وہ لوگ

In short

Why it looks that way

Woh plus log — those people: the way one speaks of a company. No gender here either: woh log covers men and women alike

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.

• وہ لوگ یہاں ہیں

  wo log yahan hain

  They are here

Nearby words: pronouns

I, you, we, they. There is a handful of them, they turn up in every sentence, and politeness rides on them: most of these languages keep a formal “you” apart from a familiar one, and choosing the wrong one is noticed faster than a mispronounced word.

• میں

  main

  I

  The vowel at the end escapes through the nose — the nasal sign does it, the same one that ends "mother". Almost never dropped: the verb’s ending already says who speaks
• تم

  tum

  you (informal)

  Only for the close, the same age and the younger: thou and you are kept apart here more firmly than English ever kept them. To anyone older — straight to aap
• آپ

  ap

  you (polite)

  The polite you — and to one person as well: the same solution as French vous. With aap the verb takes the they-form
• وہ

  wo

  he

  One word for he, she and it: the pronoun keeps no gender — the context tells you who it is
• ہم

  hum

  we

  One we for every case: it never splits into we-and-you versus we-without-you. Opens with a light puff of breath
• آپ لوگ

  ap log

  you (all)

  Aap plus log — people: a heavy "you all" aimed at a company, not the polite you to one person. The verb stays the aap one
• میرا

  mera

  my

  It changes with the thing: about a book — meri, about expenses — mere. The familiar mera naam is literally "my name is"
• تمہارا

  tumhara

  your (informal)

  The home possessive, tied to tum. The polite aap answers with aap ka — your — and the difference is heard at once
• ہمارا

  hamara

  our

  From hum — we: hum, hamara, hamare. One root holds the whole family of words
• آپ کا

  ap ka

  your (polite)

  The polite your: ka hooks onto aap. A woman’s thing — aap ki, many things — aap ke

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “pronouns”. 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

• Pronouns26 words on the topic
• آپ کہاں سے ہیں؟ — where are you from?read “ap kahan se hain?”
• میں روس سے ہوں — I am from Russiaread “main rus se hun”
• پاکستان — Pakistanread “Pakistan”
• لاہور — Lahoreread “Lahor”
• All Urdu wordsIndex by topic
• Why a word list doesn't sticka note