracted from the syntax by these "barf ke aadmii/mard" (and/or "barfaanii putle"), so for my sanity, I will redirect my discussion to the following sentences:

(A) us_ne apne beTe jaisaa lambaa sno_main banaayaa.
(B) us_ne apne beTe jitnaa lambaa sno_main banaayaa.

Sentence (A) is not grammatically incorrect, but it means something different as @littlepond jii noted in #15 above. In more detail:

As @littlepond jii, @Qureshpor jii, and @marrish jii have all noted, it is sentences of the form (B) that have the sense that you're aiming for. Here the phrase apne beTe jitnaa is adverbial and modifies the adjective lambaa. We get a parse structure that's something like [[[apne beTe jitnaa] lambaa] sno_main]. The tallness of the snowman is what is being compared to something (in this case, to the son's tallness).

For sentence (A), the phrase apne beTe jaisaa is adjectival. Depending on your syntactic formalism, there's potential for some syntactic ambiguity: (i) it might modify sno_main directly, in parallel with lambaa, or (ii) it might modify the entire noun phrase lambaa sno_main. In other words, we get either a parse structure of (i) [[apne beTe jaisaa] [lambaa] [sno_main]] or (ii) [[apne beTe jaisaa] [lambaa sno_main]].[^1] The semantics reflected by parse (i) would be a snowman that is both tall and also like his son. The semantics reflected by parse (ii) would be a tall snowman that is like his son. The difference between the semantics of these two parses is somewhere between very subtle and completely unimportant.

But there is a clear syntactic and semantic difference between (A) and (B).

---
[^1]: Parse (ii) "feels" more right to me, and probably the "only binary branching" principle of formalisms such as X-bar theory would also rule out parse (i).


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## MonsieurGonzalito

I apologize, I made a mistake in my previous example: using _jaisaa _instead of _jitnaa_, which derived in a whole set of issues that, although per se interesting, are not what I intended to ask.

Let me clarify my question:

I will use _pitaa, _and will not specify the material the dummy is made of, in order to get those two distractions out of the way.
Also, I will use the sentence in present, in order to appreciate differences in an _-aa_ word like _beTaa_.
And finally, I will refer to many dummies, in order to make the actions more apt to be "quantifiable".


_pitaa apne beTe jitnaa lambe putle banaata hai._

I understand that [_apne beTee jitnaa_] is a construction which:
- is linked to the rest of the sentence by _jitnaa, which  _is conjuntive in this case, 
- can also be "_jitnaa ke_"
- modifies the adjective (_lambe)_.

What I was asking was, if I put the content (NP, in bold below) of said construction in direct case, ie:

_pitaa *apnaa beTaa *jitnaa lambe putle banaata hai.  _

... then what I am qualifying with _apnaa beTaa jitnaa_  is not the dummy('s) height(s)  anymore, but the actions themselves?
i.e. the father makes tall dummies "in the same quantity/degree" as the boy makes them.

Is that true, or I am imagining all this, and the only possible case the bolded part can be, is oblique?


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## aevynn

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> pitaa apne beTe *jitnaa* lambe putle banaata hai.


This should be jitne.



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> pitaa *apnaa beTaa *jitnaa lambe putle banaata hai.


To me, neither this nor "apnaa beTaa jitne lambe" sound right.

--
Extra information that I think is different (but related) to what you're asking about: You can sometimes have a full genitive before jaisaa/jitnaa, and the case on the entire genitive clause is usually oblique, but can sometimes be direct. I do not think this results in any difference in meaning. Some examples from the internet include:
​(Oblique-case genitives):​ko'ii nahiiN hai mere jaisaa chaaroN or // apne gird ek bhiiR sajaa kar tanhaa huuN (Rekhta)​mirii x(w)aahish ke jitnaa kab hu'aa mujh meN saraabaaN (Rekhta)​khilte hu'e phuul ke jaisaa rang shariir kaa (Hindwi)​​(Direct-case genitives):​he prabhu(u), meraa jaisaa Gariib is jagat meN hai... (Google Books)​ham to suneN_ge qiSSaa/h aisaa // ek ho laRkaa meraa jaisaa (Rekhta)​
Probably the construction with the oblique-case genitive is more "prescriptively correct' and the direct case genitive might sometimes sound awkward to some people. There are many more examples of the oblique-case genitive on the internet from literary sources. To my ear, swapping out some of oblique-case genitives in the examples above for direct-case genitives sounds strange -- while doing the reverse sounds just fine.


