Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "नहीं" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce नहीं in Hindi?

नहीं is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /nə.ɦĩː/. It means “not / no.” nuh-HEEN with the n dissolved: dental n at the front, voiced h, and a long nasalized ee at the end.

nuh-HEEN with the n dissolved: dental n at the front, voiced h, and a long nasalized ee at the end.

नहीं /nə.ɦĩː/

naheeṁ

Light first syllable, heavy second — long vowel plus nasality — so the beat is firmly on -heeṁ. In emphatic negation the second syllable stretches further still, which is one of the few places Hindi uses duration expressively.

Listen: नहीं

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Sound it out

na Dental न plus a bare schwa — a fast, unstressed launch syllable.

hee Voiced ह into long ई. In rapid speech many speakers reduce the whole word to something like nahīṁ or even nī, but the long nasal vowel survives.

ṁ Nasalization on the final vowel only, with no closure. There is no n consonant at the end despite what the transliteration suggests.

Hear it in a sentence

मुझे समझ नहीं आया।

Mujhe samajh naheeṁ aayaa.

I don't understand.

Listen: मुझे समझ नहीं आया।

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

"Mujhe samajh naheeṁ aayaa" puts the negator immediately before the verb, which is its default home, and the construction is again dative: mujhe rather than maiṁ. Samajh ends in a breathy-voiced झ, so there is a warm puff between samaj- and naheeṁ.

Where English speakers slip

The commonest fault is pronouncing a hard final n, producing "na-heen." That adds a consonant and shortens the vowel. Second, the h often comes out voiceless and strong as in English "he," which over-separates the syllables; in Hindi it is a soft voiced murmur that almost blends the two.