ہونا

In short

Why it looks that way

The verb "to be" itself. Its forms — hoon, hai, hain, ho — live in every second phrase. Mujhe jaana hai — literally "to me there is going" — means "I have to go"

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

• مجھے جانا ہے

  mujhe dzhana hai

  I have to go

Nearby words: verbs

I want, I can, I am going, I know. The verb holds a sentence together: a few of the most frequent ones cover more everyday talk than a long list of nouns.

• چاہیے

  chahiye

  I need, I want

  This language does not say "I want": it says "to me it is needed", and the word never changes — mujhe, tumhein, aap ko. The polite request is the same word with meharbani
• پینا

  pina

  to drink

  The dictionary form. The order is straight: paani peena chaahiye — "water to-drink is-needed": the verb shuts the phrase here too
• جانا

  dzhana

  to go

  Walking and riding are one verb; the circumstance says how. The polite command is jaayein: seedha jaayein — go straight
• کام کرنا

  kam karna

  to work

  Literally "to do work": a noun plus the service verb karna. Half the verbs here are built this way: phone karna — to make a call
• سیکھنا

  sikhna

  to learn

  Urdu seekhna — to learn Urdu — is a phrase heard here every day; people say it of themselves with pride
• رہنا

  rehna

  to live (reside)

  To live as to reside: main Lahore mein rehta hoon — I live in Lahore. A woman says rehti hoon — the gender decides the ending
• چننا

  chunna

  to choose

  Vegetables and fruit are chosen by hand here, and the seller allows it: choosing is part of the trade itself. The noun is chunaav — the choice
• پڑھنا

  parhna

  to study

  Both to study and to read: one word for both affairs. Reading a book is one thing; learning a skill is another verb — they split the work
• یاد کرنا

  yad karna

  to memorize

  Literally "to make memory": yaad — the memory — and karna — to do. To forget is "not did memory" — exactly
• دیکھنا

  dekhna

  to see

  Both see and look; the breathy kh in the middle. Ye dekho! — here, look! — is the first phrase at the shop window

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “verbs”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• Verbs104 words on the topic
• دوست — friendread “dost”
• کام — workread “kam”
• کام کرنا — to workread “kam karna”
• سیکھنا — to learnread “sikhna”
• All Urdu wordsIndex by topic
• Why a word list doesn't sticka note