Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "飛行機" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 飛行機 in Japanese?

飛行機 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /çi.koː.ki/. It means “airplane.” hi-ko-o-ki, four beats — a palatal h at the front and a long o in the middle.

hi-ko-o-ki, four beats — a palatal h at the front and a long o in the middle.

飛行機 /çi.koː.ki/

hikouki

Four slots, two of which belong to a single sustained o. The word has three k-like consonants in four beats, so the vowels between them do all the rhythmic work — and one of those vowels is twice as long as the others.

Listen: 飛行機

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Sound it out

hi The h has its friction on the hard palate here, like the start of English "hue" rather than "hat," and the vowel is short and often devoiced.

kou The k is released gently and the o that follows runs for two full counts. The u in the romaji marks that length and is never pronounced as a vowel.

ki A third consonant in the same family, palatally coloured before the i, with a short tense vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

飛行機は一時間後に出ます。

Hikouki wa ichi-jikan go ni demasu.

The plane leaves in an hour.

Listen: 飛行機は一時間後に出ます。

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飛行機は一時間後に出ます contains 一時間 (i-chi-ji-ka-n), five morae ending in a nasal beat. So the sentence has a long vowel early and a hum later, with a run of short beats in between — a fairly typical Japanese distribution of length.

Where English speakers slip

"hee-KO-kee" gets four things wrong: a plain h, a long opening vowel, a shortened middle o, and English stress in the middle. Raise the h's friction to the palate, clip the first i, hold the o for two counts, and level the emphasis. The middle length is the one that most changes how the word registers.