Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "会社員" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 会社員 in Japanese?

会社員 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ka.i.ɕa.iɴ/. It means “office worker / company employee.” ka-i-sha-i-n, five beats — two separate vowel junctions and a closing hum.

ka-i-sha-i-n, five beats — two separate vowel junctions and a closing hum.

会社員 /ka.i.ɕa.iɴ/

kaishain

Five beats, and three of them are exactly what English deletes: two bare vowels and a nasal. This is 会社 plus 員, so if you have the three beats of 会社 secure, the compound simply adds two more without changing anything already there.

Listen: 会社員

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Sound it out

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

i A curt high vowel as its own beat, straight off the a. The first of two vowel junctions in this word.

sha A palatal hiss combined with an a in a single mora — lighter and further forward than English sh.

i A second bare i beat, arriving off that a. Two identical junctions in one word, both of which English wants to fuse.

n The moraic nasal closing the word, a full beat made far back with the mouth open.

Hear it in a sentence

私は会社員です。

Watashi wa kaishain desu.

I am an office worker.

Listen: 私は会社員です。

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私は会社員です is a very short sentence with a long word in it — watashi-wa is four morae, 会社員 is five, and です is two. Delivering all eleven beats evenly, with the shi of 私 and the su of です both devoicing, is the whole exercise.

Where English speakers slip

"kigh-SHINE" is the collapse: both vowel junctions fused into English diphthongs and the nasal absorbed, leaving two beats out of five. Pulse each i apart from the a before it, and hum the ん separately. The word is more than twice as long as English intuition suggests.