Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "悪い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 悪い in Japanese?

悪い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /wa.ɾɯ.i/. It means “bad.” wa-ru-i, three beats — the final i is its own mora, not a glide off the ru.

wa-ru-i, three beats — the final i is its own mora, not a glide off the ru.

悪い /wa.ɾɯ.i/

warui

The i at the end is a beat like any other — three units, all the same, with the melody peaking on ru. This is the standard shape of an i-adjective, and the final i is a full mora rather than a suffix — treating it as a tail rather than a beat is what makes learner adjectives sound rushed.

Listen: 悪い

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Sound it out

wa The lips compress sideways rather than protruding, then open to a bright short a. Lighter than the English w in "water."

ru One quick strike of the tongue tip on the ridge, then the flat-lipped u. Rounding this vowel is the single most common error in the word.

i Vowel only: a short i filling one whole slot, arriving directly off the u. Two vowels in adjacent morae with no consonant between them — keep them apart.

Hear it in a sentence

今日は天気が悪いです。

Kyou wa tenki ga warui desu.

The weather today is bad.

Listen: 今日は天気が悪いです。

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今日は天気が悪いです pairs it with 天気 (te-n-ki), three morae with a nasal in the middle whose colour is shaped by the following k. Then 悪いです ends with a devoiced su. Between them, the sentence has a vowel-less mora, a vowel-only mora, and a whispered one — the full range in a single line.

Where English speakers slip

"wa-ROO-ee" gathers the usual faults: a stressed rounded middle beat and a long final vowel. Flatten the lips for the u, tap once instead of curling the tongue, and clip that closing i to a single short beat. Learners who stretch the final i of an adjective end up sounding like they're being deliberately emphatic.