Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "鏡" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 鏡 in Japanese?

鏡 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ka.ɡa.mi/. It means “mirror.” ka-ga-mi, three even beats — two matching a's and a clipped final i.

ka-ga-mi, three even beats — two matching a's and a clipped final i.

鏡 /ka.ɡa.mi/

kagami

Three identically-cut units, and standard speech leaves the word unaccented so the pitch steps up after ka and runs level. The two a's in the first two beats should be indistinguishable from one another.

Listen: 鏡

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Sound it out

ka A quiet k with no burst of air, then a bright short a.

ga A fully hard g, giving a second a exactly matching the first — or the nasalised "nga" many Tokyo speakers prefer mid-word.

mi A brief lip closure, giving a short tense i about half the length of English "me."

Hear it in a sentence

毎朝鏡を見ます。

Maiasa kagami o mimasu.

I look in the mirror every morning.

Listen: 毎朝鏡を見ます。

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

毎朝鏡を見ます opens with 毎朝 (ma-i-a-sa), four morae with three consecutive vowels that must not fuse. So the sentence begins with a vowel-separation problem and continues with a word that simply needs three flat, even beats.

Where English speakers slip

"ka-GAH-mee" stresses the middle, stretches it, and doubles the final i. Match the two a's, level the emphasis, and clip the last vowel. The word is easy to say slowly and hard to keep even at speed — practise it faster than feels comfortable, checking that no beat swells.