Indefinite Pronouns: on, quelqu'un, personne, quelque chose, rien
अनिश्चयवाचक सर्वनाम: कोई, कुछ, कोई नहीं, कुछ नहीं
These small words cover 'someone/no one' and 'something/nothing' — one of them, on, is so flexible that it single-handedly covers 'we', 'someone', and 'people in general', a three-way flexibility Hindi splits across separate, dedicated words instead.
Grammar Comparison
व्याकरण तुलना
on does the job of three different Hindi words at once
On mange. (We're eating — same meaning as Nous mangeons, but conjugated like il/elle)
हम खा रहे हैं। (यहाँ हम ही काफ़ी है — on जैसा कोई एक शब्द नहीं जो 'हम'/'कोई'/'लोग' तीनों बन जाए)
In spoken French, on very often replaces nous, grammatically behaving as a third-person singular subject (on mange, not on mangeons) even though it means 'we'. on can also mean the impersonal 'one' or 'people in general' (on dit que... = 'they say that...'). Hindi keeps these meanings apart in separate words: हम always and only means 'we', कोई means 'someone/anyone', and the 'people say...' sense is usually built with a generic subject like लोग ('people') rather than one flexible pronoun covering all three roles. When you hear on in French, don't reach for a single Hindi equivalent — you have to first figure out which of Hindi's three separate words it's standing in for.
personne and rien need ne ≈ Hindi's कोई नहीं / कुछ नहीं
Je ne vois personne. (I don't see anyone.) / Je ne comprends rien. (I understand nothing.)
मुझे कोई नहीं दिखता। / मुझे कुछ नहीं समझ आता।
personne ('no one') and rien ('nothing') slot into the same ne...X negation frame you learned with ne...pas — they simply replace pas, and can also stand as the subject of a sentence: Personne n'est venu. ('No one came.') Hindi does something structurally similar: कोई नहीं literally pairs the indefinite कोई ('someone/anyone') with नहीं ('not'), and कुछ नहीं pairs कुछ ('something/anything') with नहीं the same way — so double-marking a negative pronoun by combining an indefinite word with a separate negator isn't new to you at all; French's ne...personne/ne...rien follows the same two-part logic your Hindi कोई नहीं/कुछ नहीं already does.
Vocabulary
शब्दावली
- Hindi
- हम (बोलचाल) / कोई / लोगham (bolcāl)/koī/log
- English
- we (informal) / one / people
- Hindi
- कोईkoī
- English
- someone
- Hindi
- कोई नहींkoī nahīñ
- English
- no one
- Hindi
- कुछkuch
- English
- something
- Hindi
- कुछ नहींkuch nahīñ
- English
- nothing
- Hindi
- सब लोगsab log
- English
- everyone
- Hindi
- हर एकhar ek
- English
- each one
- Hindi
- कोई औरkoī aur
- English
- someone else
- Hindi
- कुछ औरkuch aur
- English
- something else
- Hindi
- कहीं नहींkahīñ nahīñ
- English
- nowhere