Hindi has most of the same phonetic sounds as English. They do not have any vowels that are different, but there are many extra consonant sounds.
One type of phonetic difference is regarding aspiration, or the addition of an “H” or extra exhalation of sound. English has aspirated sounds (P, as an example) but we do not often distinguish or pay attention to differences between aspirated and non-aspirated sounds. Hindi, however, considers the aspirated and non-aspirated versions of a letter as completely different letters and not to be confused! One example of a word that uses both the aspirated and non-aspirated version of a phone is Hindi for “good”. It is written अच्छा and can be transliterated achchha, because it is literally “a” “ch” “aspirated ch” “a”.
Another difference between the Hindi phonetic inventory and American English is the many distinctions between types of “T” and “D” sounds. It is the bane of Hindi-learners everywhere! There is regular T, aspirated regular T, heavy T, aspirated heavy T, regular D, aspirated regular D, heavy D, and aspirated heavy D. Sometimes these similar sounds are combined within the same word, and it is important to be able to audibly distinguish them in order to spell the words correctly!
To learn the differences between these sounds, I have been consulting linguistics books that have descriptions of how physically to make the sounds, and I’m also watching alphabet videos for kids on Youtube. J At this point, if a Hindi-speaker can understand me, I am ok with not perfectly distinguishing between the similar sounds. I know that ability will come with time and practice.
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