Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "全員" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce 全員 in Japanese?

全員 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /dzeɴ.iɴ/. It means “everyone (all members).” ze-n-i-n, four beats — the apostrophe in "zen'in" warns you that the ん and the i are separate.

ze-n-i-n, four beats — the apostrophe in "zen'in" warns you that the ん and the i are separate.

全員 /dzeɴ.iɴ/

zen'in

Four slots, half of them nasal. This word is the classic demonstration of why Japanese romanisation needs an apostrophe: without it, zenin would read as ze-ni-n, three beats, a completely different rhythm. Keep the nasal and the following vowel apart and the four-count survives.

Listen: 全員

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Sound it out

ze Word-initially this is a voiced affricate closer to "dz" than to a plain z, opening onto a short front e.

n A full beat of nasal — and a tricky one, because a vowel follows rather than a consonant. With nothing to assimilate to, it stays a back-of-the-mouth hum, and it must not turn into the onset of the next mora.

i A short tense vowel starting its own beat. The whole point of the apostrophe in the romaji is that this is "n" plus "i," not the mora "ni."

n A second nasal beat closing the word, made far back with the mouth open.

Hear it in a sentence

全員が集まりました。

Zen'in ga atsumarimashita.

Everyone has gathered.

Listen: 全員が集まりました。

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全員が集まりました follows with 集まりました, six morae including a tap and a devoicing-prone shi at the end. So the sentence opens with two nasal beats in four morae and then runs six mostly-voiced ones — a long line where the temptation to compress the opening is strong.

Where English speakers slip

The instinct is "ZEN-in" in two syllables, or worse, "ze-NEEN" with the nasal absorbed into the following vowel. Both drop beats. Hum the first ん to completion, then start the i cleanly — a tiny break helps at first — and finish on a second full beat of nasal.