Two more of the world's oldest stories, told in your Urdu. The crow you already know from the zoo; the wolf too. As always: read each line aloud before you tap it, and the flagged new words come glossed.
ایک کوا بہت پیاسا تھا۔ek kawwā bahut pyāsā thā: A crow was very thirsty.pyāsā from the feelings unit, doing real work
پانی نہیں تھا۔pānī nahīṉ thā: There was no water.the simplest sentence of trouble
پھر اس نے ایک گھڑا دیکھا۔phir us ne ek ghaṛā dekhā: Then he saw a clay pot.NEW: ghaṛā = clay water-pot, with the retroflex ṛ
گھڑے میں تھوڑا پانی تھا۔ghaṛe meṉ thoṛā pānī thā: In the pot was a little water.ghaṛā bends to ghaṛe before meṉ (Qawāid Q5)
کوے نے چھوٹے پتھر ڈالے۔kawwe ne chhoṭe patthar ḍāle: The crow dropped in small stones.NEW: patthar = stone, ḍālnā = to drop in. The famous trick
پانی اوپر آ گیا۔pānī ūpar ā gayā: The water rose up.NEW: ūpar = up. Ā gayā — arrived, completely (L23)
کوے نے پانی پیا۔kawwe ne pānī piyā: The crow drank the water.piyā — pīnā in the ne-past, agreeing with pānī
چھوٹی کوشش، بڑا کام۔chhoṭī koshish, baṛā kām: Small effort, big result.koshish from Level 15, promoted to a moral
ایک لڑکے کے پاس بکریاں تھیں۔ek laṛke ke pās bakriyāṉ thīṉ: A boy was keeping goats.bakrī pluralises to bakriyāṉ, and thī to thīṉ, all feminine
لڑکے نے کہا: بھیڑیا! بھیڑیا!laṛke ne kahā: bheṛiyā! bheṛiyā!: The boy shouted: wolf! wolf!the zoo word, now a false alarm
سب دوست آئے۔sab dost āe: All his friends came running.āe — the plural past of ānā
لیکن بھیڑیا نہیں تھا۔lekin bheṛiyā nahīṉ thā: But there was no wolf.lekin from Level 19's honest sentence
لڑکا ہنسا۔laṛkā haṉsā: The boy laughed.NEW: haṉsnā = to laugh. He thought it was funny
پھر ایک دن بھیڑیا آ گیا۔phir ek din bheṛiyā ā gayā: Then one day the wolf really came.ā gayā again — arrival, complete and real
لڑکے نے کہا: بھیڑیا! لیکن کوئی نہیں آیا۔laṛke ne kahā: bheṛiyā! lekin koī nahīṉ āyā: The boy shouted: wolf! But nobody came.koī nahīṉ — the loneliest words in the story
جھوٹ گیا، اعتبار گیا۔jhūṭ gayā, iʿtibār gayā: The lie went out; the trust went with it.NEW: jhūṭ = a lie, iʿtibār = trust. The whole fable in four words
Good to know
✨ Both are Aesop again — The Crow and the Pitcher, and The Boy Who Cried Wolf — and the second one became an English idiom outright: 'to cry wolf' is the fable compressed to two words.
✨ The crow's trick is real. Corvids actually drop stones into water to raise its level — researchers have tested it — which makes this one of the few fables that is also a lab result.
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