chale-jaise-havai asked: Hi! Thank you so much for your blog, it's a great resource.
I have been wondering about the phrase "hota hai." What is the literal translation of it, and why can it be used both in "yeh kya hota hai," to ask "what is that?" and "kuch kuch hota hai" to mean "something happened"? They seem like very different sorts of sentences to me.

नमस्ते namaste! Thank you very much for your very kind words about the site, I’m so glad that you like it! Now let’s get straight to it; होता है hotaa hai - what does it mean? Well it usually means ‘happens’, we’re using the verb होना honaa to mean ‘to happen’ and it’s in the present tense. 

So just like in the title of the Bollywood film, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, we have that it means; कुछ कुछ होता है kuch kuch hotaa hai - Something Happens!

But then in other cases it doesn’t really mean ‘happens’, it just means ‘is’. Like you’re example; यह क्या होता है? yeh kyaa hotaa hai - What is this? You often find होता है hotaa hai after क्या kyaa - what, and it just means ‘what is’. It’s just the way the language is! 

Sorry that that wasn’t much help, but I’ll try and find some more examples and I’ll post them soon to try and help you. Please feel free to ask me if you have any more questions!

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