Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "長い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 長い in Japanese?

長い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /na.ɡa.i/. It means “long.” na-ga-i, three beats, with the ga and i staying separate rather than becoming "guy."

na-ga-i, three beats, with the ga and i staying separate rather than becoming "guy."

長い /na.ɡa.i/

nagai

The crest is on ga, and all three beats are cut to the same size. It shares its template with 高い and 若い: two short beats then a bare i. The irony of this word is that it means "long" while being rhythmically short — there's nothing held in it anywhere.

Listen: 長い

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

Sound it out

na The n is made just behind the upper teeth, then a bright short a.

ga Hard g, then a second a identical to the first. Many Tokyo speakers nasalise this consonant mid-word, giving a softer "nga" texture.

i A bare short i standing as its own beat. Two adjacent vowels with no consonant between — the configuration English cannot leave alone.

Hear it in a sentence

長い旅行でした。

Nagai ryokou deshita.

It was a long trip.

Listen: 長い旅行でした。

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

長い旅行でした pairs it with 旅行 (ryo-ko-o), three morae opening with a palatalised r-mora and closing on a long o. So the sentence contains a word meaning "long" with no long vowels, followed by a word with a genuine one — a useful reminder that Japanese length is phonetic, not semantic.

Where English speakers slip

"na-GUY" is the reflex, fusing the last two morae and stressing them. Keep three beats. Learners also over-harden the g — try the nasalised version that many native speakers use in this position, which makes the word sound noticeably more idiomatic while also making the vowels easier to keep even.