First, a basic table of the Hindi personal pronouns, then I'll give some explanation.

 तू (tu) is used only for very close person, e.g. your girlfriend/boyfriend. Then तुम (tum) is probably the most used word for "you" (sg) in Hindi. You can say that to everybody unless you want to be polite, if so you can use the word "aap" (आप). NB. When using "aap" (आप) or "tum" (तुम) you have to conjugate the verb for plural, since they're actually the plural form of "you". Well, you don't know how to conjugate at this point, but do remember that rule! When meeting for the first time and when politeness is needed better use 'aap' for 'you'!

Now let's have a look at some demonstrative pronouns:
      यह = This ( yeh / yah )
      वह = That ( voh / vah )

      ये = These ( ye )
      वे = Those ( ve )

Now for the possesive pronouns:

I think one can build many sentences with so many pronouns. So, let's say something in hindi at last! ;-)

       है = is ( hai /hae/ )

   मेरा नाम Peter है = My name is Peter. ( Mera naam Peter hai.    नाम (naam) means "name" ).

NB: The verb in Hindi is placed always at the end of the sentence. That's a feature which many asian languages share as well. So, Hindi is SOV language (i.e Subject-Object-Verb). In our case we don't say "My name is Peter", but "My name Peter is", that's the proper wordorder in Hindi. More examples:

   उसका नाम Peter है. = His name is Peter. (Uska naam Peter hai.)
   यह पानी है. = This is water. ( Yah pani hai. )
   यह घर है. = This is a house. (Yeh ghar hai. )

That's enough material for the lesson I think. Next lesson will be about genders and verbs.

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May 2003, Lesson made by somebody