Hindi World Stress

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May 6th, 20135 Comments
Hindi Word Stress

Jobert Asked: I love your website. Thanks so much for providing these lessons! My question is about
pronunciation. I can read and write devanagari now, and it has helped me so much with Hindi. My
problem still is that while I can sound out each of the syllables, I never really know which one to
emphasize. When I learned Swahili, the accent was always on the second to last syllable, with very few
exceptions. Are there any tips for accenting words in Hindi? Shukriya!
Namaste Jobert and thank you for your question and lovely compliments! That’s a great question actually. So
what syllable in a word do we stress in Hindi? And what are the rules for finding the stressed syllable?
image
Let’s take a step back for a moment. Syllable stress in English is actually real important - it can change the
meaning of words completely - and is very unpredictable. Think of the sentence “I suspect you are the
suspect”. The word “suspect” here is stressed differently in each case! Crikey. This makes that learning
English even trickier!
Ok so back to Hindi. First the good news: stress in Hindi is not really that important. It doesn’t change the
meaning of words and it doesn’t have much power - especially when compared to English. Because of that
it’s not really something you should worry too much about. Linguists are actually still in disagreement about
the true nature of Hindi word stress - some even say it doesn’t exist!
Having said that though, what are the actual rules? Well it’s a little complicated but here goes…
Firstly the three vowels अ a, इ i and उ u are called short vowels and all the other vowels are called long
ones. Ok now we’re going to use this to define three types of syllables.
A light syllable is either just a short vowel on its own, or a consonant followed by a short vowel - so अ a,
िल li and नु nu are examples of light syllables.
A heavy syllable is either a long vowel on its own, or a consonant followed by a long vowel - so आ aa,
की kee and गो go are examples of heavy syllables.
Finally a super heavy syllable is anything else. This is mainly syllables that start and end with a consonant,
so for example पम pam and जान jaan are super heavy syllables.
That’s the categories done, what are the rules? Well the one rule is this:
the heaviest syllable in a word is stressed. If two or more syllables are tied then the last of these
is stressed - unless this last one is the final syllable in the word in which case you take the
heaviest syllable before that.
Phew! Let’s have a look at some examples to give you the picture…
घड़ी gharee means watch or clock. This has the pattern light-heavy and so we stress the second syllable
because that is the heaviest.
िब ी billee means cat. This has the pattern super heavy-heavy (the syllables here are bil and lee) and so
this time we stress the first syllable because that’s the heaviest.
काला kaalaa means black. This has the pattern heavy-heavy. These are tied so we take the last one - but
hang on the last one is the final syllable so we take the one before that. So kaa is stressed.
Phew ok! I hope that helps. Don’t forget though that stress really is not as important nor as prominent in
Hindi as it is in English. The best way to learn all this is to just listen to what you hear and copy that!
If you’d like to read a proper linguistic paper on this then you can find one here and another here. Please free
to ask if you have any other questions! Thanks again.
Have you got a question, comment or suggestion? Let me know here.
Tags:qanda stress word stress syllable stress syllable
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Jobert • 6 years ago
and posting of comments, explained further in the
Sorry I haven't
Privacy Policy checked into the site in awhile. Thank you so much
for answering my question! I will look into the two articles you
I agree to additional processing of my information,
linked to.first
including My husband
and thirdis party
Rajasthani, and for
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to explain why the emphasis was the way it was. I can't blame him,
because I certainly can't explain English pronounciation, haha.
Thanks again. Proceed
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LearningHindi Moderator > Jobert • 6 years ago

Namaste Jobert! It's good to hear back from you!
You're welcome, I'm glad we were able to help you. You are
so right there as well. I actually find it fascinating how we
can use language 24/7 and can straight away recognise if
something is correct or incorrect but we often struggle to
explain "why"! Weird hey.
I'm glad to have helped you : ) Be sure to ask if you have

any other questions. All the best.
Jobert > Jobert • 6 years ago

*correcting* - Haha
hindilanguage.info • 6 years ago
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Learning Hindi!

May 6th, 20135 Comments

Hindi Word Stress

Have you got a question, comment or suggestion? Let me know here.

Tags:qanda stress word stress syllable stress syllable

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LearningHindi Moderator > Jobert • 6 years ago

I'm glad to have helped you : ) Be sure to ask if you have

Jobert > Jobert • 6 years ago

hindilanguage.info • 6 years ago

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