Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "です" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce です in Japanese?

です is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /de.sɯ̥/. It means “to be (polite copula).” Say "dess" — the u is normally silent, whispered away between the s and the end of the breath.

Say "dess" — the u is normally silent, whispered away between the s and the end of the breath.

です /de.sɯ̥/

desu

Two morae on paper, and in slow or careful speech you really do give the su a full beat. In normal speech the devoiced u shrinks toward zero, so the word occupies roughly a beat and a half — but crucially it never becomes a stressed English-style word. It attaches to whatever precedes it and stays low and level.

Listen: です

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Sound it out

de A dental d with the tongue tip on the upper teeth, followed by a short, tense e like the vowel in "bet" — never the "day" glide English adds.

su The u here is Japanese's unrounded high back vowel, and at the end of an utterance it routinely loses its voicing entirely. What survives is the s: a clean, sustained hiss with no lip rounding.

Hear it in a sentence

私は学生です。

Watashi wa gakusei desu.

I am a student.

Listen: 私は学生です。

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私は学生です puts です where it always lives, at the very end. Notice that 学生 already ends in a long "ei" that in practice is a held "ee" sound (gaku-see), so the sentence gives you a long vowel followed immediately by the devoiced です — a nice pairing of "hold this one" and "drop this one" in the space of two words.

Where English speakers slip

The classic mistake is a fully pronounced "DEH-soo," with a rounded oo and a punch on the first syllable. Native speakers say something much closer to "dess." Round your lips for that u and you get a foreign-sounding word instantly; keep the lips flat, let the vowel go voiceless, and don't stress it — です is grammatical furniture, not a word you emphasise.