Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "सकना" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce सकना in Hindi?

सकना is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /sək.naː/. It means “to be able to / can.” SUCK-naa in two beats — the vowel after क is deleted, so the k and n collide directly.

SUCK-naa in two beats — the vowel after क is deleted, so the k and n collide directly.

सकना /sək.naː/

saknaa

Light closed syllable then heavy open one, so the beat lands at the end. The k-n junction in the middle has no vowel at all, and getting that cluster clean is what separates two-beat Hindi rhythm from a spelled-out three-beat reading.

Listen: सकना

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Sound it out

sa s plus a bare schwa; brief and unstressed, exactly like the first syllable of English "suppose."

k Unaspirated क closing the syllable. Its inherent vowel drops out, which is why the word has two beats rather than three.

naa Tongue to the teeth for न, then a wide-open aa; this suffix marks every Hindi infinitive, so the habit built here transfers everywhere.

Hear it in a sentence

क्या आप मेरी मदद कर सकते हैं?

Kyaa aap meree madad kar sakte haiṁ?

Can you help me?

Listen: क्या आप मेरी मदद कर सकते हैं?

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"Kyaa aap meree madad kar sakte haiṁ?" uses saknaa as a helper on the bare stem kar, and it inflects — sakte — while kar stays fixed. Madad has two dental d sounds and a schwa between them, so the tongue is on the teeth twice in quick succession.

Where English speakers slip

Reading letter by letter gives "sa-ka-naa," which no native speaker says. Beyond that, English speakers aspirate the k, pushing it toward ख. Both problems vanish if you think of the middle as a single hard consonant cluster, like the kn in "acne."