Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "早い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 早い in Japanese?

早い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ha.ja.i/. It means “early.” ha-ya-i, three beats — spelled identically in romaji to 速い "fast," and pronounced the same way.

ha-ya-i, three beats — spelled identically in romaji to 速い "fast," and pronounced the same way.

早い /ha.ja.i/

hayai

Three beats of matching size. This word is a true homophone of 速い in ordinary speech — same morae, same rhythm — and the kanji is what tells them apart on the page. In conversation the context does the work, which is a reminder that Japanese tolerates far more homophony than English does.

Listen: 早い

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Sound it out

ha A soft breath shaped into h — nothing like the forceful English version — opening onto a bright short a.

ya One mora combining the y-glide with an a, produced as a single gesture. The vowel matches the one before it exactly.

i A stand-alone i taking the third beat, arriving directly off the a with nothing between them.

Hear it in a sentence

今日は早く帰ります。

Kyou wa hayaku kaerimasu.

I'm going home early today.

Listen: 今日は早く帰ります。

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今日は早く帰ります uses the adverbial 早く, where the final u devoices before the k of 帰ります. 今日 at the head is two morae with a long o. So the sentence opens with a held vowel and continues with a whispered one, both easy to lose.

Where English speakers slip

"ha-YAI" fuses the second and third morae into an English diphthong and stresses them, dropping the word to two beats. Separate them with a deliberate pulse. And keep the h light — English speakers push far more air through it, which makes a neutral adverb sound like an exclamation.