Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "住む" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 住む in Japanese?

住む is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /sɯ.mɯ/. It means “to live / reside.” su-mu, two short beats with two identical unrounded u's — never "soo-moo."

su-mu, two short beats with two identical unrounded u's — never "soo-moo."

住む /sɯ.mɯ/

sumu

Two identical slots, high then low. Both vowels are the same, both beats are the same length, and there's nothing else in the word — which makes it an unusually pure test of whether you're producing Japanese u correctly.

Listen: 住む

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Sound it out

su An ordinary s followed by the flat-lipped u. Because a voiced m follows, this vowel keeps its voicing rather than whispering away as it does in words like 好き.

mu Lips closed for the m and then immediately spread for the same u again. Two identical vowels in consecutive morae make any English reduction obvious.

Hear it in a sentence

東京に住んでいます。

Toukyou ni sunde imasu.

I live in Tokyo.

Listen: 東京に住んでいます。

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東京に住んでいます turns it into 住んで, where the mu becomes a moraic nasal: su-n-de, three morae with a beat of humming in the middle. 東京 at the head is four morae with two long o's. The sentence therefore opens with held vowels and continues with a held nasal — different sounds, same principle.

Where English speakers slip

"SOO-moo" — the sumo-wrestling pronunciation English speakers already know — is exactly wrong here on both vowels, which should be unrounded, and on the stress, which shouldn't exist. Spread your lips and check in a mirror: if they push forward at any point during this two-beat word, the vowel is English rather than Japanese.