Japanese pronunciation

I clearly remember an episode back in the third grade. I had checked a book called Flying Origami by Eiji Nakamura out from the library. The book was great, filled with really cool Japanese paper airplanes to make, but there was just one problem — I had no idea how to pronounce the word origami, which was just too difficult for my nine‑year‑old brain to handle. Little did I know I'd end up living in Origami Central one day, which goes to show that you never know where your life will take you. Anyway, I've decided to present a “quickie pronunciation guide” for Japanese, in case it will help anyone.

Japanese as a Syllabic Language

First, understand that Japanese is a syllabic language, meaning that sounds always come in consonant + vowel syllable pairs (e.g., ka, ki, ku, ke, or ko, never just a “k” sound by itself), or as a single vowel syllable.

The exception is the letter n, the only consonant that can appear by itself — without which we wouldn't have the word ramen (and that would be a travesty).

Vowels are easy as pie in Japanese — there are only five, identical to the ones in Spanish. They are:

A — “ah,” rhyming with fall
I — “ee,” rhyming with feel
U — “oo,” rhyming with fool
E — “eh,” rhyming with let
O — “oh,” rhyming with go

Breaking Words Into Syllables

When you see a word like origami, just break it into syllable‑sized chunks, pronouncing all the letters and squeezing it into the “Japanese phonetic grid”: oh‑ree‑GAH‑mee.

There are no diphthongs in Japanese — a vowel by itself is treated as a separate syllable. So a name like Miura becomes mee‑OO‑ra.

When you see a Japanese name or word, try not to let English pronunciation rules get in your way. We had a friend named Tomoe (toh‑moh‑EH), but English speakers always called her “Tomo,” thinking the “silent e” should be ignored.

Other things to keep in mind:

A g sound like ge or gi is always hard (as in go), never soft (as in giraffe). Hence the third sound in Evangelion is indeed a hard g.
The sound u is always “oo,” never “you.”
The ra‑ri‑ru‑re‑ro sounds are closer to an L than an English R. This is why ramen is about 80% of the way to lamen pronunciation‑wise.

Of course, the best way to learn to pronounce Japanese is while learning the hiragana and katakana writing systems. Remember that J‑List has many cool products to help you start studying the language, if you want to give it a try.

The “Small Tsu” (っ)

A somewhat unique aspect of Japanese is the small tsu, a special kana character that indicates a brief pause between syllables — similar to the short stop you hear in button or kitten. Linguistically, it's called a glottal stop.

In romaji, it’s usually expressed with double consonants. Examples:

gakkou — gah‑[small pause]‑KOH (school)
nattou — nah‑[small pause]‑TOH (fermented soybeans)
matcha — mat‑[small pause]‑CHA (green tea powder)

Onomatopoeia and Mokkori

The Japanese love onomatopoeia, and there are many odd sound words used in Japan. One of the strangest is mokkori (there’s that small tsu again), which is the sound of something rising suddenly — a word made famous among anime fans by the classic City Hunter series of the 1980s.

This wacky linguistic concept is embodied in Mokkori‑kun, a lovable character on our latest T‑shirt. This upstanding little guy is a mushroom (of course!) who is a real straight‑shooter. One of our wackiest Japanese T‑shirts ever, it's guaranteed to get you lots of attention from cute Japanese coeds who see you walking across campus.