Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "人々" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 人々 in Japanese?

人々 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /çi̥.to.bi.to/. It means “people.” hi-to-bi-to, four beats — note the second half starts with b, not h.

hi-to-bi-to, four beats — note the second half starts with b, not h.

人々 /çi̥.to.bi.to/

hitobito

Four beats, evenly cut. The word is 人 doubled, but the doubling isn't purely mechanical: the second copy's consonant voices to b, so the two halves sound different despite the writing suggesting otherwise. Both halves still take exactly two beats.

Listen: 人々

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Sound it out

hi The palatal h, with friction on the roof of the mouth. Before a voiceless t this vowel commonly devoices, so the word can open on breath.

to t on the teeth, quiet release, then a stationary short o.

bi Here the h of ひと has become a b. This voicing change, called rendaku, happens routinely when a word is repeated or compounded — and the 々 mark tells you to repeat the word, not the sound.

to An exact repeat of the second mora, closing the word on the same short o.

Hear it in a sentence

駅にたくさんの人々がいます。

Eki ni takusan no hitobito ga imasu.

There are a lot of people at the station.

Listen: 駅にたくさんの人々がいます。

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駅にたくさんの人々がいます pairs it with たくさん, four morae with a whispered ku and a moraic nasal. So the sentence has a devoiced vowel in each of its two main nouns, plus a nasal beat, before the verb arrives.

Where English speakers slip

The commonest error is reading the 々 literally and saying "hito-hito." Rendaku voices the second h to b. Beyond that, learners stress the third beat and stretch the final o — level all four and keep both o's short and identical.