Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "मिलना" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce मिलना in Hindi?

मिलना is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /mɪl.naː/. It means “to be found / to meet.” MIL-naa in two beats, with a short lax i and a clear front l — the vowel after ल is not pronounced.

MIL-naa in two beats, with a short lax i and a clear front l — the vowel after ल is not pronounced.

मिलना /mɪl.naː/

milnaa

Schwa deletion after ल produces the shape: spelled out in full the word would have three light beats, and nobody says it that way. What survives is a short closed syllable feeding a long open one.

Listen: मिलना

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Sound it out

mi m plus short इ, lax and brief like the vowel of "mitt." Lengthening it changes the vowel phoneme.

l A clear l closing the syllable. English darkens l before a consonant; Hindi keeps the tongue tip forward and the tongue body low.

naa The infinitive ending, with the n on the teeth and the aa given its full duration.

Hear it in a sentence

मुझे यह किताब बाज़ार में मिली।

Mujhe yeh kitaab baazaar meṁ milee.

I found this book at the market.

Listen: मुझे यह किताब बाज़ार में मिली।

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"Mujhe yeh kitaab baazaar meṁ milee" uses the verb in its "was found by me" sense, with the dative mujhe as the finder and the feminine milee agreeing with kitaab. Baazaar has a nuqta ज़, so it is a z, and its two long aa vowels frame the sentence's middle.

Where English speakers slip

The dark English l is the usual intruder, producing something like "meeownaa" where the l swallows the preceding vowel. Keep the l bright and the i short. Reading the word as three syllables is the other risk, and it makes the verb unrecognisable in fast speech.