Learn about the foreign sounds that you will come across in Hindi and how they are correctly pronounced
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Maya: Hello everyone, Maya here and welcome to pronunciation series, lesson 4. The Nuances of Hindi Pronunciation. |
| Manasi: Namaste. Hello everyone, this is Manasi here. So listeners, how is it going? Are you getting the hang of Hindi pronunciation, starting to feel more confident? |
| Maya: This time, we will be going over a couple of concepts, foreign sounds and joined or half consonant sounds. |
Lesson focus |
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| Manasi: First, let’s talk about foreign sounds. Hindi gets a lot of its vocabulary from many foreign languages such as Urdu and English. |
| Maya: But what happens to the sounds that come from non-Indian languages? |
| Manasi: Now Maya, that’s a very interesting question. While the set of sounds used in Hind is quite broad compared to some languages, there are of course still quite a few sounds that Hindi doesn’t natively use. |
| Maya: So do Hindi speakers just leave these sounds out? |
| Manasi: Well not quite. To get around it, there actually is a pretty easy way to represent some foreign sounds. We just add one point or [nukta] below the closest sounding letter in Hindi. Then we know to pronounce it as in a foreign word. So [a nukta] is like a little dot that goes beneath a letter to change its sound. |
| Maya: Can you give us one example? |
| Manasi: Sure Hindi has been influenced by Urdu when the Mughal emperor ruled Delhi. So Urdu words like [Khuda] and [Khafaa] which have the [Kh] sound use the [Kh] but have a [Nukta] placed beneath it. |
| Maya: What about English sounds not available in Hindi? |
| Manasi: Well Hindi was influenced by English at the time of British colonies. So words like Zebra are represented in Hindi with original letter [J] with a [Nukta] beneath it. |
| Maya: Listeners, you can refer to the PDF file that accompanies this lesson to find out how other foreign sounds are represented in Hindi. |
| Manasi: Now let’s talk about the half consonant. Until now, we’ve learned that a Hindi syllable is made up of a consonant and a vowel, right. Well, in some cases, we say that the consonant is half. |
| Maya: When the consonant is half, the pronunciation changes slightly. Hindi consonants come with the inbuilt vowel [A] but when we want sounds without the vowel [A], we can change it by chopping off the [A]. |
| Manasi: You must not pause as you move from the half consonant to the next sound. |
| Maya: Can you give us an example? |
| Manasi: Sure in Hindi, words like [pyaar] which means love or [Kya] which means what, [Achcha] which means good et cetera are examples of using half consonants. |
| Maya: Okay I think I see but how will we know when we read it? |
| Manasi: If a consonant you read is chopped from the tail part and attached to the next letter, it becomes a half consonant. For example, when you read [Pyaar], the word has the letters pa and ya and next is ra but pa has been chopped off and is attached to ya to make it [Pya]. After that of course, ra is added as usual to make [Pyaar]. |
| Maya: Listeners, this is very important as it could change the meaning of the whole word. Let’s hear one example so that we can compare. |
| Manasi: Okay the first word has a single consonant [Samay] which means time. |
| Maya: So this word is made up of the usual whole consonants. |
| Manasi: That’s right. It’s made up of sa, ma and ya all of them are whole consonants but listen carefully to the next sound which is a half consonant [saamya] which means equality or equity. |
| Maya: Here ma has been chopped and attached to ya. So ma is a half consonant. Can you hear the difference? Manasi, could you say the two words once again? |
| Manasi: Sure, the first one is [Samay] |
| Maya: Or time. |
| Manasi: And the next is [Saamya] |
| Maya: Or equality. Those words have really different meanings. Listeners, please be very careful to pronounce each word correctly as it can change the entire meaning of the word. |
| Manasi: Also listen carefully so you can catch the real meaning of the word without misunderstanding. |
| Maya: Yes and the best way is to listen and repeat. |
| Manasi: We can’t stress this enough. |
| Maya: Listening and repeating is the quickest way to get these sounds down. Practicing them will make it easy for you and don’t forget to refer to the PDF file for some more examples of these words. |
| Manasi: So Maya, do you feel like you have a pretty good grasp of half consonants and the representation of foreign sounds in Hindi? |
| Maya: I think it’s getting clearer. |
Outro |
| Manasi: Well that’s it for this lesson. Listeners, can you understand Hindi TV shows, movies or songs? |
| Maya: How about friends and loved ones conversations in Hindi. |
| Manasi: If you want to know what’s going on, we have a tool just for your help. |
| Maya: Line by line audio. |
| Manasi: Listen to the lesson conversations line by line and learn to understand natural Hindi fast. |
| Maya: And it’s pretty simple really. |
| Manasi: With just a click of a button, listen to each line of the conversation |
| Maya: Listen again and again and tune your ear to natural Hindi. |
| Manasi: Rapidly understand natural Hindi with this powerful tool. |
| Maya: Find this feature on the lesson page under premium member resources at hindipod101.com |
| Manasi: [fir milenge] Goodbye. |
| Maya: See you next time. |
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