Hindi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "डरना" in Hindi?

Q: How do you pronounce डरना in Hindi?

डरना is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɖəɾ.naː/. It means “to be afraid / to fear.” ḌUR-naa — the first consonant is a retroflex d, tongue curled back, not the English d you would expect.

ḌUR-naa — the first consonant is a retroflex d, tongue curled back, not the English d you would expect.

डरना /ɖəɾ.naː/

ḍarnaa

A schwa syllable feeds a long-vowelled one, so the beat is at the end. The tongue makes three different movements in quick succession — curled back, quick tap, forward to the teeth — which is what makes this short word demanding.

Listen: डरना

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Sound it out

ḍa ड is a voiced retroflex stop: curl the tongue tip up and back so it strikes behind the alveolar ridge, with the voice on and no breath escaping.

r Touch and release — a tap, quite different in mechanism from the retroflex stop immediately before it.

naa The tongue comes all the way forward to the teeth for the nasal, then opens into the long infinitive vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

बच्चा अंधेरे से डरता है।

Bachchaa andhere se ḍartaa hai.

The child is scared of the dark.

Listen: बच्चा अंधेरे से डरता है।

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

"Bachchaa andhere se ḍartaa hai" marks the thing feared with se rather than ko, and andhere contains a dental द. So the sentence puts a dental stop and a retroflex one within two words, which is precisely the contrast to listen for.

Where English speakers slip

An alveolar d lands between Hindi ड and द and reads as neither — and the contrast is live here, since the same sentence contains a genuine dental द in andhere. Curl the tongue tip back until the position feels exaggerated.