Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "ちょっと" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce ちょっと in Japanese?

ちょっと is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tɕot.to/. It means “a moment / a little.” cho-t-to, three beats — the middle one is a full beat of silence with the tongue in place.

cho-t-to, three beats — the middle one is a full beat of silence with the tongue in place.

ちょっと /tɕot.to/

chotto

Three beats, one of them nothing at all. English writes doubled consonants without doubling their duration, so "chotto" reads as two syllables; Japanese measures three. Count the gap as a beat and the word gains half its length.

Listen: ちょっと

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

cho One affricate combined with an o in a single mora — not "chi-yo." Made with the tongue blade against the palate, lighter than English ch.

t (small っ) The geminate: set the tongue against the teeth at the end of the o and hold, blocking all air, for a complete beat. Silence, not a harder consonant.

to The release into a short o matching the first. The burst out of the closure is what makes the silence audible in retrospect.

Hear it in a sentence

ちょっと待ってください。

Chotto matte kudasai.

Please wait a moment.

Listen: ちょっと待ってください。

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

ちょっと待ってください stacks two geminates in a row — ちょっと and 待って both have a held silent beat — so the phrase contains two separate gaps within about seven morae. Rushing either one is the fastest way to sound non-native in a very common request.

Where English speakers slip

"CHOT-toe" delivers an emphatic but instantaneous t and diphthongises the final vowel. Hold the closure until a listener can hear the gap, and freeze both o's so neither glides. The opening cho should also be lighter — English ch is considerably more aspirated.