Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "जूता" in Hindi?

JOO-taa — a dry j, a long oo, and a dental t before the long final vowel.

जूता /dʒuː.t̪aː/

jootaa

Level and even, with a single dental stop between two long vowels of contrasting quality. Reducing the final one under English rhythm would erase the gender ending as well as the rhythm.

Listen: जूता

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Sound it out

joo ज is a voiced affricate made a touch further forward than English j, released with no breath, opening into a long ऊ.

taa Tongue tip to the upper teeth for the stop, released with the voice on and no escaping breath, then the vowel that follows.

Hear it in a sentence

यह जूता बहुत छोटा है।

Yeh jootaa bahut chhoṭaa hai.

This shoe is too small.

Listen: यह जूता बहुत छोटा है।

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

"Yeh jootaa bahut chhoṭaa hai" pairs jootaa with chhoṭaa, which has both an aspirated छ and a retroflex ट. So the sentence contrasts a dental stop in the noun with a curled-back one in the adjective, with matching -aa endings on both.

Where English speakers slip

The t comes out alveolar, and in American English an intervocalic t becomes a flap, which in Hindi lands near ड़ and would make the word sound like a different one. Keep the tongue tip clearly against the teeth for a full stop.