LingoDrop
Japanese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "葉" in Japanese?
One beat: a soft breath of h and a short bright a, over immediately.
ha
A single mora. Like other one-beat nouns, it carries no internal melody: the pitch pattern plays out across the particle that follows. The whole word lasts about as long as a single tap of a finger.
Listen: 葉
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
秋になると葉が落ちます。
Aki ni naru to ha ga ochimasu.
When autumn comes, the leaves fall.
Listen: 秋になると葉が落ちます。
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秋になると葉が落ちます contains 落ちます, whose chi is a light affricate, and なると with two quick beats. The one-beat 葉 sits in the middle of a sentence full of two- and three-beat words, and it should sound conspicuously brief.
Where English speakers slip
English speakers give this a full stressed syllable with a strong h, producing something like "hah." Soften the breath, shorten the vowel, and resist the urge to lengthen it for clarity. A one-mora noun is meant to be short enough that context does most of the identifying.