Listening trainer: understand Japanese
Ten short tasks per round: recognise a word, hear the gap in a sentence, find the stressed syllable, tell two similar sounds apart, follow a dialogue. You decide when something plays — and whether slowly or at normal speed.
Listening closely helps you speak.
Listening trainer
Read along shows the text with every task straight away. Good for tuning in; answers then do not count, because it is no longer a listening test.
Or practise one thing
A pitch-accent exercise is left out on purpose: there is no checked data for it yet, and speech output does not get the accent right reliably. Better no exercise than one that trains the wrong thing.
Why in small steps
Listening to a new language means recognising sounds first, then where words begin and end, then the meaning. The trainer practises these steps one by one — and together in the mixed round. Feedback comes at once, so your ear learns what made the difference.
Slow is not a step back
At the start, a slower speed demonstrably helps understanding. Feel free to hear a task twice, slowly first and then at normal speed: the goal is normal speed, but the way there can be slow.
Why different voices
If you hear words from many speakers, you later recognise them from strangers too. So the trainer switches between the voices your browser has for the language. They are speech-output voices, not recordings, and nothing plays unless you press a button.
Without sound or with hearing loss
Every task has a “Show text” button, and the “Read along” switch always shows the text. Everything works from the keyboard: Tab to the buttons, digits for the answers, Enter to go on.
Example sentences
N5 六日から学校が始まります。School starts on the 6th.
N5 どこが痛いですか。Where does it hurt?
N5 パン屋さんの朝はとても早いです。A baker's day starts very early.
N4 先日はありがとうございました。Thank you for the other day.
N4 では、テストを始めてください。Right, please begin the test.
N4 普段は家で料理をしますが、たまに外で食べます。I usually cook at home, but once in a while I eat out.
N3 父を説得して、留学を許してもらいました。I persuaded my father to let me study abroad.
N3 混んでいる電車では、優先席を必要な人に譲りましょう。On a crowded train, leave the priority seats to the people who need them.
N3 母は父が亡くなった五年後に再婚した。My mother remarried five years after my father died.
N2 システム障害のため、一時サービスを停止しております。Owing to a system failure, the service has been temporarily suspended.
N2 不適切な投稿を見つけたら、運営に報告してください。If you find an inappropriate post, please report it to the people who run the site.
N2 物価の上昇が、家計をじわじわと苦しめている。Rising prices are slowly squeezing household budgets.