Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "ग़लत" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce ग़लत in Hindi?

ग़लत is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɣə.lət̪/. It means “wrong.” ghuh-LUT — that dot under ग़ makes it a soft throat sound, not a hard g, and the final t is dental.

ghuh-LUT — that dot under ग़ makes it a soft throat sound, not a hard g, and the final t is dental.

ग़लत /ɣə.lət̪/

galat

Both vowels are short, so nothing in this word is heavy by length; the final syllable is closed and takes what little prominence there is. The word should feel quick and slightly throaty rather than emphatic.

Listen: ग़लत

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Sound it out

ga ग़ with a nuqta is a voiced uvular fricative borrowed from Arabic via Persian: the back of the tongue nearly touches the uvula and buzzes, like a French r. Many speakers do substitute a plain g, but the careful pronunciation keeps the friction.

la A clear front l with a bare schwa; brief and colourless.

t Dental त closing the word, tongue tip on the upper teeth, released quietly with no puff.

Hear it in a sentence

यह नंबर ग़लत है।

Yeh nambar galat hai.

This number is wrong.

Listen: यह नंबर ग़लत है।

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"Yeh nambar galat hai" places galat after nambar, an English loan whose anusvara becomes a bilabial m before the b. The adjective is invariant, so it looks the same regardless of the noun's gender.

Where English speakers slip

The nuqta is routinely ignored, giving a hard English g. That is a common enough substitution among Hindi speakers to be understood, but it flattens a distinction the writing system explicitly marks. The final t is the second issue: English speakers make it alveolar and release it audibly, when it should be dental and almost silent.