# Urdu, Hindi: یہ کس ماحول / यह किस माहौल



## MonsieurGonzalito

Hello.
I am a little confused by the syntax / cases of this first verse.


یہ کس ماحول میں ہم ہیں​ये किस माहौल में हम हैं

_Which of situation we are in?_

What confuses me is that "_ye_". Shouldn't it be oblique, since is the situation we are *in*?

Thanks in advance.


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

I think I have the answer:

"ye" in the sentence above is not the personal/demonstrative pronoun, but one of the many conjunction uses that are barely mentioned in the Hindi dictionaries, but listed in the lughat
(probably number 5 in this case): _then, so, therefore, because_

Therefore, in what situation are we?


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

Or perhaps "ye kis" is itself some idiomatic phrase meaning "what kind of".
Another of the lughat entries  has "ye" as equivalent to "aisa, is tarah ka", and "ye kis' seems to be part of several fixed expressions


----------



## desi4life

Your use of ye/yeh is not a conjunction IMO but an adverb and is defined as follows in Platts:

H يہہ यह _yah_, (dialec.) यिह _yih_ or _yěh_, pron. (prox. demons.) This; this person;—he; she; it;*—adv. In this, herein; here;—to the extent or degree (that), to this degree
*
Platts doesn't provide an example of this usage but McGregor provides one:

अरे आप यह क्या कर बैठे हैं?
are aap yeh kyaa kar baiThe haiN?

Oh, what have you gone and done (here)?

So I would roughly translate your sentence as: What situation are we in (here)?


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

Thanks, @desi4life
This was a hard one!


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

This is getting way over my head, but, a professor friend of mine told me that "ye kis", in this case, could be understood as a unit, a kind of compound phrase known as  "murrakab ishaari".

This is a related wikipedia entry

In that construction, "yeh" would be the indicative part of it, and "kis" the word being "indicated".

I am not sure I totally understood his explanation, but what I like about it, is that it matches the translations I find of line, (i.e., _what kind of environment are we in_?), and that "ye" as "such as, this kind" also exists.

What still bothers me about this explanation, is the case of "ye".


----------



## marrish

yih is in the direct case/nominative.

yih kyaa maaHaul hae (nom.)
yih kis maaHaul meN (obl.)

yih kyaa maahaaul hae jis meN ham haiN.
yih ham kis maaHaul meN haiN.

What is this environment which we are in.

There's been a discussion about 'wuh'

Urdu: وہ


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

marrish said:


> yih kyaa maahaaul hae jis meN ham haiN.
> yih ham kis maaHaul meN haiN.



Oh, so yih was "normal" all along. 
The odd (substandard?) element here, is "kis", weirdy doubling as "kyaa ... jis"
Am I right?


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

[Mod note: Threads merged. There's no need to open a new thread about the same topic.]

I am sorry to belabor on this issue, but I still don't quite understand the general idea of the "یہ کس" expression.
I received reasonable explanations, but I am still tempted to consider the 2 words as a single unit.
Consider, for example the following verse, from poet Mohsin Naqvi

یہ کس نے ہم سے لہو کا خراج پھر مانگا
ابھی تو سوئے تھے مقتل کو سرخرو کر کے​Can someone tell me what the literal translation of it would be?
Wouldn't یہ کس here mean simply "who", without any real meaning attached to the یہ part?
Would it be fair to assume that یہ کس is used just for metrics/poetic purposes, because we need a 2-syllable word?

Thanks in advance.


----------



## littlepond

"kis" is rather acting as kind of an adjective here, acting as a kind of "such". "kis" often acts like that, as one of its meanings is "which". Read it as "yeh ham kis tarah ke maahaul meN haiN".


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

Thank you, @littlepond 
I like your interpretation (elided "tarah ke") the best. 
It explains the cases of everything, and doesn't require any obscure association between "yeh" and "kis".


----------



## marrish

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> I am sorry to belabor on this issue, but I still don't quite understand the general idea of the "یہ کس" expression. I received reasonable explanations, but I am still tempted to consider the 2 words as a single unit.


