Free Japanese accent test

Japanese has few sounds that are hard on their own; the accent comes from timing and from a handful of substitutions. Every mora takes about the same time, so a long vowel or a small っ is a full extra beat: おばさん (aunt) and おばあさん (grandmother) differ only in length, and so do きて and きって. Learners from stress-timed languages shorten the long beats and drop the held ones. The Japanese r is a quick flap, neither an English r nor an l. つ becomes "su" or "tsoo", ふ becomes an English f, and the u in です and した, which Japanese speakers whisper, gets said in full.

Pitch accent is the other part of a Japanese accent. This test scores the sounds and timing of five words; it does not give a separate pitch-accent grade. For pitch, a dedicated pitch-accent dictionary such as OJAD is the right tool, and the comparison page explains how the two fit together.

ひとり and ふたり carry the r-flap and the Japanese ふ, and ふたり often shows a devoiced u that learners pronounce in full. つぎ isolates つ. 東京 (とうきょう) is four morae with two long vowels — said as "toe-kyo" it loses two beats. ちょっと combines a small ょ with a small っ, the held beat that turns "chotto" into a three-mora word.

Read the result as a ranking: after the fifth word the test orders your words from weakest to strongest. The score is for the whole word, so a low word is a prompt to check its trouble spots — for 東京 and ちょっと that includes the timing: count the beats (と・う・きょ・う, ちょ・っ・と) and record again.

English speakers: shortened long vowels, a missing っ beat, an English r or l for ら行, and full vowels where Japanese whispers them. Spanish and Italian speakers have clean vowels but tend to roll the r and to treat long vowels and っ as optional. Korean and Chinese speakers usually manage the timing better but may blur the voiced/voiceless pairs (か/が, た/だ) and turn つ into ち or ず into じゅ.

Each of these has its own page with audio and a tip, and the guides below cover the timing problems in depth.