LingoDrop
Japanese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "日" in Japanese?
A single beat, with the h made against the hard palate — hissier than English "he."
hi
One mora — as short as a Japanese noun gets. Its brevity is exactly what English speakers underestimate, since a single beat feels too fast to carry meaning. Nouns of one mora also do their pitch work across the following particle rather than within themselves.
Listen: 日
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
今日は暑い日ですね。
Kyou wa atsui hi desu ne.
It's a hot day today.
Listen: 今日は暑い日ですね。
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
今日は暑い日ですね uses the kanji twice with different readings: 今日 is "kyou" (two morae, one long vowel) and 日 alone is "hi" (one mora). Seeing the same character deliver two and one beats in a single sentence is a useful reminder that kanji encode meaning, not sound.
Where English speakers slip
"hee" with a plain English h and a long relaxed vowel is roughly double the correct length and the wrong consonant. Raise the friction to the palate — you should feel the hiss on the roof of your mouth — and clip the vowel hard. A drawn-out ひ sounds like a different word entirely.