Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "कोई नहीं" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce कोई नहीं in Hindi?

कोई नहीं is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /koː.iː nə.ɦĩː/. It means “no one / nobody.” KOH-ee nuh-HEEN — two vowels in hiatus in the first word, and a nasalized ee at the end of the second.

KOH-ee nuh-HEEN — two vowels in hiatus in the first word, and a nasalized ee at the end of the second.

कोई नहीं /koː.iː nə.ɦĩː/

koee naheeṁ

Four heavy or near-heavy syllables in a row make this a slow phrase. The vowel hiatus in koee stretches the first word without adding a consonant, and rushing it is what makes learners produce a single diphthong instead of two vowels.

Listen: कोई नहीं

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Sound it out

ko Unaspirated क with a long ओ held in a fixed lip position.

ee A long ई directly after that o with no consonant between them — two full vowels in a row, which English almost never allows within a word.

naheeṁ Dental n, a schwa, a soft voiced ह, and a long nasalized ई with no closure at the end.

Hear it in a sentence

यहाँ कोई नहीं है।

Yahaaṁ koee naheeṁ hai.

There is no one here.

Listen: यहाँ कोई नहीं है।

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

"Yahaaṁ koee naheeṁ hai" needs both koee and naheeṁ for a single negation, which is standard Hindi rather than a double negative. Yahaaṁ at the front has its own nasalized long aa, so the sentence carries two nasal vowels of different qualities.

Where English speakers slip

The hiatus collapses into a diphthong — "koy" — and naheeṁ gets a hard final n. Both erase distinctive features. Say ko and ee as two separate vowel beats with a slight break, and let the nasality in naheeṁ live entirely in the vowel.