Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "मैं" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce मैं in Hindi?

मैं is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /mɛ̃ː/. It means “I.” One nasalized syllable: "meh" with air also escaping through the nose, much closer to the vowel of "men" than to English "my."

One nasalized syllable: "meh" with air also escaping through the nose, much closer to the vowel of "men" than to English "my."

मैं /mɛ̃ː/

maiṁ

A monosyllable has nowhere to shift prominence to, so all the interest is in duration and airflow: the vowel is long and nasal from onset to release, not a short vowel with a nasal bolted on at the end.

Listen: मैं

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Sound it out

mai Despite the roman ai, standard Hindi ऐ is not the diphthong of "mine" — it is a single steady open-mid vowel, roughly the e of "bed" stretched long.

ṁ The chandrabindu is not a separate consonant. Start the nasal airflow with the vowel itself and keep it running; nothing touches the roof of the mouth.

Hear it in a sentence

मैं राहुल हूँ।

Maiṁ Raahul hooṁ.

I am Rahul.

Listen: मैं राहुल हूँ।

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"Maiṁ Raahul hooṁ" opens and closes on nasalized vowels — maiṁ and hooṁ — and the pairing is the grammar: first-person subject, first-person copula. Strip nasalization from either end and a Hindi listener hears a mismatch, not an accent.

Where English speakers slip

The commonest wreck is reading roman mai as English "my" and sliding from ah to ee. In standard Hindi the vowel is steady, not a glide, and the nasality is phonemic rather than decorative — an oral "may" does not read as a lightly accented pronoun, it reads as a different word shape entirely.