Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "कहना" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce कहना in Hindi?

कहना is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kəɦ.naː/. It means “to say / to tell.” KEH-naa — the spelling कहना has an h that colours the vowel toward "eh" rather than being pronounced as a separate breath.

KEH-naa — the spelling कहना has an h that colours the vowel toward "eh" rather than being pronounced as a separate breath.

कहना /kəɦ.naː/

kehnaa

Two syllables with the weight on the final long aa; the first is short and its vowel quality is determined by the h rather than by the written schwa. This vowel-colouring effect of ह appears in a whole family of words like rehnaa and pehlaa.

Listen: कहना

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Sound it out

ke Unaspirated क with a schwa that the following ह lowers and colours, so it sounds nearer to the vowel of "bed" than to a plain schwa.

h Voiced ह, very light here; in normal speech it mostly modifies the vowel rather than surfacing as its own sound.

naa न is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, then the word opens into the only long vowel it has.

Hear it in a sentence

मुझे नहीं पता कि क्या कहना है।

Mujhe naheeṁ pataa ki kyaa kehnaa hai.

I don't know what to say.

Listen: मुझे नहीं पता कि क्या कहना है।

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

"Mujhe naheeṁ pataa ki kyaa kehnaa hai" embeds a clause with ki and uses the infinitive plus hai to mean "what to say." It also stacks two words with ह in them — naheeṁ and kehnaa — so you can hear how differently the same letter behaves in each.

Where English speakers slip

Learners either pronounce a full separated "keh-h-naa" with an audible breath, or read it as "kah-naa" with a plain schwa. The natural version has the vowel already lowered by the h and the h itself nearly absorbed — closer to "kehnaa" said as one smooth movement.