How do you say "baseball" in Japanese?

In Japanese, "baseball" is 野球 (yakyū). It is a noun.

Listen to the pronunciation:

Illustration of baseball from Noun Town

Pronunciation

野球 is written in kanji. Romanised as yakyū, it sounds roughly like "yah-kyoo" to an English ear.

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Questions about 野球

How do you pronounce 野球?

野球 is romanised as yakyū. Say it roughly like "yah-kyoo" in English. Each Japanese syllable has even weight, so keep the rhythm steady.

Is 野球 formal or casual?

野球 is a neutral, everyday word that works in both casual and polite speech. The level of formality comes from the sentence structure around it, not from the word itself.

How is 野球 written in Japanese?

野球 is written using kanji. Kanji characters carry the core meaning; any hiragana or katakana that follow show grammatical endings.

This word is part of the vocabulary taught in the Japanese language learning game Noun Town, where words are introduced through play rather than memorisation.