plus...plus / moins...moins (The More..., the More...)
plus...plus / moins...moins (जितना..., उतना...)
Hindi has its own correlative pair for this exact meaning — जितना...उतना ('as much as...that much') — जितना ज़्यादा खाओ, उतना ज़्यादा मोटे हो जाओ ('the more you eat, the more you get fat'). But where French, like English, repeats the very same word twice (plus...plus), Hindi pairs two different words, जितना and उतना, each carrying its own half of the comparison — a small structural difference worth noticing even though the overall meaning lines up perfectly.
Grammar Comparison
व्याकरण तुलना
Plus on..., plus on...: the more..., the more... — Hindi's जितना...उतना carries the identical logic with different-looking words
Plus on mange, plus on grossit. (The more one eats, the more one gets fat)
जितना ज़्यादा खाओ, उतना ज़्यादा मोटे हो जाओ।
French repeats plus or moins at the start of each clause to build the correlative 'the more...the more' pattern, and both halves keep completely ordinary subject-verb-object order — no verb gets pushed anywhere. Hindi builds the identical meaning with जितना ('as much as') opening the first clause and उतना ('that much') opening the second — two different words working as a matched pair, rather than the same word repeated the way French's plus...plus does. Word order stays just as ordinary in Hindi as in French, so once you get used to जितना/उतना not being identical twins, this pattern should transfer smoothly.
Mixing plus and moins — Hindi's जितना/उतना pairing stays fixed regardless of direction
Plus on est occupé, moins on a de temps. (The busier one is, the less time one has)
जितना व्यस्त हो, उतना कम समय हो।
The two halves of French's pattern don't have to match direction — freely combine plus...moins or moins...plus depending on how each half changes. Hindi's जितना/उतना pairing itself never changes regardless of direction — जितना always opens the first clause and उतना the second, and it's the words inside each clause (व्यस्त 'busy', कम समय 'less time') that carry whatever direction of change is meant, not the correlative words themselves. So the flexibility French shows by swapping plus and moins, Hindi shows instead by keeping जितना/उतना fixed and just changing the content around them.
Vocabulary
शब्दावली
- Hindi
- जितना...उतनाjitnā...utnā
- English
- the more...the more
- Hindi
- जितना कम...उतना कमjitnā kam...utnā kam
- English
- the less...the less
- Hindi
- जितना ज़्यादा...उतना कमjitnā zyādā...utnā kam
- English
- the more...the less
- Hindi
- वह जितना काम करता है, उतना सफल होता है।vah jitnā kām kartā hai, utnā saphal hotā hai
- English
- The more he works, the more he succeeds.
- Hindi
- तुम जितना कम सोते हो, उतने थके होते हो।tum jitnā kam sote ho, utne thake hote ho
- English
- The less you sleep, the more tired you are.