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## Qureshpor

aevynn said:


> This should be jitne.
> 
> 
> To me, neither this nor "apnaa beTaa jitne lambe" sound right.
> 
> --
> Extra information that I think is different (but related) to what you're asking about: You can sometimes have a full genitive before jaisaa/jitnaa, and the case on the entire genitive clause is usually oblique, but can sometimes be direct. I do not think this results in any difference in meaning. Some examples from the internet include:
> ​(Oblique-case genitives):​ko'ii nahiiN hai mere jaisaa chaaroN or // apne gird ek bhiiR sajaa kar tanhaa huuN (Rekhta)​mirii x(w)aahish ke jitnaa kab hu'aa mujh meN saraabaaN (Rekhta)​khilte hu'e phuul ke jaisaa rang shariir kaa (Hindwi)​​(Direct-case genitives):​he prabhu(u), meraa jaisaa Gariib is jagat meN hai... (Google Books)​ham to suneN_ge qiSSaa/h aisaa // ek ho laRkaa meraa jaisaa (Rekhta)​
> Probably the construction with the oblique-case genitive is more "prescriptively correct' and the direct case genitive might sometimes sound awkward to some people. There are many more examples of the oblique-case genitive on the internet from literary sources. To my ear, swapping out some of oblique-case genitives in the examples above for direct-case genitives sounds strange -- while doing the reverse sounds just fine.


نہ جانے کیوں میرے نزدیک میرے جیسا کی بجائے مجھ جیسا زیادہ صحیح لگتا ہے۔ 

   والی مثالیں مجھے ٹھیک نہیں لگتیں۔ Direct case genitives


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## Qureshpor

aevynn said:


> LOL!
> 
> 
> I'm personally finding myself distracted from the syntax by these "barf ke aadmii/mard" (and/or "barfaanii putle"), so for my sanity, I will redirect my discussion to the following sentences:


میری حقیر رائے میں برفانی پُتلا اتنا مضحکہ خیز متبادل نہیں ہے جتنا اِسے آپ سمجھ رہے ہیں۔ آپ کو برفانی پتلا کی مثالیں جگ جکڑ جال  یعنی جیم جیم جیم میں مل سکیں گی اور اگر آپ اردو لغت میں لفظ پُتلا کی تعریف دیکھیں تو آپ کو لگے گا کہ یہ ترجمہ نہایت مناسب ہے۔​


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## aevynn

Qureshpor said:


> میری حقیر رائے میں برفانی پُتلا اتنا مضحکہ خیز متبادل نہیں ہے جتنا اِسے آپ سمجھ رہے ہیں۔ آپ کو برفانی پتلا کی مثالیں جگ جکڑ جال  یعنی جیم جیم جیم میں مل سکیں گی اور اگر آپ اردو لغت میں لفظ پُتلا کی تعریف دیکھیں تو آپ کو لگے گا کہ یہ ترجمہ نہایت مناسب ہے۔​


Qureshpor SaaHib, I think the putlaa is a perfect word for describing snowmen! It certainly makes more clear what is meant than does barf kaa aadmii. It's just that MonsieurGonzalito was asking about grammar and, for me personally, it is easiest to understand and analyze grammar when the vocabulary is as familiar as possible -- and to me, "snowman" is very familiar!


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## MonsieurGonzalito

> pitaa apne beTe *jitnaa* lambe putle banaata hai.





aevynn said:


> This should be jitne.


Why? I don't understand.

You used _jitn*aa*_ in your own examples, as well as everybody else:


aevynn said:


> (B) us_ne apne beTe jitnaa lambaa sno_main banaayaa.





Qureshpor said:


> مرد اپنے بیٹے کے قد جتنا برفانی پُتلا بناتا ہے۔


Even he "compound postposition"  format (_ke jitnaa_) has _jitnaa_.


marrish said:


> .مرد لڑکے (کے) جتنا لمبا ہے


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## marrish

Because the snowmen are many (lambe putle) in your sentence, whereas in the rest of examples, the referent of "jitnaa" is a m. sg. 'sno_main (banaayaa)" "barfaanii putlaa (banaayaa)", "mard ... (lambaa hae).


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