THE BEST

The verb होना corresponds to the English verbs “to be”, or “to become”, or “to happen”. Like all Hindi verbs, होना has person, number, gender (in most forms), tense, aspect, and mood. Hindi verbs are an elegant synthesis of tense, aspect, and mood. Thus, there are many different combinations of tense, aspect, and mood for each verb. However, many of these forms are only theoretical possibilities. The verb forms presented below are presented for the sake of completeness. For instance, to form the present continuous form of  होना , combine the verb stem ( हो , which represents the basic meaning of the verb, i.e. “to be”), a form of  रहा ( which represents the continuous aspect), and a present tense form of  होना ( which represents the present tense): “ बारिश हो रही है ” ( “ It’s raining”). The literal idiom is something like “rain is happening”. As a more complex example, the “past continuous subjunctive” form of  होना is “ हो रहा होता ” . It is a synt...