How to Pronounce 'हवाई जहाज़': Hindi Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce हवाई जहाज़ in Hindi?

हवाई जहाज़ is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɦə.ʋaː.iː dʒə.ɦaːz/. It means “airplane.” huh-VAA-ee juh-HAAZ — two vowels in hiatus at the end of the first word, and a nuqta z at the end of the second.

How do you pronounce "हवाई जहाज़" in Hindi?

huh-VAA-ee juh-HAAZ — two vowels in hiatus at the end of the first word, and a nuqta z at the end of the second.

हवाई जहाज़ /ɦə.ʋaː.iː dʒə.ɦaːz/

havaaee jahaaz

Five syllables in all, with the long vowels concentrated in the second and fourth positions, so the phrase alternates light and heavy. The vowel hiatus in havaaee stretches the first word without adding a consonant, which is where learners most often lose a beat.

Listen: हवाई जहाज़

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Sound it out

ha ह is voiced rather than whispered, and the schwa after it is bare — both words in this phrase open the same light way.

vaa The lower lip approaches the upper teeth loosely, with far less friction than English v, and the vowel that follows is a long आ.

ee A long ई directly after that aa with no consonant between them — a genuine hiatus, so the word has three syllables.

jahaaz Unaspirated ज, a schwa, a soft voiced ह, a long aa, and ज़ with a nuqta, which is a buzzing z rather than a second j.

Hear it in a sentence

हवाई जहाज़ एक घंटे में उड़ेगा।

Havaaee jahaaz ek ghaṇṭe meṁ uṛegaa.

The plane leaves in an hour.

Listen: हवाई जहाज़ एक घंटे में उड़ेगा।

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Havaaee jahaaz ek ghaṇṭe meṁ uṛegaa" uses the oblique ghaṇṭe after ek and the verb uṛegaa, which contains ड़, the retroflex flap. Ghaṇṭe itself has the breathy घ and the retroflex ण, so the second half of the sentence is the harder one.

Where English speakers slip

The hiatus in havaaee collapses into "ha-vaai" with a diphthong, and the final ज़ gets read as j. Both are the same kind of shortcut — mapping Hindi onto the nearest English shape. Say the aa and ee as separate beats, and buzz the final consonant.