English → Japanese
Japanese uses 31 sounds. You already own 14 of them from English. The other 17 are the work — and 17 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 ship (ship).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Japanese: time · written "じ ji", "じゃ じゅ じょ"
Your /d͡ʒ/ is the one in judge (judge).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Japanese: small · written "ち chi", "ちゃ ちゅ ちょ ch-"
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in church (church).
the move: postalveolar → alveolar
Japanese: moon · written "つ tsu"
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in church (church).
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 fish (fish).
the move: near-open → open
Japanese: morning · written "あ ア a"
Your /æ/ is the one in cat (cat).
the move: near-close → close
Japanese: now · written "い イ i"
Your /ɪ/ is the one in sit (sit).
the move: unrounded
Japanese: number · written "うう ū", "ウー"
Your /uː/ is the one in food (food).
the move: near-close → close-mid
Japanese: station · written "え エ e"
Your /ɪ/ is the one in sit (sit).
the move: near-close → close-mid
Japanese: sound · written "お オ o"
Your /ʊ/ is the one in book (book).
the move: open-mid → close-mid
Japanese: Tokyo · written "おう ō", "おお"
Your /ɔː/ is the one in law (law).
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 sing (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 book (book).
the move: near-open → open, longer
Japanese: grandmother · written "ああ ā", "アー"
Length is meaning: おばさん obasan is 'aunt'.
Your /æ/ is the one in cat (cat).
the move: postalveolar → palatal
Japanese: person · written "ひ hi", "ひゃ ひゅ ひょ"
German ich-Laut — h in front of i gets palatal.
Your /ʃ/ is the one in ship (ship).
the move: close → close-mid
Japanese: teacher · written "えい ei", "ええ ē"
ei is normally said as a long ē, not as two vowels.
Your /iː/ is the one in see (see).
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.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| English | Japanese | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Stress-timed | Mora-timed |
| Stress | Contrastive, and unmarked in writing — the single most common cause of not being understood. Dozens of noun/verb pairs differ only in where the stress goes, and every unstressed vowel collapses to /ə/. | 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
29 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 English 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.
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