Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "多い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 多い in Japanese?

多い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /oː.i/. It means “many / much.” oo-i, three beats — a long o held for two of them, then a short i.

oo-i, three beats — a long o held for two of them, then a short i.

多い /oː.i/

ooi

Listen for the ratio: two beats of o against one of i. That 2:1 shape is the entire word, and it's what distinguishes it from the many two-beat words that would otherwise sound similar. Length here is doing lexical work, not decorative work.

Listen: 多い

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

Sound it out

oo One continuous mid-back vowel sustained across two morae. Not two separate o's, and not a short o with emphasis added — just one unwavering sound of double length.

i A short i arriving directly off the long o, taking the third beat. There's no glide or glottal break at the junction; the vowel simply changes.

Hear it in a sentence

今日は仕事が多いです。

Kyou wa shigoto ga ooi desu.

I have a lot of work today.

Listen: 今日は仕事が多いです。

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

今日は仕事が多いです has 仕事 (shi-go-to) before it — three crisp short beats with no length at all. Coming straight after that, the held o of 多い should sound conspicuously long. If it doesn't, you're shortchanging the vowel.

Where English speakers slip

"OY" is what English produces: one syllable, one beat, the whole word collapsed into a diphthong. That's a third of the correct length. Hold the o until it feels overdone, then release into a separate short i. Learners who know the word is short in meaning often make it short in sound too — the two have nothing to do with each other.