Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "दो" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce दो in Hindi?

दो is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /d̪oː/. It means “two.” Not English "doe" — the d is dental, tongue on the teeth, and the o is a long pure vowel with no w-glide at the end.

Not English "doe" — the d is dental, tongue on the teeth, and the o is a long pure vowel with no w-glide at the end.

दो /d̪oː/

A monosyllable built on a long vowel, so it is heavy and needs its full duration; there is no accent to place, but shortening it makes the numeral sound hurried and indistinct next to the equally short-looking numerals around it.

Listen: दो

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Sound it out

d द is a voiced dental stop. Slide your tongue tip forward until it touches the back of your upper teeth; the English d position is a centimetre too far back.

o Long ओ, steady from start to finish. English "oh" ends in a lip-rounded glide toward oo; freeze the lips instead.

Hear it in a sentence

मेरे दो भाई हैं।

Mere do bhaaee haiṁ.

I have two brothers.

Listen: मेरे दो भाई हैं।

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"Mere do bhaaee haiṁ" agrees in the plural throughout — mere rather than meraa, haiṁ rather than hai — even though bhaaee itself does not change shape. And the verb is haiṁ with nasalization, which is the audible plural marker in this sentence.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers reach for the alveolar d of "do" and then diphthongise the vowel, producing something that sounds to a Hindi listener like a retroflex-ish ड plus a glide. Both halves need fixing: teeth for the tongue, and a monophthong for the vowel.