Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "なくす" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce なくす in Japanese?

なくす is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /na.kɯ̥.sɯ̥/. It means “to lose.” na-ku-su, three beats — and both u's usually devoice, so the tail of the word is mostly breath.

na-ku-su, three beats — and both u's usually devoice, so the tail of the word is mostly breath.

なくす /na.kɯ̥.sɯ̥/

nakusu

Three morae, evenly measured, even though two of them may be almost inaudible. This is one of the clearest demonstrations that Japanese mora timing is about time slots rather than sounds — a native speaker spends the same duration on this word whether the vowels are voiced or not.

Listen: なくす

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Sound it out

na n at the teeth-ridge into a short bright a. The only fully voiced mora in the word, and the one that carries most of its audible weight.

ku A k with no audible puff, and an unrounded u that sits between two voiceless consonants — a textbook devoicing environment, so it usually comes out as a whisper.

su A clean s and another devoiced u at the end of the word. What a listener hears is essentially a long hiss occupying its own beat.

Hear it in a sentence

財布をなくしました。

Saifu o nakushimashita.

I lost my wallet.

Listen: 財布をなくしました。

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

財布をなくしました gives the past form なくしました, six morae with a shi that also devoices between voiceless neighbours. 財布 at the front is three morae (sa-i-fu) — note the ふ, a soft bilabial fricative made by blowing gently between both lips, not the teeth-on-lip f of English "few."

Where English speakers slip

A beginner's version is "na-KOO-soo" with two fully rounded, stressed vowels, which sounds heavy and deliberate. Native speech whispers both. Spread the lips, drop the voicing on the last two morae, but keep the timing — a rushed two-beat version is just as wrong as an over-voiced three-beat one.