LingoDrop
Japanese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "どこ" in Japanese?
do-ko, two short beats with two matching o's and no rising question intonation.
doko
Give both units the same share of time; the melody starts high and drops onto the second. Because this is a question word, English speakers want to add a rising contour to it — but Japanese marks questions grammatically with か, so どこ itself stays flat and its own accent pattern is unaffected.
Listen: どこ
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
どこに住んでいますか。
Doko ni sunde imasu ka?
Where do you live?
Listen: どこに住んでいますか。
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どこに住んでいますか ends with the question particle か, which is where any questioning intonation would live — and even there, polite Japanese often keeps it level. 住んで in the middle has a moraic ん taking its own beat. So the sentence is two matched vowels, a nasal beat, and a flat ending.
Where English speakers slip
"DOH-koh" with English stress and glided vowels is the standard version, often delivered with a big upward swoop because it's a question. Freeze both o's so they don't move, match the two beats, and let the grammar handle the question. A swooping どこ sounds oddly dramatic to a Japanese ear.