Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "簡単" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 簡単 in Japanese?

簡単 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kan.taɴ/. It means “easy / simple.” ka-n-ta-n, four beats — two of which are nasal hums with no vowel in them at all.

ka-n-ta-n, four beats — two of which are nasal hums with no vowel in them at all.

簡単 /kan.taɴ/

kantan

Four morae, half of them vowel-less. That's the striking thing about this word: English reads two syllables and delivers two beats, while Japanese spends half the word's duration on nasal resonance. The two ん are also different sounds, shaped by what follows them — one alveolar, one velar.

Listen: 簡単

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Sound it out

ka A softly released k into a short open a.

n A full mora of nasal. Because a t follows, the tongue tip goes to the teeth-ridge and stays there, so this ん sounds like a held English n — hum it for a genuine beat before releasing.

ta The dental t releases into an a identical to the first one.

n The second ん, now at the end of the word, is made much further back with the mouth still open — closer to the ng of "song" than to a tongue-tip n. Another full beat.

Hear it in a sentence

この問題は簡単です。

Kono mondai wa kantan desu.

This problem is easy.

Listen: この問題は簡単です。

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

この問題は簡単です puts 問題 (mo-n-da-i) just before it, adding a third moraic nasal to the sentence — this one before a d, so again alveolar. Four nasal beats across two words is a lot of humming, and it's the single most reliable way to tell a beginner's Japanese from a fluent speaker's: beginners skip them.

Where English speakers slip

"KAHN-tahn" in two long syllables is the English default, with the n's treated as consonants closing their syllables rather than as beats. That halves the word. Say ka, hum, ta, hum — four counts. And notice that the two hums aren't identical: the first sits at the teeth-ridge, the second at the back of the mouth.