How to Pronounce '見つける': Japanese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 見つける in Japanese?

見つける is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /mi.tsɯ.ke.ɾɯ/. It means “to find.” mi-tsu-ke-ru, four even beats, with a genuine tsu affricate in second position.

How do you pronounce "見つける" in Japanese?

mi-tsu-ke-ru, four even beats, with a genuine tsu affricate in second position.

見つける /mi.tsɯ.ke.ɾɯ/

mitsukeru

Nothing in this word gets promoted: four identical slots, and an unaccented contour that rises after mi and stays flat. Four-beat words are where English rhythm does the most damage, because English almost never lets four syllables pass without promoting one of them. Japanese does exactly that.

Listen: 見つける

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Sound it out

mi A brief m into a short tense i. Clipped — this is only a quarter of the word.

tsu One sound, not two: the t seal releases directly into the s. Here it sits between vowels, which makes it slightly easier than word-initially, but English speakers still tend to insert a vowel and turn it into "t'soo."

ke An unaspirated k into a fixed short e. No glide toward "kay."

ru Single tap, flat-lipped u — the standard verb ending, unchanged from every other verb you've met.

Hear it in a sentence

いい店を見つけました。

Ii mise o mitsukemashita.

I found a good shop.

Listen: いい店を見つけました。

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いい店を見つけました starts with いい, a long i held for two beats, then 店 (mi-se), then the verb in its past form 見つけました — six morae. The sentence therefore opens with a deliberately held vowel and then asks for six absolutely level ones. If your final verb speeds up, the long vowel at the start will sound out of proportion.

Where English speakers slip

Beginners produce "mit-SOO-keh-roo": the affricate split across a syllable boundary, a rounded u, and English stress on the second beat. Keep the tsu whole, keep the lips flat, and refuse to let any of the four beats grow. Because the word is long, the temptation to add an English stress peak is stronger here than on shorter verbs.