Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "दिखना" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce दिखना in Hindi?

दिखना is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /d̪ɪkʰ.naː/. It means “to look / to appear.” DIKH-naa — dental d, a short lax i, and a puff of air after the k.

DIKH-naa — dental d, a short lax i, and a puff of air after the k.

दिखना /d̪ɪkʰ.naː/

dikhnaa

Light closed syllable, heavy open one, with the aspiration filling the junction. The short vowel in the first syllable makes this word noticeably quicker than dekhnaa, its long-vowelled relative, and confusing the two is easy.

Listen: दिखना

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Sound it out

di Voiced dental द on the teeth plus short इ, brief and lax like the vowel of "dip."

kh ख again in coda position — the stop is complete and the release sends genuine air out, which is what separates it from क.

naa The schwa the spelling implies after ख is deleted, so the nasal follows the puff at once and the ending's aa stretches out.

Hear it in a sentence

आप आज थके हुए दिख रहे हैं।

Aap aaj thake hue dikh rahe haiṁ.

You look tired today.

Listen: आप आज थके हुए दिख रहे हैं।

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"Aap aaj thake hue dikh rahe haiṁ" uses the bare stem dikh, and thake opens with थ, an aspirated dental stop. So the sentence contains a dental aspirate and a velar aspirate a few syllables apart, made at different places with the same mechanism.

Where English speakers slip

Beginners confuse this with dekhnaa, "to see," and the only difference is vowel length and quality — short इ versus long ए. Add to that an English alveolar d and a missing puff on the kh, and you get a word that could be either verb. Fix the vowel first, since it carries the meaning.