Tools/Japanese to IPA
Japanese to IPA converter
Convert Japanese text to IPA phonetic transcription. See the IPA, hear the word, and turn it into review-ready flashcards — without leaving what you are reading.
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Japanese in IPA
9 worked examples, each chosen for a sound the spelling hides.
thank you — tapped r, long final vowel
school (gakkō) — held k, long o
Tokyo — two long vowels, four morae
teacher (sensei) — moraic n, long e
Japan (Nihon) — final moraic nasal
newspaper (shinbun) — n assimilates before b
water (mizu) — unrounded u
dog (inu) — two clean morae
university (daigaku) — ai is two morae, not a diphthong
Japanese sounds to know
The symbols that come up most often in Japanese transcription, and what each one actually asks your mouth to do.
| Letter | Example | IPA | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| ら, り, る, れ, ろ | ありがとう | /ɾ/ | A single tap, between an English r, l and d. Romanised as r, but the English r is wrong every time. |
| ふ | ふじ | /ɸ/ | Made with both lips, not with the teeth. It is not the English f, and not quite an h either. |
| つ | つなみ | /t͡s/ | One affricate. English allows it at the end of a word (cats) but not at the start, which is why it feels hard. |
| し | すし | /ɕ/ | An alveolo-palatal fricative, softer and further forward than the English sh. |
| ち | ちず | /t͡ɕ/ | The affricate matching /ɕ/ — softer than the English ch. |
| じ | ふじ | /d͡ʑ/ | The voiced counterpart, romanised j. Its exact realisation varies by position in the word. |
| ん | 日本 | /ɴ/ | The moraic nasal: a full mora of its own, and it takes its place of articulation from whatever follows. |
| う | 水 | /ɯ/ | A back vowel with unrounded, compressed lips — not the rounded /u/ of English food. |
| ー, おう, ええ | 東京 | /oː/ | Long vowels count as two morae and change meaning: obasan (aunt) and obāsan (grandmother). |
| っ (sokuon) | 学校 | /kː/ | A held consonant that occupies its own mora, written as a small tsu. |
How Japanese writing maps to sound
Japanese mixes three scripts — hiragana and katakana for sounds, kanji for meaning — and a kanji can be read several different ways depending on the word. Romaji is a rough guide at best: it writes both r-sounds as r, hides vowel length behind a macron that is often dropped, and says nothing about pitch.
Which Japanese do these transcriptions show?
Transcriptions follow Standard Japanese (標準語), based on the Tokyo dialect and used in broadcasting. Pitch accent is the biggest regional difference: the Kansai pattern is often close to the inverse of Tokyo, and some regions have no lexical pitch accent at all.
Why guess Japanese pronunciation?
Japanese rhythm is built from morae, not stressed syllables, and meaning can hinge on pitch accent and vowel length rather than the consonants. Romanisation hides all of this; IPA shows the timing and the pitch-relevant length.
From Japanese text to IPA in seconds
Select the text
Highlight Japanese text anywhere — a PDF, a browser, a subtitle, a chat. Or paste it into the free web converter above.
Press Alt+Q
IPAtics detects the language automatically and shows the IPA in a floating overlay, right where you are reading.
Hear it, save it, study it
Play native audio, tap any symbol to learn it, save the word, and generate Anki cards — all in one place.
Frequently asked questions
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