A Guide to Hindi Pronunciation

A Guide to Hindi Pronunciation How To Pronounce Hindi Words ChaptersHow to Pronounce the Hindi AlphabetPlaces Where You Can Listen to Hindi PronunciationHow to Work on Your Hindi PronunciationWhen learning the Hindi language, it’s important to know how to pronounce Hindi words correctly or you will not be understood.Have you ever stood flummoxed while someone tried to speak English - asking for directions or trying to understand the Underground - and you couldn’t understand what they were saying because of their accent?If you don’t want to find themselves in their situation, you will need to perfect your Hindi pronunciation. We will be looking at standard Hindi pronunciation. It can be slightly different depending on the dialect - Urdu, the Hindustani spoken as the official language of Pakistan is slightly different in both vocabulary and accent.native Hindi speaker, record yourself, listen to yourself, repeat.Then pick a few words from a Hindi dictionary or your Hindi vocabulary list and pronounce them. This will help you learn to stri ng the sounds together. Listen to them on a Hindi online dictionary (see the list above) and try and get not just the sounds, but make sure the emphasis is on the right syllable.As you progress, pick one or two sentences from a book or, even better, a film, and repeat those. This will help you practice the rhythm of the language. Remember, a language is like a song: each one has its own rhythm, with different syllable emphasised in each word and different words emphasised in each sentence! Take some time occasionally to listen to several different languages with your eyes closed - each one has a different rhythm.For advanced students, a challenging exercise might be to look up and pronounce some Hindi tongue twisters!Improve your Hindi pronunciation with a native speakerAnother way to practice is to speak with a native Indian - someone from Delhi or Kolkata who grew up with Hindi as a mother tongue. There are several ways you can do this:Find a Hindi language partner through a langu age exchange website or appHire a private tutor (here on Superprof, perhaps?) to speak to you in Hindi and help with your pronunciation.Proper pronunciation is an advantage when ordering food in India. Photo credit: Saad.Akhtar on VisualHunt.comThe first has the advantage of generally being free. However, it’s more likely that life might prevent you from getting together as often as you need to in order to really learn a language. With a private tutor, your teacher will work around your schedule and, if they or you need to skip a class, they will try to make it up (after all, it’s money they would lose otherwise). A tutor will also be more aware of the problems you might encounter when trying to pronounce Hindi.