Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "少し" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 少し in Japanese?

少し is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /sɯ̥.ko.ɕi̥/. It means “a little / few.” su-ko-shi, three beats — the first and last vowels both whisper away, leaving mostly hiss.

su-ko-shi, three beats — the first and last vowels both whisper away, leaving mostly hiss.

少し /sɯ̥.ko.ɕi̥/

sukoshi

Three slots, two of them essentially voiceless. This is a good word for proving to yourself that Japanese timing is measured rather than heard: the duration is unchanged whether or not the vowels carry voice, and a native version sounds thin but never rushed.

Listen: 少し

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

Sound it out

su The u sits between silence and a voiceless k, so it devoices: what you hear is an s with a vowel-shaped gap inside it.

ko The k comes out gently, opening onto a stationary o — the only fully voiced beat in the word, and the one carrying most of its audible weight.

shi A thin palatal hiss with an i that devoices at the end of the word, so it trails off on breath rather than on a vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

今日は少し疲れました。

Kyou wa sukoshi tsukaremashita.

I'm a little tired today.

Listen: 今日は少し疲れました。

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

今日は少し疲れました gives 疲れました afterwards — six morae opening with an affricate and ending in a shi-ta that also tends to devoice. So the sentence has whispered vowels at both ends of the phrase, with a fully voiced stretch in the middle. That distribution is very characteristic of natural Japanese.

Where English speakers slip

Beginners voice everything, producing "SOO-ko-shee" with rounded lips and a stressed opening. Devoicing isn't sloppiness — it's the norm. Spread the lips, let the first and third vowels drop out of voice, and keep the timing at three even counts. An over-voiced 少し sounds like it's being spelled out rather than spoken.