Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "पत्नी" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce पत्नी in Hindi?

पत्नी is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /pət̪.niː/. It means “wife.” PUT-nee — a dental t pressed straight against a dental n, with no vowel between them.

PUT-nee — a dental t pressed straight against a dental n, with no vowel between them.

पत्नी /pət̪.niː/

patnee

Because त and न share exactly one tongue position, the middle of the word is a single sustained contact with a change in airflow, so it moves faster than it looks on paper. The beat lands on the long final vowel.

Listen: पत्नी

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Sound it out

pa No air escapes as the lips part, and the vowel is a bare schwa; the whole syllable is a run-up.

t Dental त closing the syllable. Its inherent vowel is deleted, so the stop sits directly against the following nasal.

nee Dental न — the tongue does not move at all from the t position — opening into a long tense ई.

Hear it in a sentence

उनकी पत्नी वकील हैं।

Unkee patnee vakeel haiṁ.

His wife is a lawyer.

Listen: उनकी पत्नी वकील हैं।

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

"Unkee patnee vakeel haiṁ" uses the feminine unkee for the possessor's wife and the honorific plural haiṁ for her. Vakeel has two long vowels and no aspiration, so the sentence is phonetically gentle apart from the tn cluster.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers insert a vowel — "pat-a-nee" — or make both consonants alveolar. Neither works. Put the tongue tip on the teeth for the t, keep it there, and simply open the nasal passage to produce the n without releasing the closure.