Home › Glossary › Letter D

Dutar

Musical Instrument
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A two-stringed lute from Central Asia, used in classical and folk traditions

Detailed Definition
The dutar’s intimate, lyrical tone appears in Persian and Turkic poetry to symbolize love, storytelling, and Sufi devotion; its name (“two strings”) often serves as a metaphor for duality—body and soul, lover and beloved—in mystical and romantic verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Central Asian poetry, the dutar’s two strings carry epics of love and horseback journeys; Poets describe its long neck as “a road stretching between cities of sound”; The dutar appears in Sufi verse as the instrument of mystical dialogue; Its name (“two strings”) becomes a metaphor for duality—earth and sky, lover and beloved; In diaspora poetry, the dutar ties Uzbekistan to global Turkic identity; Contemporary poets use the dutar to explore conversation—strings answering each other.
Additional Notes
The dutar is a Central Asian two-stringed lute with a long neck, used in epic storytelling; its name means “two strings,” symbolizing duality or balance—ideal for poems about oral history, nomadic life, or the tension between melody and drone in Turkic musical aesthetics.
Also Known As
Dutar lute
Skip to main content