How to Pronounce 'おはようございます': Japanese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce おはようございます in Japanese?

おはようございます is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /o.ha.joː.ɡo.za.i.ma.sɯ̥/. It means “good morning.” o-ha-yo-o-go-za-i-ma-su — nine beats, with a genuinely long "yoo" that takes two of them.

How do you pronounce "おはようございます" in Japanese?

o-ha-yo-o-go-za-i-ma-su — nine beats, with a genuinely long "yoo" that takes two of them.

おはようございます /o.ha.joː.ɡo.za.i.ma.sɯ̥/

ohayou gozaimasu

Nine morae is a lot to keep even, and that's precisely the discipline: o-ha-yo-o-go-za-i-ma-su, nine identical units, of which two are consumed by the single long "yoo." There is no English-style stressed peak. If you find yourself building to a climax somewhere in the middle, you've imported an English rhythm onto a phrase that wants a steady, level march.

Listen: おはようございます

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Sound it out

o A stand-alone polite prefix that gets its own full beat. Pure o, no glide, and no reduction just because it's unimportant grammatically.

ha A light breath of h — much softer than the h of English "ha!" — into an open a.

you One syllable stretched over two morae: the y-glide plus a long o held for double the usual length. Do not turn it into English "yo" plus a separate "oo"; it is one continuous ooooh.

go A hard g as in "go," though many Tokyo speakers soften it mid-word toward a nasal "ng." Either way the vowel stays pure.

za In word-medial position this is a plain z into an open a — like the middle of "lizard," not the harder "dz" you'd use at the start of a word.

i A separate beat of its own, not a diphthong with the za before it. Say "za" and "i" as two distinct pulses: za-i, never "zye."

ma Straightforward m into a clean open a, with the lips relaxed rather than spread.

su Devoiced at the end of the phrase, exactly as in です — it comes out as a trailing hiss.

Hear it in a sentence

おはようございます、田中さん。

Ohayou gozaimasu, Tanaka-san.

Good morning, Mr. Tanaka.

Listen: おはようございます、田中さん。

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

おはようございます、田中さん pairs the greeting with a name plus さん, and the join matters: nothing pauses between ございます and 田中さん except the comma's slight breath. Also note that the ざ of ございます and the さ of さん are different sounds despite looking similar in romaji — one voiced, one not.

Where English speakers slip

Two things go wrong at once. English speakers say "o-ha-YO go-ZAI-mass," chopping the long o down to a short one and merging za-i into a single "zye" diphthong. The long vowel is doing real work — hold it for two full counts — and za and i are two separate beats. Say the whole thing more slowly and evenly than feels natural and you will be closer than you think.