Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "खुश" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce खुश in Hindi?

खुश is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kʰʊʃ/. It means “happy.” khush — puff after the k, a short lax u, and a sh at the end. One quick syllable.

khush — puff after the k, a short lax u, and a sh at the end. One quick syllable.

खुश /kʰʊʃ/

khush

A single light-vowelled syllable closed by a fricative: heavy by position, brief in reality. The aspiration at the front is the longest-lasting part of the word, which is unusual and worth noticing.

Listen: खुश

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

Sound it out

kh Aspirated ख: a velar stop with breath following the release, not the fricative of German "Buch."

u Short उ, lax and rounded like the vowel of "push." Lengthening it would change the phoneme.

sh श, essentially identical to English sh — the one segment here that transfers without adjustment.

Hear it in a sentence

मैं आज बहुत खुश हूँ।

Maiṁ aaj bahut khush hooṁ.

I am very happy today.

Listen: मैं आज बहुत खुश हूँ।

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

"Maiṁ aaj bahut khush hooṁ" ends with hooṁ, so the sentence has a voiceless aspirated kh and then a voiced nasalized vowel a syllable later. Bahut before it reduces heavily in speech, which makes khush stand out as the only fully articulated content word.

Where English speakers slip

The aspiration is the whole battle: without it the word becomes kush, and Hindi hears a different consonant. English speakers also tend to lengthen the vowel toward "koosh." Keep it short and lax, and make sure the breath after the k is genuinely audible.