Korean → Japanese
Japanese uses 31 sounds. You already own 21 of them from Korean. The other 10 are the work — and 10 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: longer
Japanese: grandmother · written "ああ ā", "アー"
Length is meaning: おばさん obasan is 'aunt'.
Your /a/ is the one in 나라 (country).
the move: longer
Japanese: grandfather · written "いい ī"
Your /i/ is the one in 이 (this; two; tooth).
the move: longer
Japanese: number · written "うう ū", "ウー"
Your /ɯ/ is the one in 그 (that; he).
the move: longer
Japanese: teacher · written "えい ei", "ええ ē"
ei is normally said as a long ē, not as two vowels.
Your /e/ is the one in 네 (yes).
the move: longer
Japanese: Tokyo · written "おう ō", "おお"
Your /o/ is the one in 오늘 (today).
the move: alveolo-palatal → alveolar
Japanese: moon · written "つ tsu"
Your /t͡ɕ/ is the one in 집 (house).
the move: alveolo-palatal → palatal
Japanese: person · written "ひ hi", "ひゃ ひゅ ひょ"
German ich-Laut — h in front of i gets palatal.
Your /ɕ/ is the one in 시간 (time).
the move: voiced
Japanese: water · written "ざ ず ぜ ぞ z-"
Your /s/ is the one in 사람 (person).
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 강 (river).
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.
| Korean | Japanese | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed, phrase melody | Mora-timed |
| Stress | None at word level. No syllable is reduced and no vowel becomes a schwa; every syllable is said in full. What an English ear hears as stress is the phrase-initial rise. | 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
13 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 Korean 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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