Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "怖い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 怖い in Japanese?

怖い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ko.wa.i/. It means “scary / to be afraid of.” ko-wa-i, three beats — a compressed w and a final i that stands on its own.

ko-wa-i, three beats — a compressed w and a final i that stands on its own.

怖い /ko.wa.i/

kowai

A three-count with every unit alike, with a crest on the middle one. The word is nearly all vowels and glides, so there's little consonantal structure to hang the rhythm on — each vowel has to be given its full value to keep the three-count intact.

Listen: 怖い

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Sound it out

ko A soft k with no burst, then a stationary short o.

wa Japanese w squeezes the lips sideways rather than pushing them forward, then opens to a bright short a.

i One clipped i taking the final beat, arriving straight off the a with nothing between them.

Hear it in a sentence

子供は暗いところを怖がっています。

Kodomo wa kurai tokoro o kowagatte imasu.

The child is scared of dark places.

Listen: 子供は暗いところを怖がっています。

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

子供は暗いところを怖がっています uses 怖がって with a geminate and 暗い (ku-ra-i), which has its own vowel pair at the end. So the sentence asks you to keep two separate a-i sequences apart and to hold a silent beat in between.

Where English speakers slip

"ko-WHY" fuses the last two morae into an English diphthong with stress on it, leaving two beats instead of three. Pulse them apart. English speakers also round the w too hard — Japanese compresses the lips, which makes the sound lighter and shorter than its English counterpart.