Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "間違い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 間違い in Japanese?

間違い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ma.tɕi.ɡa.i/. It means “mistake / wrong.” ma-chi-ga-i, four beats — the last two are separate morae, not the diphthong of English "guy."

ma-chi-ga-i, four beats — the last two are separate morae, not the diphthong of English "guy."

間違い /ma.tɕi.ɡa.i/

machigai

The crest falls on ga, and none of the four units outlasts another. The word's difficulty is concentrated at the end, where two adjacent vowels have to stay separate; the first half is straightforward. If your version has three beats, the ga-i fused.

Listen: 間違い

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Sound it out

ma An unforced m, then a bright short a. Nothing pushed.

chi One affricate made with the tongue blade rather than the tip, lighter than the ch of English "chip," with a short tense i.

ga The g stays hard here, opening onto another short a, though many speakers nasalise the consonant mid-word toward "nga."

i One short i, unaccompanied by any consonant. This is the mora that disappears when English speakers hear "gai" and produce the word "guy."

Hear it in a sentence

この番号は間違いです。

Kono bangou wa machigai desu.

This number is wrong.

Listen: この番号は間違いです。

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この番号は間違いです contains 番号 (ba-n-go-o), four morae with a nasal beat and a long o. So the sentence pairs a word that gets its length from a hum and a held vowel with one that gets its length from an extra vowel beat — three different mechanisms in two words.

Where English speakers slip

"ma-chi-GUY" is the near-universal version, and it's wrong in two ways: the stress peak, and the fusion that turns four morae into three. Pull the ga and i apart with a deliberate pulse on each, and level out the emphasis. The chi also needs softening — English ch is heavier and more aspirated than the Japanese affricate.