LingoDrop
Japanese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "手" in Japanese?
One beat: a dental t and a short flat e, with no puff of air and no glide.
te
A single mora — the whole word is one beat long. Like 目, its pitch is realised across whatever particle follows rather than inside the noun, so there's nothing to shape melodically within the word itself.
Listen: 手
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
手を洗ってください。
Te o aratte kudasai.
Please wash your hands.
Listen: 手を洗ってください。
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手を洗ってください uses 洗って with its geminate: a-ra-t-te, four morae including a beat of held silence. So a one-beat noun is followed almost immediately by a beat of pure silence — the two most easily lost units in Japanese, side by side.
Where English speakers slip
"tay" imports both an aspirated t and an English diphthong, roughly tripling the word's length. Put the tongue on the teeth, release it quietly, and hold the vowel in one fixed position for a single short beat. It should feel almost too brief to count as a word.