Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "楽しい" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 楽しい in Japanese?

楽しい is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ta.no.ɕiː/. It means “fun / enjoyable.” ta-no-shi-i, four beats — three short ones and a long i held for two.

ta-no-shi-i, four beats — three short ones and a long i held for two.

楽しい /ta.no.ɕiː/

tanoshii

Four beats, with half the word's duration in the final long vowel. That back-weighting is characteristic of the whole -shii adjective family, and it runs directly counter to English, which front-loads strength and lets endings fade.

Listen: 楽しい

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Sound it out

ta Dental t with a quiet release into a bright short a.

no The tongue touches the ridge for the n, then a stationary short o.

shii A restrained palatal sh followed by an i sustained across two full morae. One continuous vowel, not two — and it should still be sounding when English intuition says the word is over.

Hear it in a sentence

旅行はとても楽しかったです。

Ryokou wa totemo tanoshikatta desu.

The trip was a lot of fun.

Listen: 旅行はとても楽しかったです。

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

旅行はとても楽しかったです uses the past form 楽しかった, which contains a geminate — ta-no-shi-ka-t-ta, six morae including a beat of held silence. 旅行 at the front adds a palatalised tap and a long o. The line is dense with things English would skip.

Where English speakers slip

"ta-no-SHEE" puts a stress peak at the end and clips the vowel, losing a beat and adding emphasis simultaneously. Level the three short beats and hold the closing i for two full counts. A short final vowel makes the word sound curt — the wrong tone for something meaning "fun."