Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "でも" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce でも in Japanese?

でも is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /de.mo/. It means “but.” de-mo, two short beats — a flat "deh" and a pure "mo," neither of them stressed.

de-mo, two short beats — a flat "deh" and a pure "mo," neither of them stressed.

でも /de.mo/

demo

Two morae, equal in length, with the accent on the first so de is high and mo falls. Because this word typically begins a sentence, English speakers give it the emphatic launch they'd give "But—": a loud, drawn-out first syllable. Japanese keeps it short and lets the pitch fall do the work.

Listen: でも

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Sound it out

de Dental d into a fixed front e. English speakers automatically slide toward "day"; keep the tongue still for the whole vowel.

mo The m gives way to a mid-back o with no closing glide. English "mo-" in "mobile" drifts toward w at the end; this stops where it starts.

Hear it in a sentence

行きたいです。でも時間がありません。

Ikitai desu. Demo jikan ga arimasen.

I'd like to go, but I don't have time.

Listen: 行きたいです。でも時間がありません。

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行きたいです。でも時間がありません。 places it at the head of the second sentence, where you can hear it isn't a heavy word. In the first sentence, 行きたい is four morae (i-ki-ta-i) with the ki often devoiced between voiceless consonants and the final ta-i kept as two separate beats — so the pair of sentences drills devoicing and vowel separation before でも even arrives.

Where English speakers slip

The two habitual errors are diphthongising the e into "day" and stretching the whole word for rhetorical weight, giving "DAY-mo." Both vowels are short and both are pure. If you want the contrastive force English gets from stressing "but," Japanese supplies it through the word choice itself — you don't need to lean on it.