# Urdu: "Poetic Licence" for apnaa



## Qureshpor

*We know that in Urdu/Hindi grammar there is a difference in using "meraa" and "apnaa". In the following sentence, "mere" is clearly wrong and should be replaced with "apne".

maiN mere bhaa'ii se puuchh kar bataa'uuN gaa.

I shall let you know once I have asked my brother.

But, poets seem to flout this rule regularly, or so it appears. Perhaps it is I who am at fault.

**manzar ik bulandii par aur ham banaa sakte 
 'arsh se udhar hotaa kaashke makaaN apnaa

**(Ghalib)

Similarly from Faiz,

in kaa dam saaz apne sivaa kawn hai?*
*shahr-i-jaanaaN meN ab baa-safaa kaun hai?

Should we not have "hamaaraa" and "hamaare" (or "mere") respectively?*


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## BP.

Maybe it's more than a poetic license, maybe it is or *was *used in this manner. I remember Iqbal using the opposite case i.e. _meeraa _instead of _apnaa _somewhere.


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## Qureshpor

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Maybe it's more than a poetic license, maybe it is or *was *used in this manner. I remember Iqbal using the opposite case i.e. _meeraa _instead of _apnaa _somewhere.



A very ambiguous answer, if I may so!


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## Qureshpor

I am re-booting this thread in the hope that newer members might have views on this topic.


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## marrish

Qureshpor said:


> I am re-booting this thread in the hope that newer members might have views on this topic.


I'd nicely fit in within your understandable preference since this thread predates my membership, wouldn't I? Answering it appears more urgent than contributing to the one in which I've been having to respond to a post of yours the next day. Although I can see three threads treating many a question on the subject of "_apnaa_" – a couple of points are briefly postulated amongst others in the previous posts:

Urdu: difference between میرا-میری-میرے and اپنا-اپنی-اپنے
Urdu: apna/apni vs. meri/mera
Urdu: apna/apni vs. meri/mera


Qureshpor said:


> A very ambiguous answer, if I may so!


Well, this is a very ambiguous question! See below:


Qureshpor said:


> *We know that in Urdu/Hindi grammar there is a difference in using "meraa" and "apnaa".
> In the following sentence, "mere" is clearly wrong and should be replaced with "apne".
> maiN mere bhaa'ii se puuchh kar bataa'uuN gaa.
> I shall let you know once I have asked my brother.
> But, poets seem to flout this rule regularly, or so it appears. Perhaps it is I who am at fault.
> manzar ik bulandii par aur ham banaa sakte
> 'arsh se udhar hotaa kaashke makaaN apnaa
> (Ghalib)
> Similarly from Faiz,
> in kaa dam saaz apne sivaa kawn hai?*
> *shahr-i-jaanaaN meN ab baa-safaa kaun hai?*


There appears to be little relation between this rule and the couplets since you say first that the rule requires _meraa_ become apnaa, then you proceed quoting evidence of poets using that very apnaa, but yet you claim that it's poets not following the rule. Perhaps a different rule should have been taken as the reference?


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## Qureshpor

^ You may have misunderstood what I am saying, marrish SaaHib. 

In both Ghalib and Faiz couplets, according to my understanding of the rule, the lines should read as follows

3arsh se udhar hotaa kaashke makaaN *hamaaraa

*in kaa dam saaz *hamaare* sivaa kawn hai? I say "hamaare" because the poet goes onto say...

raxt-i-dil baaNdh lo dil-figaaro chalo
phir hamiiN qatl ho aa'eN yaaro chalo

Platts writes...

"apnaa" is sometimes found in connection with a substantive which is the subject of the proposition, but this is not to be imitated.

apnaa bhii mizaaj bahak gayaa x

Better to say, "meraa bhii mizaaj bahak gayaa""


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## marrish

I was only arguing that your post used wrong examples for a valid question, which is now clear. It might have been the reason why you needed to re-boot it.

I understand that Ghalib didn't *make a mistake* and that the observation noted by Platts is also correct while his exhortation not to imitate it by students must have arisen out of caution, since using 'apnaa' is not the neutral, unmarked option to express the same.

I don't agree with even a theoretical substitution of hamaaraa for apnaa in the Ghalib shi3r because in the first misra3 "ham" has already excluded such an option.


