LingoDrop
Japanese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "始まる" in Japanese?
ha-ji-ma-ru, four level beats, with a soft palatal j in second position.
hajimaru
Four identical slots and no accent anywhere, so the melody rises after the first and holds. This is the intransitive partner of 始める (hajimeru), which has the same four-beat shape — the two differ only in one vowel, which is another reason to keep every vowel crisp and unreduced.
Listen: 始まる
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
映画は八時に始まります。
Eiga wa hachi-ji ni hajimarimasu.
The movie starts at eight.
Listen: 映画は八時に始まります。
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映画は八時に始まります gives 八時 (ha-chi-ji), where the chi and ji sit next to each other — two affricates, one voiceless and one voiced, in consecutive morae. Getting both light and forward, without English's heavier ch and j, is the trickiest part of the sentence.
Where English speakers slip
"ha-JEE-ma-roo" is what usually comes out: a stressed, lengthened second beat and a rounded rhotic ending. Level the four beats, shorten the i, soften the j so the tongue blade rather than the tip does the work, and unround the final u. With four morae there's a lot of room for English rhythm to creep in — check the whole word, not just the ending.