LingoDrop
Japanese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "に" in Japanese?
One beat only, "ni," with the tongue lying flat against the palate rather than tapping the ridge.
ni
One mora, and as a particle it is unaccented and rhythmically bound to the noun before it. Its shortness matters in strings of particles and counters — に is exactly half the length of a two-mora word, and letting it swell to English syllable length throws off the whole phrase.
Listen: に
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
八時に学校に行きます。
Hachi-ji ni gakkou ni ikimasu.
I go to school at eight.
Listen: 八時に学校に行きます。
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
八時に学校に行きます uses に twice, once for time and once for destination, and both instances should be equally brief and equally unstressed. Between them, 学校 (ga-k-ko-o) is four morae: a geminate っ giving a silent beat before the k, and then a long o. Two heavyweight morae flanking two featherweight particles.
Where English speakers slip
English speakers say "nee," a full-length relaxed vowel roughly twice as long as the target, and often pause before it as they would before English "at" or "to." Clip the vowel, flatten the tongue against the palate, and attach the particle to the preceding word with no gap. It should barely register as a separate item.