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## Qureshpor

*manzar ik bulandii par aur ham banaa sakte
3arsh se udhar hotaa kaashke makaaN apnaa* 

The way I read it is this.

agar *hamaaraa* makaaN 3arsh se udhar hotaa
to *ham* ik aur manzar bulandii par banaa sakte


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## marrish

No, the order of the pronouns is opposite: "ham...  banaa sakte" has sufficiently established the personal pronoun for _apnaa_ to appear in the second misra3.

_ham banaa sakte agar hamaaraa ..._ does not sound right to the ear.

Moreover, the poet refers to himself with "_apnaa_" for the sake of portraying his internal dialogue.


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## Qureshpor

marrish said:


> No, the order of the pronouns is opposite: "ham...  banaa sakte" has sufficiently established the personal pronoun for _apnaa_ to appear in the second misra3.
> 
> ham banaa sakte to hamaara ... does not sound right to the ear.
> 
> Moreover, the poet refers to himself with "apnaa" for the sake of portraying his internal dialogue.


Thank you for your interpretation. It would be good to get other friends' views.


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## aevynn

Well, I think in some sense the answer to @Qureshpor jii's original question has already been answered in this thread and the other one, but perhaps I can distill some elements of other people's responses to clarify this. There are a number of uses of _apnaa_, but the two that are most relevant here are:

(1) As a _reflexive_ possessive pronoun (referring to the subject of the matrix verb).
(2) As a _first-person_ possessive pronoun (referring to the speaker/writer).

For example:

(1) If I say _aasif apne ghar gayaa_, the house belongs to Asif (the subject[*] of the matrix verb). If I instead said _raam apne ghar gayaa_, now the house now belongs to Ram. The reference of _apnaa_ changes as the subject changes.

(2) If I say _ye apnaa ghar hai_, the house belongs to me (the speaker), plus possibly other people I associate with myself (this usage of _apnaa_ is first-person, but is agnostic about singular vs plural). It does not refer to the subject of the matrix verb (which is _ye_). If this same sentence was said by @marrish jii instead, the house would then belong to @marrish jii (and possibly other people that @marrish jii associates with himself). The reference of _apnaa_ changes as the speaker changes, not as the subject changes.

Now sometimes (1) and (2) can be hard to tell apart (when the subject of the matrix verb is itself a first-person pronoun), but in any case, it should be clear that these are both of these usages of _apnaa_ exist. I think that (2) is the type of usage that @Dib jii refers to in this post.

I haven't pored through standard Urdu-Hindi grammars to see what they say about _apnaa_, but based on the quote from Platts (and also this comment), it may be that usages of type (2) are regarded as less "correct" than those of type (1). But this seems to me to be entirely a prescriptivist injunction. From a descriptive perspective, usages of type (2) are by no means uncommon (in my experience, at least).

I believe that usages of type (2) are also what is happening in the shers that @Qureshpor jii shared with us in the opening post. Let's look at them more closely to see this. First up, Ghalib:

manzar ik bulandii par aur ham banaa sakte​'arsh se udhar hotaa kaashke makaaN *apnaa*​​The verbal clause in which the word _apnaa_ appears (after reordering into a more "neutral" order) is _apnaa makaan 'arsh se udhar hotaa_. In fact, the phrase _apnaa makaan_ is itself the subject of this clause. Interpreting _apnaa_ here as a usage of type (1) would cause a circular reference (it would be a house that belongs to a house that belongs to a house that belongs to...!), so it only makes sense to interpret this as a usage of type (2). In other words, _apnaa_ must refer back to the speaker/writer, ie, to Ghalib.

Next up, Faiz:

in kaa dam saaz *apne* sivaa kaun hai?​shahr-i-jaanaaN meN ab baa-safaa kaun hai?​​The verbal clause in which apnaa appears (again, after reordering into a more "neutral" order) is _apne sivaa kaun inkaa dam saaz hai_. The subject of this clause is _kaun_. The _apne sivaa _in this clause does not mean "except for who," it means "except for me/us." Again, this is a usage of type (2).

---
[*]: Identifying the "subject" of an Hindi-Urdu clause is not always so clear-cut (since different subjecthood criteria might disagree), but I think subjecthood seems fairly clear-cut in all of the examples above. Also, it may be that saying "subject of matrix verb" is not precisely the right thing (words like "c-command" might be important here), but it's perhaps enough for all of the examples above.


