Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "人生" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 人生 in Japanese?

人生 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /dʑiɴ.seː/. It means “life.” ji-n-se-e, four beats — a nasal beat in second place and a long e at the end.

ji-n-se-e, four beats — a nasal beat in second place and a long e at the end.

人生 /dʑiɴ.seː/

jinsei

Four slots, and only one of them is an ordinary short vowel. One beat is nasal, two belong to a single sustained e — which means three-quarters of the word's duration comes from sounds English wouldn't count as syllables at all.

Listen: 人生

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Sound it out

ji A soft voiced affricate made with the tongue blade against the palate, lighter than English j, with a short tense i.

n One count of humming, no vowel at all. Because an s follows, the tongue sits near the teeth-ridge, so this is a held n rather than the back-of-mouth version.

sei Written "sei" but pronounced as a long e: the s opens onto an e that runs for two full counts. The i in the spelling marks length, not a separate vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

人生で初めて日本に来ました。

Jinsei de hajimete Nihon ni kimashita.

I came to Japan for the first time in my life.

Listen: 人生で初めて日本に来ました。

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人生で初めて日本に来ました contains 初めて (ha-ji-me-te), four even morae, and 日本 (ni-ho-n) with a closing nasal. The sentence therefore has two moraic nasals plus 人生's long e — three beats of duration that a compressed English delivery would simply skip.

Where English speakers slip

"JIN-say" is the standard rendering: nasal reduced to a consonant, and the ending turned into an English diphthong. Hum the ん for its own beat, and then hold a pure e for two counts rather than gliding from e toward i. The "ei" spelling misleads almost everyone here.