Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "驚く" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 驚く in Japanese?

驚く is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /o.do.ɾo.kɯ̥/. It means “to be surprised.” o-do-ro-ku, four beats — three of them on the same vowel, and a final u that whispers.

o-do-ro-ku, four beats — three of them on the same vowel, and a final u that whispers.

驚く /o.do.ɾo.kɯ̥/

odoroku

Four beats, three of which carry the same vowel. Standard speech gives the word a crest early, but the durations stay locked — and since the last beat is often voiceless, the audible part of the word is dominated by that repeated o.

Listen: 驚く

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Sound it out

o A short stationary mid-back vowel opening the word with no glide.

do A d formed against the upper teeth — tongue on the teeth, not the ridge — with an identical o.

ro One light touch of the tongue tip, then a third matching o. The tap and the d before it are made in nearly the same place, so the vowel between them must be clear.

ku A soft k with an unrounded u that devoices at the end of the word.

Hear it in a sentence

そのニュースに驚きました。

Sono nyuusu ni odorokimashita.

I was surprised by the news.

Listen: そのニュースに驚きました。

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

そのニュースに驚きました contains ニュース (nyu-u-su), four morae with a palatalised n, a long u and a devoicing-prone final vowel. So the sentence pairs a native four-beat verb with a loanword whose length comes from entirely different sources.

Where English speakers slip

"oh-do-ROH-koo" stresses the third beat, glides the o's, and rounds and voices the final u. Freeze all three o's, level the emphasis, tap once, and let the ending devoice. With three identical vowels, an English stress pattern is unusually conspicuous.