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## Alfaaz

A few more examples:

پہلے ہم سے کھیلا زمانہ کھیل چکا تو توڑا
جب تک چاہا دل بہلایا پھر توڑا پھر جوڑا
اب شکوہ کیسا ہوتا ہے ایسا ساتھ یہ سُلوک *اپنے *ہونا ہی تو ہے
*اپنا *جیون شیشے کا کھلونا ہی تو ہے
ہم کیوں نہ گائیں؟ کیوں نہ مسکرائیں؟ آنسوؤں کو پلکوں میں پرونا ہی تو ہے

تسلیم فاضلی از پاکستانی اُردو فلم نَوکر ١٩٧٥

ہر محفل اپنی محفل ہے ہر موڑ پہ اپنی منزل ہے
آسان ہے سب پر جاں دینا کسی ایک پہ مرنا مشکل ہے
ہے کیسا پیار اور کیسی وفاء مطلب سے مطلب رکھنا
ہرجائی من *اپنا*

تسلیم فاضلی یا ریاض الرحمٰن ساغر از پاکستانی اُردو فلم دل نے پھر یاد کیا‎ ١٩٨١

*اپنا *افسانۂ شوقِ ناکام 
کوئی آغاز نہ کوئی انجام 

رضی ترمذی​


			
				Qureshpor said:
			
		

> Platts writes...
> 
> ... but this is not to be imitated.


If it would be appropriate to ask in this thread, what would the perception be about ہمرا/ہمرے? (Based on observation in literature and media portrayals: At least in modern Urdu, it seems to be associated with غیر فصیح speech.)


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## Qureshpor

^ Thank you Alfaaz SaaHib for the quote from Urdu poetry. I think this usage has become an "epidemic" soon to become "pandemic"!

Regarding hamraa/hamre, I would associate its usage with a particular language community perhaps. But I would n't be able to pinpoint it. In relation to what is deemed correct Urdu, it would be regarded as wrong because even Mirza Ghalib in his time did not use hamraa/hamre.


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## aevynn

Qureshpor said:


> I think this usage has become an "epidemic" soon to become "pandemic"!



Here's another first-person (non-reflexive[*]) usage of _apnaa_ — by none other than the _khudaa-e-sukhan_, Mir Taqi Mir.
​rote phirte haiN saarii saarii raat​ab yahii rozgaar hai *apnaa*​
Mir died in 1810, so this "epidemic" has been around at least 210 years...!

[*]: One might attempt to argue that _apnaa_ in Mir's _sher_ above is reflexive, since the subject of the first line is a tacit _ham_. But I don't think this argument works. For instance, if I were to say "_miir rote phirte haiN saarii saarii raat, ab yahii rozgaar hai apnaa_," certainly this _apnaa_ would not refer back to the subject of the first line, _miir_. (To me, this sounds like a non-sequitur, since it seems like the only way to parse this usage of _apnaa_ is as a first-person usage, but why would I be saying that this is *my* _rozgaar_ if it is *Mir* who is the one crying his way through the night?)


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## Qureshpor

aevynn said:


> Here's another first-person (non-reflexive[*]) usage of _apnaa_ — by none other than the _khudaa-e-sukhan_, Mir Taqi Mir.
> ​rote phirte haiN saarii saarii raat​ab yahii rozgaar hai *apnaa*​
> Mir died in 1810, so this "epidemic" has been around at least 210 years...!
> 
> [*]: One might attempt to argue that _apnaa_ in Mir's _sher_ above is reflexive, since the subject of the first line is a tacit _ham_. But I don't think this argument works. For instance, if I were to say "_miir rote phirte haiN saarii saarii raat, ab yahii rozgaar hai apnaa_," certainly this _apnaa_ would not refer back to the subject of the first line, _miir_. (To me, this sounds like a non-sequitur, since it seems like the only way to parse this usage of _apnaa_ is as a first-person usage, but why would I be saying that this is *my* _rozgaar_ if it is *Mir* who is the one crying his way through the night?)


I would say Mir is talking about himself and the pronoun in question is "ham".

Mir, ham rote phirte haiN saarii saarii raat
ab yahii rozgaar hai *hamaaaaaara* *apnaa*

Nuances of Urdu poetry. Urdu poets talk to themselves even after they are dead!!

