Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "遅い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 遅い in Japanese?

遅い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /o.so.i/. It means “slow / late.” o-so-i, three beats — two identical o's and then a bare i, none of them merging.

o-so-i, three beats — two identical o's and then a bare i, none of them merging.

遅い /o.so.i/

osoi

Three beats, none longer than another, with the crest on so. The word is entirely vowel-heavy — only one real consonant in it — which makes it easy to slur into two syllables. Articulating each vowel to its full length is the only thing holding the rhythm together.

Listen: 遅い

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Sound it out

o A stationary mid-back vowel opening the word. The lips must not move during it, or you get the English "oh" glide.

so Crisp s, then an o of precisely the same quality as the first. Two matching vowels one beat apart is a reliable check on whether you're reducing.

i A stand-alone i, brief but fully counted, arriving straight off the o with nothing in between.

Hear it in a sentence

この電車は遅いです。

Kono densha wa osoi desu.

This train is slow.

Listen: この電車は遅いです。

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この電車は遅いです has 電車 (de-n-sha) before it, three morae with a nasal beat in the middle whose colour is shaped by the following sh. That vowel-less hum sits directly next to the vowel-rich 遅い, giving you the two extremes of Japanese mora structure in one short sentence.

Where English speakers slip

What emerges untrained is "o-SOY" — the last two morae collapsed into the English vowel of "boy," with a stress peak on it. Keep the o pure and stationary, then give the i its own pulse. Learners also tend to lengthen the opening o because it stands alone; it's a short beat like the others.