Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "公園" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 公園 in Japanese?

公園 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /koː.eɴ/. It means “park.” ko-o-e-n, four beats — a long o, then a bare e, then a full beat of nasal.

ko-o-e-n, four beats — a long o, then a bare e, then a full beat of nasal.

公園 /koː.eɴ/

kouen

Four slots, of which only one is an ordinary short vowel with a consonant in front of it. This word is a good illustration of how much Japanese rhythm lives in places English doesn't look: a doubled vowel, a bare vowel and a nasal beat account for three-quarters of it.

Listen: 公園

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Sound it out

kou A gentle k, and then an o sustained across two full counts. The u in the romaji marks length only.

e A short front e as its own beat, arriving directly off the long o. Two different vowels back to back with no consonant between them.

n The moraic nasal filling a whole beat, produced far back in the mouth with the lips apart.

Hear it in a sentence

毎朝公園を走ります。

Maiasa kouen o hashirimasu.

I run in the park every morning.

Listen: 毎朝公園を走ります。

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毎朝公園を走ります opens with 毎朝 (ma-i-a-sa), four morae with three consecutive vowels that must not fuse. So the sentence begins with a vowel cluster and continues with a long vowel plus another bare one — a sustained exercise in keeping vowels apart and holding them the right length.

Where English speakers slip

"KO-en" in two beats is what English produces, shortening the o and treating the n as a closing consonant. Hold the o for two counts, give the e its own pulse, and hum the nasal separately. Learners also often insert a glottal stop or a w-glide between the o and the e — there should be nothing there at all.