کی مرے قتل کے بعد اُس نے جفا سے توبہ
ہائے اُس زود-پشیماں کا پشیماں ہونا

غالب


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## marrish

Qureshpor said:


> Platts writes...
> 
> "*apnaa" is sometimes found in connection with a substantive which is the subject of the proposition, but this is not to be imitated.
> 
> apnaa bhii mizaaj bahak gayaa x
> 
> Better to say, "meraa bhii mizaaj bahak gayaa""*


The predecessor of Platts' Urdu grammar book (1874) is an identically titled work by John Dowson (1872), which appears to have offered Platts a classification structure, along the lines of which he went on to build his own revised and enlarged manual. Naturally Platts has thrown a new light on a range of issues which were not sufficiently known by Professors Monier Monier-Williams and J. Dowson, however Platts kept on referring to those books throughout his own Grammar if only to criticise them on divergent points.

Dowson's Grammar used the same example but has perhaps more to say about it, and I quote after its third edition, 1907 (transliteration added by me):

285. The word آپ 'self' is used alone, or it is added to the Nominative case of the personal pronouns, میں آپ، وہ آپ 'I myself,' 'he himself,' etc.
 The Persian خود is also used in the same way.​
معلوم ہوا کہ آپ ہی ہیں  'it was discovered that it was they their very selves.' _ma3luum hu'aa kih aap hii haiN_​ جب تک وہ ما[ں] باہمنوں کی آپ تیرے پاس نہ آوے 'until that mother of the brahmins herself comes to you.' _jab tak wuh maaN baahmanoN kii aap tere paas nah aawe_​.وہ خود تیرے نزدیک آوے گی 'she herself will come to you.' _wuh xud tere nazdiik aawe gii_​ مٹی کمھار کے یہاں خود بہ خود برتن نہیں بنتی 'clay is not itself made into dishes at the potter's abode.' _miTTii kumhaar ke yahaaN xwud bah xwud bartan nahiiN bantii_​وہ آپ ہی آپ آیا 'he himself came.' _wuh aap hii aap aayaa_​​286. آپ is also used with a personal pronoun in the Accusative.
​آپ کو قاضی سا بنانا 'to make myself like a judge.' _aap ko qaazii saa banaayaa_​ایک درویش آپ کو دنیا کی زحمت سے بچا کر 'a darwesh having rescued himself from the troubles of the world.' _ek darwesh aap ko dunyaa kii zaHmat se bachaa kar_​
But this is rare, and the form in common use is the inflected genitive اپنے _apne_ with the affix تَئِیں _ta'iiN_.

اپنے تئیں کہا  'he said to himself. '_apne ta'iiN kahaa_​اپنے تئیں ہلاک کیا  'he killed himself.' _apne ta'iiN halaak kiyaa_​اپنے تئیں حلم و بردباری کے زیور سے سنوارے  'he should adorn himself with the jewels of mercy and forbearance.' _apne ta'iiN Hilm-o-burd·baarii ke zewar se saNwaare_​کہ اپنے تئیں گرا دوں  'that I might throw myself down.' _kih apne ta'iiN giraa duuN_​جو بات اپنے پر نہ پسند کرے  'that matter which pleases not one's self.' _jo baat apne par nah pasaNd kare_​
287. This is a possessive pronoun which is used for all three persons and both numbers.  It represents the subject in the objective part of the sentence, or, in other words, it is a pronoun used with the noun governed by the verb, as teh representative of the Nominative or Agent;  but it cannot be employed in conjunction with the Nominative or Agent as the subject of a verb : Thus, in such a sentence as _the man saw his son_, the _his_ is ambiguous in English, it may mean the man's own son or another person's son ; but no such doubt can exist in Hindūstānī, because if the man's own son is intended, اپنا will be used, if another person's son, اُس کا  must be employed.  Again, اپنا is used because the words ' _his son_ ' are the object of the sentence, and are governed by the verb ;  but in the sentence ' a man and his son saw a tiger,' اُس کا must be used, and not اپنا, because it here occurs with the subject of the verb.

