Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "使う" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 使う in Japanese?

使う is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tsɯ.ka.ɯ/. It means “to use.” tsu-ka-u, three beats, opening with a true affricate and ending on a bare vowel of its own.

tsu-ka-u, three beats, opening with a true affricate and ending on a bare vowel of its own.

使う /tsɯ.ka.ɯ/

tsukau

Tap three times and the word fits, with no accent to break the flatness. The word contains both of the things English speakers most reliably mis-time: an affricate that gets split into two, and a final vowel that gets absorbed into the one before it. Getting three honest beats out of it is genuinely an achievement.

Listen: 使う

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Sound it out

tsu The affricate in the hardest position — word-initial. English never starts a word with this cluster, so the instinct is to drop the t or insert a vowel. Set the tongue for t and let it release straight into the s, all in one beat.

ka A quiet k with no aspiration, then a short open a.

u Vowel alone: the unrounded u as a complete mora. It follows the a directly with no consonant, and the two must not merge into a single glide.

Hear it in a sentence

このペンを使ってもいいですか。

Kono pen o tsukatte mo ii desu ka?

May I use this pen?

Listen: このペンを使ってもいいですか。

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

このペンを使ってもいいですか shows the te-form 使って, where the tsu turns into a geminate — tsu-ka-t-te, with a silent held beat before the t releases. So within one sentence the same verb demonstrates an affricate and a doubled consonant, the two different jobs the small っ and the つ kana can do.

Where English speakers slip

"tsoo-KAH-oo" or, more commonly, "soo-KOW" — the t dropped from the affricate and the final two vowels crushed into an English diphthong. Both need fixing: keep the t audible inside a single tsu gesture, keep the lips flat, and give the closing u its own beat instead of letting it become the tail of "kow."