Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "旅行" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 旅行 in Japanese?

旅行 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɾʲo.koː/. It means “trip / travel.” ryo-ko-o, three beats — the opening りょ is a single mora, and the final o runs long.

ryo-ko-o, three beats — the opening りょ is a single mora, and the final o runs long.

旅行 /ɾʲo.koː/

ryokou

Three beats, two of which belong to the closing long vowel. The word is a good stress test because its difficulty is front-loaded — learners slow down for the りょ, which stretches the first beat and then makes the genuinely long vowel sound relatively short.

Listen: 旅行

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Sound it out

ryo The hardest mora in the word: a single tongue-tap that is already palatalised, so the tap and the y-glide happen together with the o. It is not "ri-yo" — that would be two beats — and not an English r at all.

kou A quiet k opening onto an o sustained for two full counts. The u in the romaji is purely a length mark.

Hear it in a sentence

来月日本へ旅行に行きます。

Raigetsu Nihon e ryokou ni ikimasu.

Next month I'm taking a trip to Japan.

Listen: 来月日本へ旅行に行きます。

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来月日本へ旅行に行きます uses へ, read "e" rather than "he," and 来月 (ra-i-ge-tsu) with a vowel pair and an affricate. So the sentence contains a palatalised tap, a plain tap, an affricate and a silent-letter particle — a dense few seconds of Japanese phonology.

Where English speakers slip

"ree-YO-ko" splits the first mora into two and shortens the final vowel, giving four beats in the wrong places. Produce りょ as one quick palatalised tap, then hold the closing o for two counts. English speakers who substitute their own r here also round the lips, which distorts the whole opening.