Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "百" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 百 in Japanese?

百 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ça.kɯ̥/. It means “hundred.” hya-ku, two beats — the opening is a single palatalised breath, not "hee-ya," and the final u usually whispers away.

hya-ku, two beats — the opening is a single palatalised breath, not "hee-ya," and the final u usually whispers away.

百 /ça.kɯ̥/

hyaku

Two morae, with a fall after the first. The rhythmic trap is hya: because English needs two syllables to produce anything resembling that sound, learners give it two beats and the word swells to three morae. It must fit in one.

Listen: 百

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Sound it out

hya One mora, not two. The h is palatalised — the friction happens against the hard palate, sounding rather like the start of English "hue" — and it runs straight into an open a with no intervening vowel.

ku A light k, then the unrounded u, which routinely devoices at the end of a word after a voiceless consonant. Expect the word to trail off on breath.

Hear it in a sentence

これは百円です。

Kore wa hyaku-en desu.

This costs one hundred yen.

Listen: これは百円です。

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これは百円です attaches 円 to give 百円 (hya-ku-e-n), four morae with a moraic ん at the end. The ku sits between a voiceless k and a following vowel here, so it holds its voicing better than in the isolated word — a nice illustration that devoicing depends on what's next door, not on the mora itself.

Where English speakers slip

"Hee-YAH-koo" is the usual result: three beats instead of two, a stressed middle, and a rounded final vowel. Compress the h and the y into a single gesture — start the palatal friction and open straight to a — and then let the ku fade to a whisper with flat lips. Practise it against 八 (hachi) to feel how both are two beats despite looking so different.