Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "खाना" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce खाना in Hindi?

खाना is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kʰaː.naː/. It means “food; to eat.” KHAA-naa — the kh is a k with a deliberate puff of air, and both vowels are long.

KHAA-naa — the kh is a k with a deliberate puff of air, and both vowels are long.

खाना /kʰaː.naː/

khaanaa

Two equally heavy syllables, so weight gives no clear winner and the word is close to even. What actually needs guarding is that neither aa collapses — an English rhythm would shorten the second and produce "KHAA-nuh."

Listen: खाना

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Sound it out

kh ख is an aspirated velar stop, not the scraping ch of German "Bach." Make a normal k and let a strong breath follow the release.

aa Long आ twice over. This word is two full-length beats and nothing may be reduced.

n Dental न, made with the tongue against the teeth; the English alveolar n sounds slightly too far back.

Hear it in a sentence

मुझे पिज़्ज़ा खाना है।

Mujhe pizzaa khaanaa hai.

I want to eat pizza.

Listen: मुझे पिज़्ज़ा खाना है।

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"Mujhe pizzaa khaanaa hai" uses khaanaa as an infinitive with hai to express wanting or having to eat, so the same form covers both "food" and "to eat." The construction takes the dative mujhe, not a nominative subject, exactly as with pasand.

Where English speakers slip

Learners often either drop the aspiration entirely, producing kaanaa, or overcorrect into a velar fricative borrowed from German or Scottish. Neither is right: ख is a stop with a following puff, and the difference between क and ख changes meaning, so the puff has to be audible and clean.