Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "が" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce が in Japanese?

が is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɡa/. It means “subject marker.” One beat, a hard g into an open short a — though many Tokyo speakers soften it to a nasal "nga" mid-sentence.

One beat, a hard g into an open short a — though many Tokyo speakers soften it to a nasal "nga" mid-sentence.

が /ɡa/

One mora, no accent. Its rhythmic behaviour is the same as every other particle: it fuses onto the preceding noun so that the noun plus が forms one uninterrupted string of beats. If the noun is unaccented, が stays high; if the noun's pitch has already dropped, が stays low.

Listen: が

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Sound it out

ga At the start of a word this is a plain hard g as in "garden," but as a particle in mid-sentence a large number of speakers produce it as a velar nasal, closer to the ng in "singer." Both are correct; the nasal version sounds more relaxed and more Tokyo. The a is short and bright either way.

Hear it in a sentence

だれが来ますか。友達が来ます。

Dare ga kimasu ka? Tomodachi ga kimasu.

Who's coming? A friend is coming.

Listen: だれが来ますか。友達が来ます。

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だれが来ますか。友達が来ます。 uses the particle twice in two short sentences, which lets you hear it in both positions — after a one-word question word and after a three-mora noun. In the second instance, 友達が is four morae running straight into 来ます with no break, and the が is the least prominent thing in the whole line.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers pronounce it as a full stressed "gah," often with a pause before it, because English marks grammatical boundaries with timing. Japanese doesn't — the particle is phonologically part of the noun phrase. Shorten it, attach it, and if you want to sound more natural, try the nasal "nga" version that native Tokyo speakers use in mid-sentence.