Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "買う" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 買う in Japanese?

買う is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ka.ɯ/. It means “to buy.” ka-u, two separate vowel beats — not the single "cow" sound English wants to make of it.

ka-u, two separate vowel beats — not the single "cow" sound English wants to make of it.

買う /ka.ɯ/

kau

Two morae with the accent on the first, so ka is high and u falls. Two adjacent vowels is the configuration English handles worst, since English diphthongs are single units by definition. Japanese counts them separately, and this verb is where beginners first meet the problem head-on.

Listen: 買う

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Sound it out

ka A k damped right down, with no puff of air, into a short bright a.

u The unrounded back vowel standing as its own beat. The mouth moves from a to u, but the u is a destination held long enough to be a mora, not a glide passed through on the way.

Hear it in a sentence

パンを買いに行きます。

Pan o kai ni ikimasu.

I'm going to buy bread.

Listen: パンを買いに行きます。

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

パンを買いに行きます conjugates to 買い (ka-i), so the second vowel changes but the two-beat structure survives. パン at the head is two morae with a nasal beat. Then 行きます closes with a ki that can devoice. Short as it is, the sentence exercises vowel separation, a moraic nasal and devoicing in turn.

Where English speakers slip

"cow" is exactly what comes out — one syllable, one beat, a rounded glide at the end. Japanese has neither the rounding nor the fusion. Keep the lips flat for the u, hold it long enough to hear it as a vowel, and make sure the word takes two counts. If it rhymes with an English word, something has gone wrong.