Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "木" in Japanese?

One beat: a soft k with a palatal colouring and a short tense i.

木 /ki/

ki

A single mora — about as short as a word can be. Its pitch is realised across the following particle rather than inside the word, so 木が carries the melodic shape while the noun itself is simply one quick beat.

Listen: 木

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Sound it out

ki The k is made slightly further forward than usual because of the following i, and released with almost no air. The vowel is short, tense, and roughly half the length of English "key." One mora, and that's the entire word.

Hear it in a sentence

公園に大きい木があります。

Kouen ni ookii ki ga arimasu.

There is a big tree in the park.

Listen: 公園に大きい木があります。

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公園に大きい木があります gives 大きい, four morae made of two long vowels, right before this one-beat noun. That juxtaposition is instructive: a four-beat adjective and a one-beat noun, with no pause between them.

Where English speakers slip

"key" is roughly twice the correct length and carries English aspiration on the k. Clip the vowel hard and damp the consonant release. English speakers instinctively lengthen very short words to make them audible, which is exactly the wrong move — one-mora nouns are meant to flash past.