🎌 Japanese Phoneme Trainer

Japanese vowels can be short (1 mora) or long (2 mora). Holding the vowel for exactly one extra beat changes the meaning entirely. Click each word to hear the difference. The words below are minimal pairs — identical except for vowel length.

The small っ represents a silent pause of exactly one mora. Hold your breath briefly before the next consonant.
Example: き・て = 2 beats  |  き・っ・て = 3 beats (the っ is a held pause, not a sound).
The boxes below show the mora beats — the red box ■ is the pause.

Japanese ら行 is a single quick flap — the tip of your tongue lightly taps just behind the upper teeth and immediately drops.
❌ NOT English "r" — don't curl your tongue back.
❌ NOT English "l" — don't press your tongue against your teeth firmly.
✅ Like the quick "r/d" in American English butter or ladder.

Standard Tokyo Japanese uses pitch accent: each mora is either HIGH ■ or low ■. Wrong pitch makes you sound unnatural and can change meaning (e.g. 雨 rain vs 飴 candy — same sounds, different pitch).
The blocks below show the H/L pattern. Click any card to hear it.
⚠ TTS limitation: voices often can't distinguish pitch on a single word in isolation. Use the purple sentence buttons below each pair — hearing the word in a full sentence produces much more natural pitch.
For human recordings: OJAD (ojad.eng.hokudai.ac.jp) or Forvo (forvo.com).

A kana sound is played — click the correct character. Score is tracked for this session.

How to use: Click ▶ Hear it to listen, then click 🎤 Speak and say the word aloud. The recognizer will transcribe what it heard and compare it to the target word.
Requires Chrome + microphone permission. Works best with words of 2+ mora.