Hindi → Japanese
Japanese uses 31 sounds. You already own 15 of them from Hindi. The other 16 are the work — and 15 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 shaam (evening).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Japanese: time · written "じ ji", "じゃ じゅ じょ"
Your /d͡ʒ/ is the one in jaanaa (to go).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Japanese: small · written "ち chi", "ちゃ ちゅ ちょ ch-"
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in caay (tea).
the move: postalveolar → alveolar
Japanese: moon · written "つ tsu"
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in caay (tea).
the move: near-close → close
Japanese: now · written "い イ i"
Your /ɪ/ is the one in din (day).
the move: close, but not identical
Japanese: morning · written "あ ア a"
Your /aː/ is the one in aam (mango).
the move: close, but not identical
Japanese: station · written "え エ e"
Your /eː/ is the one in ek (one).
the move: close, but not identical
Japanese: sound · written "お オ o"
Your /oː/ is the one in do (two).
the move: unrounded
Japanese: number · written "うう ū", "ウー"
Your /uː/ is the one in duudh (milk).
the move: voiced
Japanese: water · written "ざ ず ぜ ぞ z-"
Your /s/ is the one in saal (year).
the move: close, but not identical
Japanese: I · written "わ wa"
Barely rounded compared with English w.
Your /ʋ/ is the one in vah (he, she, that).
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 kuchh (something).
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 shaam (evening).
the move: alveolar → bilabial
Japanese: winter · written "ふ fu"
Blow gently between the lips. Teeth never touch — this is not English f.
Your /s/ is the one in saal (year).
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 Hindi 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.
book
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.
Closest thing you own: — but retroflex → uvular.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| Hindi | Japanese | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed, with deletion | Mora-timed |
| Stress | Not contrastive and not written. Stress falls on the heaviest syllable — a long vowel or a closed syllable outweighs a short open one — and where several are equal it goes to the last of them. No two Hindi words are told apart by stress alone, which makes it the least stressful stress system here. | 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
26 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 Hindi 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 · German · Italian · Georgian · Russian · Mandarin Chinese · Cantonese · Vietnamese · Korean · Malay · Turkish