Turkish → Japanese
Japanese uses 31 sounds. You already own 18 of them from Turkish. The other 13 are the work — and 13 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 şeker (sugar).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Japanese: time · written "じ ji", "じゃ じゅ じょ"
Your /d͡ʒ/ is the one in cami (mosque).
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Japanese: small · written "ち chi", "ちゃ ちゅ ちょ ch-"
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in çay (tea).
the move: postalveolar → alveolar
Japanese: moon · written "つ tsu"
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in çay (tea).
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 fırın (oven / bakery).
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 anne (mother).
the move: longer
Japanese: grandfather · written "いい ī"
Your /i/ is the one in iki (two).
the move: longer
Japanese: number · written "うう ū", "ウー"
Your /ɯ/ is the one in kız (girl).
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 el (hand).
the move: longer
Japanese: Tokyo · written "おう ō", "おお"
Your /o/ is the one in okul (school).
the move: close, but not identical
Japanese: I · written "わ wa"
Barely rounded compared with English w.
Your /j/ is the one in yol (road).
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 renk (colour).
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.
| Turkish | Japanese | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed, rising to the end | Mora-timed |
| Stress | Regular by default: the last syllable, and it travels rightwards as suffixes are added (kiTAP, kitapLAR, kitaplarDAN). The exceptions are what make it a real system. Place names are stressed early, on a pattern borrowed from their shape (ANkara, İsTANbul, İZmir); many adverbs and old loans stay on the first syllable (ŞIMdi, YArın, LOkanta); and some suffixes refuse the stress and push it onto the syllable before them — the negative -me-/-ma- above all, so that the same letters can be a noun or a command. | 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 Turkish 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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