Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "弱い" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 弱い in Japanese?

弱い is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /jo.wa.i/. It means “weak.” yo-wa-i, three beats — three different glides and vowels, none of them merging.

yo-wa-i, three beats — three different glides and vowels, none of them merging.

弱い /jo.wa.i/

yowai

There is a crest on wa, but nothing in the word is lengthened. The word is built almost entirely of glides and vowels, which makes it slippery: there are no hard consonants to anchor the beats, so the timing has to come from the vowels themselves being fully articulated.

Listen: 弱い

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Sound it out

yo A y-glide straight into a fixed o, one mora. English "yo" glides again at the end; this one doesn't.

wa Japanese w compresses the lips sideways rather than pushing them forward, then opens to a bright short a. Coming off an o, keep the two beats distinct.

i The closing beat is a lone i. Following an a with no consonant, it's exactly the sequence English turns into the vowel of "eye."

Hear it in a sentence

弟は体が弱いです。

Otouto wa karada ga yowai desu.

My younger brother is in frail health.

Listen: 弟は体が弱いです。

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弟は体が弱いです includes 体 (ka-ra-da), three crisp beats with a tap in the middle, and 弟 (o-to-u-to), four morae with a long o hiding in the middle. The sentence therefore has a held vowel early and a vowel sequence late — opposite demands on your sense of timing.

Where English speakers slip

"yo-WYE" collapses the second and third morae into one English diphthong with stress on it, giving two beats instead of three. Articulate wa clearly — lips compressed, then a real a — and then pulse the i separately. Learners also round the initial yo too much, importing the English glide that this vowel doesn't have.