How to Pronounce 'こんにちは': Japanese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce こんにちは in Japanese?

こんにちは is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /koɲ.ɲi.tɕi.wa/. It means “hello.” kon-ni-chi-wa, five beats of exactly equal length. The doubled "nn" is a real held hum, not a single quick n.

How do you pronounce "こんにちは" in Japanese?

kon-ni-chi-wa, five beats of exactly equal length. The doubled "nn" is a real held hum, not a single quick n.

こんにちは /koɲ.ɲi.tɕi.wa/

konnichiwa

Five morae — ko / n / ni / chi / wa — and the metronome test is the whole exercise here: tap five even taps and place one unit on each, including the lone ん. In standard Tokyo speech the contour is flat and unaccented after a low first mora, so nothing in the word gets "punched"; the greeting rides along level and then trails off.

Listen: こんにちは

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Sound it out

ko A light k with almost no puff of air behind it — hold a hand in front of your mouth and you should feel nothing, unlike English "core." The o is a single pure vowel, not the "oh-w" glide of English "go."

n The ん is a whole beat by itself. Because a ni follows, it comes out as a held palatal hum: say "kon" and then keep humming that n for an extra full count before you release it.

ni Not the English word "knee." The tongue blade lies flat against the hard palate and the i is short and clipped — think of the ni in Spanish "niño" rather than a drawn-out "nee."

chi One indivisible affricate made with the flat of the tongue, lighter and further forward than the ch of "cheese," and again with a short, tight i.

wa The lips come close but do not pucker forward the way they do in English "water" — Japanese w is made by compressing the lips sideways. The a is bright and open.

Hear it in a sentence

こんにちは、お元気ですか。

Konnichiwa, ogenki desu ka?

Hello, how are you?

Listen: こんにちは、お元気ですか。

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In こんにちは、お元気ですか, the ですか at the end is where most learners get caught: the u of desu is squeezed between s and k and comes out voiceless, so the phrase lands as "des ka," not "deh-soo kah." Meanwhile お元気 keeps its full o- prefix as its own beat, which makes the sentence eight steady counts before the question particle.

Where English speakers slip

The near-universal English rendering is "kon-nee-CHEE-wah" — a stressed, drawn-out "CHEE" and a single flicked n. Both halves of that are wrong: the double n needs a genuine extra beat of humming, and chi is short, unstressed, and identical in length to every other mora. If your greeting has a peak in the middle, flatten it out and lengthen the n instead.