Spoken Hindi: ka, ki, or ke?

So Sue has this Blogathon going called Red Marker Blogathon.

If some word/phrase/idiom/spelling/syntax/punctuation incorrectly used drives you up the wall, blog about it.

The only rule is that you must explain what is wrong with the usage that it bothers you so and you must also explain the proper usage. 

Unlike most of the entries in the marathon, I am writing about my peeves in spoken Hindi: some very common mistakes made by non-native-Hindi speakers while speaking Hindi. I wouldn’t say that all of them drives me up to a wall but I have this uncontrollable need to correct whenever someone get these wrong.

So what are my peeves, you ask? The use of postpositions ka, ki and ke (in Hindi, we have postpositions instead of prepositions as  they are placed after the noun or pronoun: just FYI). You see, most non-native-Hindi speaker often get confused whether it’s, for example, tale ka chabhi or tale ki chabhi (key of lock); uska patni or uski patni (his wife), etc? So how do you decide?

The rule of thumb in this case is very simple:

Gender of the postpositions ka, ki, or ke is same as the gender of the noun after the postpositions ka, ki, or ke.

So in case of chabhi and tala, the noun after the postposition, chabhi,  is feminine so it is tale ki chabhi. Similarly, in the second case, since patni is a female, the right form here is uski patni.

Now coming to a very good example, my special peeve:

- aloo ka paratha ( paratha of potato),  aloo ke parathae
- aloo ki roti,  aloo ki rotiyan.

First thing first. Yes, there is a ‘ka’ in the middle of aloo and paratha. Calling it ‘aloo paratha’ is wrong Hindi. And this one gets me to grind my teeth and close my fist while trying hard not to hit any thing. (Deep breath, count backwards. Okay. Where were we? Right..) Please don’t use the term, 'aloo partha'. It takes a micro second more to add a ka, ki or ke in middle.

Moving to the second point. Did you notice how ka becomes ke when we have multiple parthae (mmm, yummy), but ki remains ki even if the quantity of roti changes? Yep, you got it. The plural form of ki is also ki, and not ke (another fairly common mistake).
Similarly, we say gobhi ke pakode and diwali ki mithaiyan.

Hmm, I don't know about you but all this talk about parathe, pakode, and mithaiyan have made me hungry. I am heading to the kitchen for a mid-evening snack while you digest this information.

P.S.: 1. I refrained from using Devnagari script here as I was not sure how many people can read Hindi. Hope that's okay.
2. Just to be clear: ka is का;    ki is की;  ke is के|
3. Another post on the subject matter by yours truly is here.