The adjective ऐसा may be rendered in English as “like”, “so”, “such”, “thus”, “like that”, “that way”, etc.
Form
ऐसा is a marked adjective and therefore inflects like other marked adjectives.
| Gender/Number | Form |
|---|---|
| Masculine Singular | ऐसा |
| Masculine Plural | ऐसे |
| Feminine Singular | ऐसी |
| Feminine Plural | ऐसी |
Just as all adjectives, ऐसा has oblique forms:
| Gender | Form |
|---|---|
| Masculine Oblique | ऐसे |
| Feminine Oblique | ऐसी |
Examples
Adjective Examples
मुझे ऐसी किताबें पसंद है – “I like those kinds of books”/”I like such books”
ऐसा आदमी है जो हमेशा दुसरे लोगों की मदद करता है – “…the kind of man who always helps other people”
Substantive Examples
ऐसा क्यूँ होता है – “Why is that”?
Idioms
ऐसा is used in a variety of idioms.
ऐसा होते हुए भी – “notwithstanding”
4 replies on “ऐसा”
When forms of ऐसा are used adverbially to mean “this way” following a verb (well, preceding I guess because of SOV), do we use ऐसे or ऐसा ?
In one of your notes, you write अगर मैं आप की जगह होता तो मैं ऐसा नहीं करता, but can we say things like ऐसे करना सही नहीं है (Doing that is not right)?
It can be used both ways: “that”, “like that”. To learn how to use it idiomatically, you’ll just need to see a lot of examples. Here are a few examples: आप सॉफ्टवेयर के सबसे नए संस्करण का इस्तेमाल करें, ऐसा ज़रूरी नहीं है – “It’s not necessary to use the most recent version of the software”, वह खाना ऐसे खा गया जैसे कि उसने कई दिनों से कुछ नहीं खाया हो – “He devoured the food as if he hadn’t eaten for several days”. “ऐसे करना सही नहीं है” is not right; use ऐसा instead, e.g. “ऐसा करना ठीक नहीं है” or “ऐसा करना अच्छी बात नहीं है”. What you wrote is like saying “doing like that is not correct”. Type both into Google, and compare the number of results that you get. Use wildcards for better results, e.g. “ऐसा करना * नहीं है”, etc. Make sure that you use quotation marks for exact results. You’ll find ungrammatical sentences and typographical errors on the web, of course, but this technique can be useful.
Recently, I sort of revisited this question. Whether to use ऐसा or ऐसे with verbs seems to depend on the verb itself, but I can make no sense of the patterns. In episode 42 of the popular TV show Kaun Banega Crorepati, I heard a contestant say the sentence मेरा ऐसा मानना है कि जो लोग ऐसा समझते हैं की बेटियाँ हमारे लिए तो भोज (not sure exactly what is said here, sounds like “bhoj”) है तो ऐसा नहीं है. I’ve noticed that कहना, करना, समझना, and मानना all use ऐसा, and I even used Google’s search engine to verify that ऐसा + these verbs is used more often than ऐसे + these verbs. But then, it is always ऐसे for other verbs like चलना and पकड़ना . Are my observations correct? Grammatically I don’t see why there should be this difference between ऐसा and ऐसे, with all verbs taking one or the other (or maybe both). “Saying something this way, doing something like this, understanding something a certain way, walking a certain way, and catching something a certain way” seem to all be the same to me.
Yes, the word you must have heard is “भोज” (“burden”). Your example of मानना here is not a valid example, because the grammatical relationship with ऐसा is different; here, ऐसा is an adjective, and मानना is like a gerund (used as a noun). The sentence is translated “I believe that the people who think that daughters are a burden for us… that’s not right” (there is a slight anacoluthon here). There’s an idiom in Hindi that uses a possessive adjective with an infinitive, e.g. “उसका कहना था कि” (“He said that…”, literally “his saying was that…”). It is usually used with मानना or कहना. So “मेरा ऐसा मानना है कि…” is literally “my such believing is that…”; here ऐसा is an adjective modifying मानना and it is an expletive referring to the subordinate clause (“कि…”). The sense is “I have *this sort* of belief, namely, that…”. In general, the reason ऐसा is used with मानना but not with चलना is simply that the former is a transitive verb whereas the latter is an intransitive verb; intransitive verbs can’t have objects. The choice of ऐसा or ऐसे is a grammatical choice, and doesn’t depend on the verb per se.