پہلا درویش اپنی سیر کا قصہ کہنے لگا  'the first darwesh began to tell the story of his (own) adventures. _paihlaa darwesh apnii sair kaa qissah kaihne lagaa_​میں اپنے گھر بیٹھا تھا  'I was seated (in) my house.' _maiN apne ghar baiTha thaa_​اپنے گھر کی راہ لو 'take the road to your house (go home).' _apne ghar kii raah lo_​ایک شیر اور ایک مرد نے اپنی تصویر دیکھی 'a tiger and a man saw their picture.' _ek sher aur ek mard ne apnii taswiir dekhii_​
288. But though اپنا cannot be used in conjunction with the Nominative*, it is used at the beginning of a sentence with the Nominative for its object. *

*اپنا بھی مزاج بہک گیا apnaa bhii mizaaj baihak gayaa 'my own mind also was perverted.' *​اپنے نوکر و رفیقوں نے جب یہ غفلت دیکھی _apne naukar-o-rafiiqoN ne jab yih Ghaflat dekhii_ 'my own servants and companions when they saw this negligence.' ​اپنا وقر اپنے ہاتھ میں ہے _apnaa waqr apne haath meN hae _'one's honour is in one's own hands.' ​
290. اپنا is used substantively for ' one's friends.'

اپنوں کے پاس آیا  'he came to his own.' _apnoN ke paas aayaa_​
291. The Persian pronoun خود 'self' is sometimes used instead of اپنا. 

یہ ماجرا بچشمِ خود دیکھا '(I) saw this circumstance with my own eyes' _yih maajraa bachashm-e-xud dekhaa._​


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## MonsieurGonzalito

aevynn said:


> this usage of _apnaa_ is first-person, but is *agnostic about singular vs plural*


Verisimilar as this sounds, what does the part in bold mean, exactly?

My impression (based on related threads) was that, poetic examples given aside, a modern HU speaker when hearing a sentence devoid of any context like:

_apnii kitaab baRii hai_

would always automatically assume a 1st person plural ("our" book, i.e, multiple owners, even though the speaker is singular).
Is that impression correct?

And if so, could there be an example of _apnaa _used subjectively as discussed, where the sentence has enough context words so that the speaker would unequivocally think of "_merii_" instead of "_hamaarii_"?


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## aevynn

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> what does the part in bold mean, exactly?


I think you've understood it correctly: as a first-person possessive, _apnaa_ can be either singular or plural.


MonsieurGonzalito said:


> would always automatically assume a 1st person plural ("our" book, i.e, multiple owners, even though the speaker is singular).
> Is that impression correct?





MonsieurGonzalito said:


> ... so that the speaker would unequivocally think of "_merii_" instead of "_hamaarii_"?


Given that people do sometimes use _ham_ as a first-person singular (far more frequently than the "royal we" in English!), the second question is not the same as the first question. I assume your question is really the first one, ie, about unequivocal uses of _apnaa_ used as a first-person singular possessive when _maiN_ is not the subject of the matrix verb. And we have seen at least one example of this already in this thread:


marrish said:


> *اپنا بھی مزاج بہک گیا apnaa bhii mizaaj baihak gayaa 'my own mind also was perverted.'*


Multiple people don't typically share a single mind/mizaaj, so this seems like a pretty clear first-person singular usage to me.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

aevynn said:


> Multiple people don't typically share a single mind/mizaaj


Just to be sure:
Doesn't HU allow, unlike English, but like Spanish, referring singularly, distributively, to an element people share in common?

_The girls washed their *faces*.
Las niñas se lavaron la *cara*. => _("_cara_" singular for "face", _"lavaron sus caras"_ is not idiomatic in Spanish).
_laRkiyaaN  ne apne *chehre *dhoe_   or  _laRkiyaaN  ne apnaa *chehraa *dhoaa ?_


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## Alfaaz

MonsieurGonzalito said:
			
		

> _laRkiyaaN ne apne *chehre *dhoe_ or _laRkiyaaN ne apnaa *chehraa *dhoaa ?_


_laRkiyoN ne apne (apne) chehre dho'e. 
laRkiyoN ne apnaa apnaa chehra*h* dhoyaa._


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> _laRkiyaaN  ne apne *chehre *dhoe_   or  _laRkiyaaN  ne apnaa *chehraa *dhoaa ?_


Both "laRkiyoN ne apne chehre dhoe" and "laRkiyoN ne apnaa chehraa dhoyaa" are possible (the second one is better with "apnaa-apnaa," but without the doubling is possible and is used).

But so? In "apnaa bhii mizaaj baihak gayaa," one would assume the "apnaa" to mean the same as "meraa." "apnaa" as a first-person possessive can be plural or singular: when it's singular, the person is referring to himself in a slightly "bigger" or "jollier" manner.


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