We'll see if this post makes sense when I'm finished typing.

an occurence of "yih" یہ (H. यह) followed by ''kis'' کِس (H.किस) is "unrelated":

''_yih_'' is the pronoun 'this', 'it', they, etc. e.g. _yih kis kaam kii chiiz hae_, lit. "this of what use a thing is?"-> (what is this thing for, what is this thing good for, etc.) or, _yih kis kaa naam hae_, (lit. "this, whose name is it?") or, _yih kis zamaane ke log haiN_. Some examples are there in Urdu Lughat (in fact all examples you gave are of this kind, not of the following);
"yih" remains a pronoun but can be translated adverbially as 'here' 'look', to express a kind of astonishment before asking a question, or hesitation. Especially with questions, when one begins with "yih" (pointing literally or figuratively to something) and then making a short pause, goes on to say the rest of the utterance. (Like @desi4life said and provided a nice example and commentary)

"یہ کِس" is not a single unit, at least not as far as grammar is concerned. In my previous examples it is shown that _yih_ can be followed by _kyaa_, _kis_ and _ham_ (and any other word) in the variations of this phrase and the meaning remains unaffected.
I hope @aevynn could have a glance at all this.


marrish said:


> yih is in the direct case/nominative.
> yih kyaa maaHaul hae (nom.)
> yih kis maaHaul meN (obl.)
> yih kyaa maahaaul hae jis meN ham haiN.
> yih ham kis maaHaul meN haiN.
> *What is this* environment which we are in.
> There's been a discussion about 'wuh'
> Urdu: وہ





> Consider, for example the following verse, from poet Mohsin Naqvi
> یہ کس نے ہم سے لہو کا خراج پھر مانگا
> ابھی تو سوئے تھے مقتل کو سرخرو کر کے​Can someone tell me what the literal translation of it would be?
> Wouldn't یہ کس here mean simply "who", without any real meaning attached to the یہ part?
> Would it be fair to assume that یہ کس is used just for metrics/poetic purposes, because we need a 2-syllable word?
> 
> Thanks in advance.


yih kis ne ham se lahuu kaa xaraaj phir maaNgaa - abhii to so`e the maqtal ko surxruu kar ke (Mohsin Naqvi)
look, who's demanded from me /who is this person this time that.../what's going on,/just consider/what's the matter, who is it that has demanded I offer a tribute of blood again............
I was just gone to sleep right now, having had made the execution place red-faced.


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

Thanks, @marrish, I think I understand now:
To summarize:


_ye kis_ is not an idiomatic expression, nor any "unit" that can skip syntactical rules.
_ye _is in direct_ / _nominative and_ kis _is in oblique / formative. Therefore, in principle, there is no direct syntactic relationship between the 2 words
regarding _kis_, one has to search in the rest of the sentence, for anything that can function as the second term of a relative clause (this ... which, he ... who), but always keeping in mind that _kis_ itself is oblique, and cannot directly modify _ye . _If this parsing fails (i.e., if nothing in the sentence can reasonably justify the _kis_ as a relative), one can fall back to @littlepond's interpretation, reading "kis" as an elided "kis tarah ka", which, in this case, can modify _yeh_ directly
ye, in many cases, when used with _kis_, or other seemingly unrelated relative pronouns, can have this interpolation / almost-adverbial value of "here", "this ... here", similar to English
Thank you, everyone. Now it makes complete sense.


----------



## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> If this parsing fails (i.e., if nothing in the sentence can reasonably justify the _kis_ as a relative), one can fall back to @littlepond's interpretation, reading "kis" as an elided "kis tarah ka", which, in this case, can modify _yeh_ directly



I don't see "yeh" modified even then, Gonzalito jii. "yeh" still stands independently, unaffected by the rest. It is a pointer, it is "it/he/she/that, such, here, so", depending on context.


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

littlepond said:


> I don't see "yeh" modified even then, Gonzalito jii. "yeh" still stands independently, unaffected by the rest. It is a pointer, it is "it/he/she/that, such, here, so", depending on context.



You are right, @littlepond 
Not even in that case we are spared from trying to rebuild the rest a relative clause, justifiably in oblique, elsewhere in the sentence. _kis_ will never modify _ye_ directly.


----------

