Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "कॉपी" in Hindi?

KOH-pee with a rounded open-mid vowel — the ऑ vowel Hindi added for English loans — and a dry p.

कॉपी /kɔː.piː/

kopee

The borrowed ऑ vowel is the interesting part rhythmically as well as phonetically: Hindi gives it the same length as a native long vowel, which is how the loan gets absorbed into the system.

Listen: कॉपी

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Sound it out

ko The vowel written ऑ is a borrowed one, roughly the o of British "cot" lengthened; it is more open than ओ and used almost exclusively in loanwords.

pee प with a completely silent release, opening into a long tense ई.

Hear it in a sentence

मेरी कॉपी कहाँ है?

Meree kopee kahaaṁ hai?

Where is my notebook?

Listen: मेरी कॉपी कहाँ है?

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"Meree kopee kahaaṁ hai?" makes meree feminine to agree with kopee, and kahaaṁ ends in a nasalized long aa. So the sentence has one borrowed vowel and one nasalized native one within a few syllables.

Where English speakers slip

The familiar word "copy" has a short first vowel and a reduced second one, and Hindi has lengthened both. Keep the initial k free of aspiration too, since English puffs it automatically before a stressed vowel.