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Hindi · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "फल" in Hindi?
phal with a real puff after the p — an aspirated stop, not an f, since there is no nuqta here.
phal
The vowel is a schwa and the syllable is closed, so it is heavy only by position; the aspiration at the front supplies most of the word's audible time. That breath is a consonant release, not a beat of its own.
Listen: फल
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
यह फल बहुत मीठा है।
Yeh phal bahut meeṭhaa hai.
This fruit is very sweet.
Listen: यह फल बहुत मीठा है।
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"Yeh phal bahut meeṭhaa hai" makes meeṭhaa masculine to agree with phal, and meeṭhaa contains an aspirated retroflex ठ. So the sentence has an aspirated bilabial and an aspirated retroflex a few syllables apart — same mechanism, different places.
Where English speakers slip
Learners who have met फ़ read this as "fal," but there is no nuqta, so it is a puffed p. Check for the dot before deciding. The l then tends to darken at the end of the syllable; keep the tongue tip forward on the ridge.