Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "दिल" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce दिल in Hindi?

दिल is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /d̪ɪl/. It means “heart.” dil — a dental d, a short lax i, and a bright front l with the tongue tip on the ridge.

dil — a dental d, a short lax i, and a bright front l with the tongue tip on the ridge.

दिल /d̪ɪl/

dil

Short vowel, closed syllable, no aspiration and no cluster: this is about as brief as a Hindi content word gets. Its emotional weight in poetry and song is entirely unrelated to its phonetic weight.

Listen: दिल

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Sound it out

d Touch the back of the upper front teeth with the tongue tip and keep the voice on; the English position is far enough back to sound retroflex-adjacent.

il A short इ closed by a clear l. English darkens a word-final l, which would retract the vowel in front of it.

Hear it in a sentence

मेरा दिल तेज़ धड़क रहा है।

Meraa dil tez dhaṛak rahaa hai.

My heart is beating fast.

Listen: मेरा दिल तेज़ धड़क रहा है।

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"Meraa dil tez dhaṛak rahaa hai" uses dhaṛak, which packs a breathy-voiced ध and a retroflex flap ड़ into one short word. Dil itself is easy by comparison; the verb is where the sentence's difficulty lives.

Where English speakers slip

The d lands on the alveolar ridge and the l goes dark, giving something like "dill" with a retracted ending. Push the tongue tip forward to the teeth for the stop, then keep it on the ridge with the tongue body low for a bright l.