Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "すぐに" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce すぐに in Japanese?

すぐに is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /sɯ.ɡɯ.ɲi/. It means “immediately / right away.” su-gu-ni, three beats — two unrounded u's in a row and a palatalised n at the end.

su-gu-ni, three beats — two unrounded u's in a row and a palatalised n at the end.

すぐに /sɯ.ɡɯ.ɲi/

sugu ni

Crest on the first, with all three units cut the same. Two consecutive u vowels make this an unforgiving test of lip position: if either one rounds, the word takes on an English colour immediately, and the pair should sound indistinguishable from each other.

Listen: すぐに

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

Sound it out

su Crisp s into the flat-lipped u. A voiced g follows, so this vowel keeps its voice rather than whispering away.

gu A plain hard g gives way to a second u identical to the first. Many Tokyo speakers nasalise this consonant mid-word toward "ngu."

ni The n here is palatalised — the tongue blade spreads flat against the hard palate, giving a ñ quality — with a short tense i.

Hear it in a sentence

すぐに行きます。

Sugu ni ikimasu.

I'm coming right away.

Listen: すぐに行きます。

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

すぐに行きます closes with 行きます, where the ki between voiceless consonants tends to devoice. So the sentence moves from two fully voiced u's to a whispered i in the space of five beats — a compact illustration of how conditional Japanese voicing is.

Where English speakers slip

"SOO-goo-nee" rounds both u's, stresses the first beat, and stretches the final i. The rounding is the loudest error: Japanese u is made with the lips flat and slightly spread, and doubling that mistake across two consecutive morae makes the whole word sound foreign. Check your lips in a mirror.