Basic Urdu Grammar for Beginners: The Rules That Matter Most

English says subject, verb, object; Urdu says subject, object, verb: maiñ chaa.e piitaa huuñ, literally "I tea drink am", is "I drink tea". Urdu has no word for "a" or "the": kitaab is "a book" or "the book". A yes-or-no question keeps the word order and adds kyaa at the start: kyaa ye kitaab hai? (Is this a book?).

Many masculine nouns end in -aa (kamra, room) and many feminine ones in -ii (kursii, chair), but there are plenty of exceptions (kitaab, book, is feminine), so learn each noun with its gender. Adjectives ending in -aa and most verbs agree: achchhaa laRkaa (good boy), achchhii laRkii (good girl).

Where English puts a preposition before the noun, Urdu puts a postposition after it: ghar meñ (in the house), mez par (on the table), Lahore se (from Lahore), dost ke saath (with a friend). A noun before a postposition changes to the oblique form: kamra becomes kamre meñ (in the room).

"Of" or "'s" is kaa / kii / ke, and it agrees with the thing possessed, never with the owner: sanaa kaa bhaa.ii (Sana's brother), faisal kii bahan (Faisal's sister). The same rule gives meraa / merii / mere (my). That is why us kaa bhaa.ii can mean his brother or her brother. See family words.

aap is respectful (elders, teachers, strangers), tum friendly (friends, children), and tuu intimate or rude, best avoided by learners. When in doubt, use aap: nobody is offended by too much respect. Respected people also take the plural verb, even when there is only one of them: wo mere abbuu haiñ.

In the past tense, a transitive verb (one that takes an object) agrees with the object, not the subject, and the subject takes ne: maiñ ne chaa.e pii (I drank tea), where pii is feminine to agree with chaa.e. It feels strange at first, but it follows a fixed rule, taught in the free course chapter My Weekend.

The first chapter of the course, Introductions, is free and puts rules 1 and 2 to work from the first page. See also How to learn Urdu and Urdu greetings.