EkGuru › Answers › What are the Hindi pronouns and when do you use tu, tum and aap?
Hindi pronouns are simple except for one thing, and that one thing matters enormously.
| Person | Hindi | Romanised | |---|---|---| | I | मैं | main | | we | हम | ham | | you (respectful) | आप | aap | | you (familiar) | तुम | tum | | you (intimate) | तू | tu | | he / she / it / that | वह | vah | | this / he / she (near) | यह | yah | | they / those | वे | ve |
आप — respectful. Use it for anyone older, anyone you have just met, teachers, officials, your partner's family, shopkeepers, and every stranger. As a learner, use आप with everyone until someone invites you to do otherwise. Nobody has ever been offended by too much respect.
तुम — familiar. Friends, colleagues your own age, people clearly younger. Wait to be invited, or wait until they use it with you first.
तू — intimate. Used with very small children, a spouse, a very old friend, or God in prayer. Used with anyone else it is a deliberate insult, and a foreigner using it by accident is genuinely shocking. Learn to recognise it; do not use it.
Japanese, Korean and German speakers will find this familiar. English speakers have nothing to map it onto and must simply learn it.
वह means he, she and it. Hindi does not distinguish them. Whether a person is male or female shows up in the verb, not the pronoun — which is the opposite of English and takes some getting used to.
यह is "this" or a person nearby. वह is "that" or a person further away. Both are used for people constantly, which sounds impolite translated literally into English but is completely normal.
तुम and आप take different verb forms, and आप always takes the plural form even when addressing one person — exactly like French vous. Getting the pronoun right and the verb wrong is a very common intermediate error.
Use आप. Everything else can be learned slowly. Choosing the wrong "you" is the only pronoun mistake that will actually cause offence.
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