German → Japanese
Japanese uses 31 sounds. You already own 19 of them from German. The other 12 are the work — and 11 of those are the dangerous kind: close enough to something you already say that you will substitute them without hearing yourself do it.
The silent swaps
Your mouth has something close enough to reach for. These survive for years precisely because they sound right to you — the fix is hearing the difference first, not trying harder.
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Japanese: sushi · written "し shi", "しゃ しゅ しょ sh-"
Not English 'sh' — tongue flatter and further forward.
Your /ʃ/ is the one in Schule (school).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Japanese: small · written "ち chi", "ちゃ ちゅ ちょ ch-"
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in Deutsch (German).
the move: labiodental → bilabial
Japanese: winter · written "ふ fu"
Blow gently between the lips. Teeth never touch — this is not English f.
Your /f/ is the one in Vater (father).
the move: near-close → close
Japanese: now · written "い イ i"
Your /ɪ/ is the one in Kind (child).
the move: close, but not identical
Japanese: station · written "え エ e"
Your /eː/ is the one in See (lake).
the move: close, but not identical
Japanese: sound · written "お オ o"
Your /oː/ is the one in Brot (bread).
the move: unrounded
Japanese: number · written "うう ū", "ウー"
Your /uː/ is the one in gut (good).
the move: close, but not identical
Japanese: I · written "わ wa"
Barely rounded compared with English w.
Your /j/ is the one in ja (yes).
the move: velar → uvular
Japanese: book · written "ん n"
A beat of its own, and it changes colour: [m] before p/b/m, [n] before t/d/n, [ŋ] before k/g, uvular [ɴ] at the end.
Your /ŋ/ is the one in singen (to sing).
the move: near-close → close, unrounded
Japanese: sea · written "う ウ u"
Say /u/ but DON'T round your lips. The commonest giveaway of a foreign accent.
Your /ʊ/ is the one in Mutter (mother).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Japanese sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
Genuinely new
Nothing in German sits close to these. They sound foreign in your mouth — which is the good news: you can hear that you are not saying them yet.
cherry blossom
One tap — between an English r, l and d. Never the English r.
Closest thing you own: — but plosive → tap.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| German | Japanese | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Stress-timed | Mora-timed |
| Stress | Contrastive in a very German way: with separable-vs-inseparable prefix verbs, the stress tells you which grammar you are in — and therefore what the sentence means. Otherwise stress sits on the stem syllable, and the unstressed prefixes (be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent-) never take it. | No stress in the English sense — syllables are not louder or longer, so a Japanese speaker reading English tends to flatten it, and an English speaker reading Japanese tends to hammer syllables that should be even. |
What you have that Japanese doesn't
24 sounds with no job in Japanese. They are not mistakes — but they are where an accent leaks in, because a sound you own is easy to use when a hard one is due.
The honest caveat
This is a prediction from the shape of two sound systems, not a recording of you. It says what your inventory makes likely — it cannot know that your German has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned Japanese from someone whose accent you copied. A teacher listening to you beats it. Use it to know what to listen for.
Other first languages: English · French · Spanish · Portuguese · Italian · Georgian · Russian · Hindi · Mandarin Chinese · Cantonese · Vietnamese · Korean · Malay · Turkish