Repetition and echo words, which Hindi uses constantly
I can use reduplication for gradualness, distribution and vagueness
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
Slowly, everything will be fine.
Have some tea or something.
Give the children two laddus each.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
Repetition adds gradualness, intensity or distribution depending on the word.
Repeat the word with the first consonant replaced by व, and you get 'and things like it':
This is thoroughly colloquial and extremely common. It softens and generalises, and it is not slang.
Doubling a question word asks for a list: कौन-कौन आया? - who all came?
Apply this grammar in A2 course exercises
Practice ExercisesTreating echo words as slang and avoiding them, or coining one where the fixed form differs.
Avoiding echo words as if they were slang
chay-vay is ordinary colloquial Hindi and carries no joking tone.
Coining a reduplication where a fixed form exists
Learn the set forms first: dhire-dhire, kabhi-kabhi, jaldi-jaldi.
Slowly, everything will be fine.
Full repetition for gradualness, exactly like malo-pomalu.
Have some tea or something.
An echo word: ordinary conversation, not slang.
Give the children two laddus each.
Doubling a numeral distributes it, like the Russian po dva.
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in A2 course exercises
Kamta Prasad Guru's grammar, the standard prescriptive reference for Hindi verb and particle usage.
Yamuna Kachru's reference grammar; the descriptive account of modality, particles and reported speech used here.