How to Pronounce '親切': Japanese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 親切 in Japanese?

親切 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɕin.se.tsɯ̥/. It means “kind / helpful.” shi-n-se-tsu, four beats — a nasal hum in second place and an affricate at the end.

How do you pronounce "親切" in Japanese?

shi-n-se-tsu, four beats — a nasal hum in second place and an affricate at the end.

親切 /ɕin.se.tsɯ̥/

shinsetsu

Four morae, and only two of them carry a clearly audible vowel: the nasal has none, and the final u typically loses its voicing. That means half the word is voiceless or vowel-less, yet the timing is still four even counts — a good demonstration that Japanese rhythm is measured, not heard.

Listen: 親切

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

Sound it out

shi A light palatal hiss with a short tense i. Because a nasal follows, this vowel keeps its voicing rather than whispering away.

n A full mora of nasal, made at the teeth-ridge because an s follows. Hold it — this is a whole beat, not a consonant closing the previous syllable.

se A plain s into a fixed short e. Notice the contrast with the sh at the start of the word: two different sibilants, two beats apart.

tsu One affricate, with a devoicing-prone u at the end of the word — so the final beat is mostly a sustained "ts."

Hear it in a sentence

店の人はとても親切でした。

Mise no hito wa totemo shinsetsu deshita.

The shop staff were very kind.

Listen: 店の人はとても親切でした。

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

店の人はとても親切でした ends with でした, where the shi devoices between the voiceless consonants around it, so the ending comes out close to "desh-ta." That's a second devoiced mora immediately after the one in 親切 — a run of whispered beats at the sentence's end that still occupy full time.

Where English speakers slip

"SHIN-set-soo" delivers three syllables with English stress on the first, a nasal treated as a closing consonant, and a split, rounded affricate. Three fixes: hum the ん for its own beat, keep the tsu as one gesture, and spread the lips so the final vowel devoices rather than ringing out as "soo."