Say it

Five rules

1. Five vowels, always the same. a as in father, i as in machine, u as in flute but shorter, e as in get, o as in hot. They never change the way English vowels do.
2. A line over a vowel makes it long. ō and ū are held for twice as long. So the first vowel of shōgun is drawn out, shoh-oh-goon run together, where English speakers often clip it to “show-gun”. English writing usually drops the line, as this site does in running text.
3. No heavy stress. English leans hard on one syllable. Japanese gives each syllable about the same length and lets the pitch rise and fall instead, so say Ka·ma·ku·ra evenly, not ka·ma·KOO·ra.
4. Double consonants are a pause. In shikken, stop briefly on the k before carrying on, as in “bookcase”.
5. A few consonants differ. g is always hard, as in go. r is a light tap, somewhere between r, l and d. tsu sounds like the end of “cats”. u and i are often almost silent between soft consonants, so a final su can sound like a plain s.

The respellings are rough guides for English speakers, not exact sounds. Where your device has a Japanese voice of its own, a Listen button appears beside each word and plays it on your device; nothing is sent anywhere. If you see no buttons, adding Japanese as a language with its speech option in your system settings usually makes them appear.

The title

Periods and places

People

Historical Japanese names are written family name first, as they are in Japan.

The novel and the series

The actors are listed as they are credited in English, given name first.

For the rest of the Japanese terms on this site, see the glossary.