Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "財布" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 財布 in Japanese?

財布 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /sa.i.ɸɯ/. It means “wallet.” sa-i-fu, three beats — the sa and i are separate, and the "fu" uses both lips.

sa-i-fu, three beats — the sa and i are separate, and the "fu" uses both lips.

財布 /sa.i.ɸɯ/

saifu

Three beats, evenly cut, with a crest on the middle one. The word combines two of the things English handles worst — a vowel pair that gets fused and a bilabial fricative that gets replaced — so a correct rendering takes attention at both ends.

Listen: 財布

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Sound it out

sa A short clean s into a bright open a with the jaw genuinely down.

i A short, forward i taking its own beat, arriving straight off the a. English fuses these into the vowel of "sigh"; Japanese counts two.

fu The teeth never touch the lip. Bring the two lips close together and let air pass between them — a soft breath. The u afterwards has flat lips.

Hear it in a sentence

新しい財布がほしいです。

Atarashii saifu ga hoshii desu.

I want a new wallet.

Listen: 新しい財布がほしいです。

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新しい財布がほしいです is bracketed by two long i vowels: 新しい ends on one, ほしい ends on another. Between them, 財布's three beats contain nothing held at all, which makes the two adjacent long vowels stand out clearly.

Where English speakers slip

"SIGH-foo" collapses the first two morae into a diphthong, uses an English f, and rounds the final vowel. Pulse the sa and i apart, take the teeth off the lower lip, and spread the lips for the u. All three corrections are needed in a word of only three beats.