Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "山" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 山 in Japanese?

山 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ja.ma/. It means “mountain.” ya-ma, two short beats with two identical a's — "ya" is one mora, not "ee-ya."

ya-ma, two short beats with two identical a's — "ya" is one mora, not "ee-ya."

山 /ja.ma/

yama

Two matched beats built on the same vowel twice. In standard Tokyo speech the pitch rises from ya to ma and then drops on whatever particle follows — a pattern known as 尾高, where the fall lands outside the word itself.

Listen: 山

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Sound it out

ya The y-glide and the a are produced as a single continuous gesture occupying one beat. Splitting them into two sounds adds a mora the word doesn't have.

ma Lips meet and part, giving a second a of exactly the same quality and length as the first.

Hear it in a sentence

山に登るのが好きです。

Yama ni noboru no ga suki desu.

I love climbing mountains.

Listen: 山に登るのが好きです。

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山に登るのが好きです ends with 好き, whose two vowels both devoice into something close to "ski," and 登る (no-bo-ru) has a tap at the end. So the sentence pairs two clearly-voiced beats at the start with a nearly voiceless pair at the finish.

Where English speakers slip

"YAH-ma" stretches and stresses the first beat while weakening the second toward a schwa. Both a's should be short, bright and identical. Learners also sometimes split ya into "ee-ya," which turns a two-beat word into a three-beat one and makes it unrecognisable.