Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "歯ブラシ" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 歯ブラシ in Japanese?

歯ブラシ is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ha.bɯ.ɾa.ɕi̥/. It means “toothbrush.” ha-bu-ra-shi, four beats — the inserted u is a real mora, not a helping vowel to rush past.

ha-bu-ra-shi, four beats — the inserted u is a real mora, not a helping vowel to rush past.

歯ブラシ /ha.bɯ.ɾa.ɕi̥/

haburashi

Four beats, and the word is a hybrid: a one-beat native noun welded onto a three-beat borrowing of English "brush." There's no pause at the seam and no stress anywhere — the whole thing runs as a single flat four-count.

Listen: 歯ブラシ

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Sound it out

ha A gently shaped breath into a bright short a — this half of the word is native Japanese, meaning "tooth."

bu A clean b and the unrounded u. Japanese cannot say "br," so a vowel is inserted — and that vowel is a full beat, not a transitional sound.

ra One brief contact of the tongue tip on the ridge, then a bright short a. Never an English r, which would blur the two morae together.

shi A slight palatal hiss with an i that devoices at the end of the word, so the compound ends on friction.

Hear it in a sentence

歯ブラシは青いです。

Haburashi wa aoi desu.

My toothbrush is blue.

Listen: 歯ブラシは青いです。

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歯ブラシは青いです ends with 青い (a-o-i), three morae of pure vowel with nothing between them. So the sentence pairs a word whose length comes from an inserted vowel against one whose length comes from three vowels in a row.

Where English speakers slip

Saying "ha-BRUSH" crushes three beats into one and imports an English r. The u between b and r is a genuine mora — give it a full count with flat lips — and tap the tongue once for the ra. Learners also stress the borrowed half, which the compound doesn't want.