Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "読む" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 読む in Japanese?

読む is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /jo.mɯ/. It means “to read.” yo-mu, two brief beats, with a fixed o and unrounded lips on the u.

yo-mu, two brief beats, with a fixed o and unrounded lips on the u.

読む /jo.mɯ/

yomu

Pitch high on the first, low on the second; the lengths match exactly. It's worth practising against 飲む (nomu), which has the same second mora and the same shape — the pair differs only in the first consonant, so any distortion in your timing will make them harder for a listener to tell apart.

Listen: 読む

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Sound it out

yo A y-glide straight into a stationary mid-back o. The vowel must not drift toward a w at the end the way English "yo" does.

mu Lips closed for the m, then immediately spread for the unrounded u. Leaving them rounded produces an English "moo" that sounds noticeably foreign.

Hear it in a sentence

本を読むのが好きです。

Hon o yomu no ga suki desu.

I like reading books.

Listen: 本を読むのが好きです。

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

本を読むのが好きです ends with 好き, whose two vowels both devoice into something close to "ski," and です, which devoices again. So the sentence starts with clearly voiced morae in 本を読む and dissolves into whispers at the end — a good demonstration of how Japanese distributes voicing across a sentence.

Where English speakers slip

An English mouth delivers "YO-moo": a diphthong on the o, rounding on the u, and stress on the first beat. Freeze the lips during the o so it can't glide, then spread them for the u. Both beats should be equally short — this is a two-mora word, roughly as long as the English syllable "yome."