Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "汚い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 汚い in Japanese?

汚い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ki̥.ta.na.i/. It means “dirty.” ki-ta-na-i, four beats, opening with a devoicing-prone ki and closing on a lone i.

ki-ta-na-i, four beats, opening with a devoicing-prone ki and closing on a lone i.

汚い /ki̥.ta.na.i/

kitanai

Four beats, evenly cut, with the crest on ta. The first mora is often whispered and the last is a bare vowel, which means half the word offers very little for an English ear to grab — the timing has to be counted rather than felt.

Listen: 汚い

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Sound it out

ki A palatally-coloured k with a short i that often loses its voicing before the following voiceless t — so the word can begin on little more than a puff.

ta Dental t with a quiet release into a bright short a.

na An n against the ridge behind the upper teeth, then an a identical to the one before it.

i The final beat is a naked vowel, arriving straight off the a. It must not merge with it into the English "eye."

Hear it in a sentence

手が汚いです。

Te ga kitanai desu.

My hands are dirty.

Listen: 手が汚いです。

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手が汚いです opens with 手 (te), a single mora, which is about as short as a Japanese noun gets. Set against the four beats of 汚い, that one-mora word shows the range: a whole noun occupying a quarter of the adjective's length, with no compensating stretch anywhere.

Where English speakers slip

Expect your first attempt to sound like "kee-ta-NIGH" — a long opening vowel, stress at the end, and the last two morae fused. All three need work: whisper the ki, level the beats, and pulse the final i separately. The two a's should also be identical, which English resists doing with repeated vowels.