# Urdu: Use of "se" and "saare"



## Qureshpor

1a) bahut se tuHfe

1b) bahut saare tuHfe

2a) Dher se tuHfe (?)

2b) Dher saare tuHfe

3a) itnii sii kitaabeN (?)

3b) itnii saarii kitaabeN

I often often wonder if 1b) is correct. 2a) looks dubious.  I am not again sure about 2b). 3a) looks ambiguous and 3b) once again seems wrong to me. Your views please.


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## Maham

1a) is wrong
1b) is correct
2b) is correct (In good Urdu I would use "Tahaa'if instead of Tohfe).

3a) is right if it's a question to ask (itni thori si kutbub)?
3b) is right, I would use Kutub instead of Kitaben.


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## BP.

Maham said:


> 1a) is wrong
> 1b) is correct
> ...



I wouldn't be so sure in your place.

These prepositions are IMV in reality only emphatics. I believe they are only used in casual speech, and you could do away with them and reformulate the idea in a better formal sentence.

With this in mind, both are[/could be] correct.

I'll add a personal anecdote: the use of _saaree/saaraa/saarii_ in this case was on of the first linguistic quirks I found myself uncomfortable with as a toddler, having heard M. H. Taarar SaaHab on TV using _D.heer saaraa_ when I was only familiar with _D.heer saa_. So, at that point in time, (1b) was wrong.

Having said all that, the two are not equivalent, and (3a) and (3b) are good examples to illustrate this. _itnii sii_ would mean _so few_, and _itnii saarii_, _so many_.


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## Maham

Well I have never heard of Dheer sa, neither in written nor in spoken Urdu.


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## BP.

Well there you go.

Begets many questions, all of them deserving their proper threads and grey matter and time:
Is there such thing as family language? At which granularity do we cut language into dialects?
Should standards be adhered to, linguistically and morally? Who defines them? By what criteria?

Stuff for a couple of doctorates. Stuff that will continue to remain unresolved in the minds of a percentage of people even after a consensus. Stuff I won't get into at this point in time.


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## Qureshpor

marrish SaaHib, a thread for you and others to ponder over.


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## tonyspeed

This was discussed here briefly before: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1954257


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> This was discussed here briefly before: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1954257


Thank you. Perhaps, these two threads can be merged. However, it seems there is not much useful that came out of that thread.


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## greatbear

I would use "bohat se tohfe" but "kaii saare tohfe". As for the others, 2a looks suspicious, but the rest look fine.


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## Qureshpor

A good opportunity to rejuvinate this thread bearing in mind Gope SaaHib's recent post on this topic. Any takers?


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## marrish

bahut se tuHfe, bahut saare tuHfe, Dher se tuHfe sound right. The last one I never use. Dher saare tuHfe sounds not right. It's very colloquial (to my ears). itnii sii kitaabeN, itnii saarii kitaabeN: the first one is very normal and the second one acceptable.


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## Qureshpor

Let me begin my saying that I think the addition of "saaraa/saare/saarii" is a relatively new formation. The well known dictionaries don't have entry for bahut-saare, Dher-saare etc.

If we trust Platts and I know most of us do...

bahut se, Dher se are present. So, I would say that..

1) bahut se tuHfe and 

3) Dher se tuHfe... are correct.

For "itnii sii kitaabeN", the difficulty is that the term implies "So few books" where as "itnii saarii kitaabeN" means "So many books". But I'll stick to my guns and say that anything with "saaraa/saare/saarii" is not correct but I may be wrong.


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## marrish

I can follow your train of thought and I agree with it up to a certain point. I trust Platts greatly and I believe he wouldn't have left out "bahut saare etc." if he'd have encountered them in his time. However I daresay "bahut saare" is correct too, at least nowadays, by popular acclamation. I will check some literature for it if time permits. I use it "bahut saare" but I am not qiblah-e-Urdu.

For this discussion you provided "itnii sii" v. "itnii saarii". Why not "itnii"? The latter would be neutral and mean, according to the context, so few or so many or that many. sii and saarii emphasise these meanings.


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## eskandar

marrish said:


> However I daresay "bahut saare" is correct too, at least nowadays, by popular acclamation.


Not that my opinion matters much on this subject as a learner, but I agree with this. Whether or not it has always been part of the language, it certainly is today and by now I think it should be considered perfectly acceptable. It's something I've heard many times (from _ahl-e zabaan_ in Lucknow, no less) and searching it (whether in Urdu, Hindi, or transliteration) turns up hundreds of thousands of results.


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## Qureshpor

eskandar said:


> Not that my opinion matters much on this subject as a learner, but I agree with this. Whether or not it has always been part of the language, it certainly is today and by now I think it should be considered perfectly acceptable. It's something I've heard many times (from _ahl-e zabaan_ in Lucknow, no less) and searching it (whether in Urdu, Hindi, or transliteration) turns up hundreds of thousands of results.


I agree, if it has become part of the language then it should be deemed as correct even if it was not found in the works of best Urdu authors.

As a matter of interest, if you had not had the example of "ahl-i-zabaan" of Lucknow (and Lucknow is not the only place where ahl-i-zabaan of Urdu are found), would you still have gone ahead with your acceptance if this usage was prevalent amongst people outside the ahl-i-zabaan circle?

You may or may not know but the phrase "ahl-i-zabaan" originally was applied by Indian writers (I believe) for Iranian speakers. See bellow, a small quote from Mirza Ghalib in which he has an issue with Qatiil, an Indian poet writing in Persian.

gar chih Bedil zi ahl-i-Eraan  nest
lek ham-cho Qatiil naa-daan nest

magar aanaan kih Paarsii daanand
ham bariiN 3ahd-o-raay-o-paimaanand

kih zi *ahl-i-zabaan* na-buud Qatiil
hargiz az Isfahaan na-buud Qatiil


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## eskandar

Qureshpor said:


> As a matter of interest, if you had not had the example of "ahl-i-zabaan" of Lucknow (and Lucknow is not the only place where ahl-i-zabaan of Urdu are found), would you still have gone ahead with your acceptance if this usage was prevalent amongst people outside the ahl-i-zabaan circle?


I just mentioned it since it was my experience. It just happens that most of my Urdu speaking experience has been with Lakhnavis, though of course that it is not the only place where Urdu "ahl-e zabaan" are found. Had I heard this usage _only _and _exclusively_ from non-native speakers, I might have been hesitant about drawing conclusions about its usage, simply because I am a learner and can't always tell what are mere variations and what are incorrect usages made by other learners.


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