A Door Into Hindi: Lesson 18

1. Expressing opinions, disagreeing

2. Hopes, fears, beliefs, feelings

3. Past subjunctive / past conditional

4. More postpositions

5. Past participles as adjectives

6. Big numbers

7. Birth and death

Culture Notes

Exercises

Quiz

Supplemental Materials

Devanagari Writing System

Digital Dictionaries

Other Resources

18.3	Past Subjunctive / Past Conditional

You know how to use the normal subjunctive (optative) to talk about future events that are uncertain, desired, or conditional. Hindi also has a past subjunctive tense which allows us to talk about past events that are conditional (“if I had gone…”), counterfactual (“I would have gone”), hypothetical (“I would go”), or regretted (“if only I had gone”).

The past subjunctive is simply the imperfect form of the verb with no auxiliary verb:

अगर वह वहाँ जाती तो वह मुझसे मिलती।	If she had gone there, she would have met me.
मैं आपके साथ फ़िल्म ज़रूर देखता लेकिन …	I would certainly have seen the film with you but…

The word काश may be used to introduce a past subjunctive sentence expressing regret or a wish that something were otherwise:

काश मेरे पास बहुत पैसा होता।	I wish I had a lot of money.
काश ये मर्द लोग हमारी बात सुनते।	I wish these men-folk listened to what we say.
काश तुम समझतीं।	I wish you understood.

Note: with a feminine plural subject (e.g. the third example above), when there is no auxiliary verb to indicate the plural, the “dot” should be transferred to the main verb.