उर्दू व्याकरण — अक्षर, चिह्न और वाक्य
The signs that give Urdu its vowels — اعراب
Urdu writes most short vowels not as letters but as marks above or below a letter. In ordinary print they are usually left out, and a reader supplies them from knowledge of the word — which is exactly why a teacher of beginners must know them well.
| Mark | Name | Sound | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| above the letter | ज़बर | short a | the first vowel of kalam |
| below the letter | ज़ेर | short i | the first vowel of dil |
| above, like a small و | पेश | short u | the first vowel of gul |
| a small circle above | जज़्म | no vowel — the letter closes the syllable | the l of dil |
| a small ω above | तशदीद | the letter is doubled | ammi, abba |
| doubled vowel mark at a word's end | तनवीन | -an, from Arabic | fauran, iltifatan |
| a wavy line over अलिफ़ | मद्द | a long aa | aab, aam |
Why they matter in a classroom. A child learning to read Urdu cannot yet supply the missing vowels, so early readers print the اعراب in full. A teacher who cannot name them cannot teach a child to read them.
उर्दू व्याकरण — अक्षर, चिह्न और वाक्य
Gender, number, and three ways to make a plural
Urdu has two genders — मुज़क्कर (masculine) and मुअन्नस (feminine) — and two numbers, वाहिद (singular) and जमा (plural).
Plurals come from three sources, and a paper tests all three:
| Source | Pattern | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Urdu (native) | -ا to -ے; -ی to -یاں; feminines add -یں | laṛkā → laṛke, laṛkī → laṛkiyān, kitāb → kitāben |
| Persian | adds -ān or -hā, mostly in set phrases | buzurg → buzurgān, sāl → sālhā |
| Arabic | the broken plural — the word's inner pattern changes | kitāb → kutub, shāir → shuarā, ālim → ulamā, khabar → akhbār |
The Arabic broken plural is the one candidates miss. An Arabic plural is not made by adding an ending — the vowels inside the root rearrange. So kutub is the plural of kitāb, and akhbār — which Urdu also uses to mean a newspaper — is at root the plural of khabar, a piece of news.
One word, two plurals. Kitāb has both a native plural, kitāben, and an Arabic one, kutub — the second used in formal and scholarly Urdu (kutub-khāna, a library).
उर्दू व्याकरण — अक्षर, चिह्न और वाक्य
The two kinds of sentence — जुमला
Urdu grammar divides every sentence into two kinds, by what it is built on:
जुमला-ए-इस्मिया — the nominal sentence
जुमला-ए-फ़ेलिया — the verbal sentence
The test that separates them: ask whether the sentence reports an action. He is a teacher reports none — it is इस्मिया. He teaches reports one — it is फ़ेलिया. Candidates who look only for the word है misclassify, because a verbal sentence in the present tense can end in है too (वह पढ़ता है).
उर्दू व्याकरण — अक्षर, चिह्न और वाक्य
Teaching grammar to a class 7 — what the paper expects of a teacher
Part III tests the subject as a teacher must hold it, so a grammar question often comes as a classroom problem.
Grammar through use, not rule first. A child who says मैंने किताब पढ़ा has made a gender error — किताब is feminine, so it is पढ़ी. The teacher's move is to set the right form in a sentence the child will say again, not to recite the rule of the ergative.
Errors that tell you what the child has learned
The pattern a paper keeps using: a scenario in which a teacher corrects every error aloud, mid-sentence. That silences a beginner. The better answer is almost always to model the correct form and let the child use it — the same principle as in language teaching generally.
उर्दू व्याकरण — अक्षर, चिह्न और वाक्य
Points to Remember