Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "人" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 人 in Japanese?

人 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /çi̥.to/. It means “person.” hi-to, two beats — and the first vowel usually devoices, so it can sound close to "h'to."

hi-to, two beats — and the first vowel usually devoices, so it can sound close to "h'to."

人 /çi̥.to/

hito

Two slots, both short, with the crest on the first. Because the opening vowel is so often whispered away, the word can sound like a single syllable — but it still occupies two counts, and squeezing it into one makes it hard to recognise in compounds.

Listen: 人

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Sound it out

hi The palatal h, with friction on the roof of the mouth rather than in the throat. Sitting before a voiceless t, this vowel is a strong devoicing candidate and often survives as pure hiss.

to Dental t released quietly into a stationary short o. This is the beat carrying most of the word's audible substance.

Hear it in a sentence

彼女はいい人です。

Kanojo wa ii hito desu.

She's a good person.

Listen: 彼女はいい人です。

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

彼女はいい人です puts 人 after いい, a long i held for two beats. That gives you a sustained vowel running directly into a whispered one — the two extremes of Japanese vowel behaviour, adjacent, with the timing unchanged across both.

Where English speakers slip

"HEE-toe" gets everything wrong: a throaty h, a long stressed vowel, and a diphthongised o. Move the h's friction to the palate, let the i devoice, and freeze the o. Learners also confuse this with the 一 in 一人; both start with the same palatal h, but this word is two beats and that one is three.