Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "手伝う" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 手伝う in Japanese?

手伝う is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /te.tsɯ.da.ɯ/. It means “to help.” te-tsu-da-u, four beats, with a proper affricate in second place and a bare vowel at the end.

te-tsu-da-u, four beats, with a proper affricate in second place and a bare vowel at the end.

手伝う /te.tsɯ.da.ɯ/

tetsudau

The crest sits on da; all four units are the same length. The word combines both of Japanese's classic English-speaker traps in one place — an affricate that gets split and a final vowel that gets absorbed — so producing four honest beats requires attention at both ends.

Listen: 手伝う

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Sound it out

te Dental t into a short front e that stays in one position. No glide toward "tay."

tsu A single affricate, not t plus s. Coming right after another t-initial mora, the tongue is already in position — release straight into the hiss without letting a vowel sneak in between.

da A dental d into a bright short a, cleanly released.

u A bare unrounded u as its own mora, following the a with nothing between. It's the beat English speakers most often lose.

Hear it in a sentence

ちょっと手伝ってくれませんか。

Chotto tetsudatte kuremasen ka?

Could you help me for a moment?

Listen: ちょっと手伝ってくれませんか。

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

ちょっと手伝ってくれませんか opens with ちょっと, four morae including a geminate silent beat, and then 手伝って adds another geminate: te-tsu-da-t-te, five morae. Two held silences in one short request is a lot of pure time, and rushing either of them is what makes a beginner's Japanese sound clipped.

Where English speakers slip

"tet-soo-DOW" gathers every error: the affricate split across a boundary, a rounded u, a stressed third beat, and the final two morae fused into an English diphthong. Keep the tsu whole and flat-lipped, level the emphasis, and pulse the closing a and u apart until four beats are automatic.