Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "शहर" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce शहर in Hindi?

शहर is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʃə.ɦəɾ/. It means “city.” SHEH-hur — the h lowers both vowels toward the sound of "bed," and the r is a single flick.

SHEH-hur — the h lowers both vowels toward the sound of "bed," and the r is a single flick.

शहर /ʃə.ɦəɾ/

sheher

Two short syllables with no long vowel at all, so the word is light throughout. The ह-colouring changes vowel quality rather than length, which is why it stays compact even though it looks like it should be drawn out.

Listen: शहर

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

Sound it out

she श with a vowel that the following ह has pulled down from a schwa toward an open-mid quality.

her Voiced ह, a second lowered vowel, and one quick tap of the tongue tip. The word is also written and said as shahar by many speakers.

Hear it in a sentence

दिल्ली एक पुराना शहर है।

Dillee ek puraanaa sheher hai.

Delhi is an old city.

Listen: दिल्ली एक पुराना शहर है।

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

"Dillee ek puraanaa sheher hai" makes puraanaa masculine to agree with sheher, and puraanaa has two long aa vowels. Set against sheher's two short coloured vowels, that adjective is where all the sentence's duration lives.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers give the h a hard release and split the word into two heavy beats, or read the vowels as plain schwas and produce "shuh-hur." The natural version has both vowels already lowered by the h, with the h itself a soft murmur. The final r must also be one contact, not a rhotic.