Anonymous asked: Sometimes I come across words that are repeated for seemingly no reason. The phrase that made me think to ask you was “क्या आप और धीरे-धीरे बोल सकते है?” - Can you speak more slowly? The “Dheere-Dheere” as the site (Livemocha) calls it, means “slowly”. However, I have seen repetition of words elsewhere, such as in “Thiik-Thiik” or the even more strange and possibly incorrect “Thiik-Thaak” Why do words double up?

नमस्ते namaste and thank you for the question. Sorry for taking so long to reply! This is actually a very good question, so thanks for asking it. Words in Hindi are often repeated for a whole bunch of various reasons to create slightly different meanings. As for adjectives and adverbs, like in your sentence, the repetition of the word gives emphasis (in a similar way to English). For example…

                                                   
                                                                          Image source

         बूढ़े बूढ़े आदमी boorhe boorhe aadmee - The very old man

He’s not just a बूढ़े आदमी boorhe aadmee - ‘old man’ he’s a बूढ़े बूढ़े आदमी boorhe boorhe aadmee - A very old man, the most old man, a wise old man etc. Can you see repeating the adjective leads to it’s emphasis? Or as another example we might say…

     सुन्दर सुन्दर लड़की sundar sundar larkee - The most beautiful girl

She isn’t just beautiful, she’s very very beautiful, the most beautiful. Can you see again here we’re emphasising just how beautiful she is.

Now with some nouns we can often repeat them, slightly changing the sound in the second word to basically create the meaning of ‘this and such like’, or ‘this and something’. Let’s see an example…

                   चाय वाय caay vaay - Tea or something

So you could ask - क्या आप चाय वाय चाहते हैं? kyaa aap caay vaay caahte hain? - Do you want tea or something? The word वाय vaay doesn’t really have a meaning, it’s basically a ‘made up’ word to sound like the word चाय caay - Tea.

This is like in the word you have mentioned - ठीक ठाक theek thaak - it means ‘fine’ or ‘in good shape’. Again the word ठाक thaak isn’t really a real word and is basically just made up to sound like ठीक theek.

Does that help you? The best way to learn things like this is through examples. There’s so many different quirks to this that I couldn’t possibly explain them all! I’ll try and use more in future and you should slowly get the idea. Please feel free to ask if you have any further questions!

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