高低アクセント·pitch accent
Japanese pitch accent
Every word in rikAI carries its accent pattern, drawn as the line the voice actually takes. Then you can say it back and be told, mora by mora, where your melody went somewhere a native reading does not.
箸［1］
chopsticks
橋［2］
bridge
The actual screens
Say it back, see where it went
Reading a pitch pattern off a page and producing one are different skills. The grader closes that gap: it listens, then plots your take against the native reading instead of just telling you a score.
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SayAny word, or a whole sentence. Tap the mic and speak — the take ends itself after a natural pause, so there is nothing to hold down.
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See itYour take laid over the native reading, mora by mora, with a verdict on how many pitch movements matched.
What is measured
Two scores, because they are two mistakes
Sounds · melody
Saying it wrong and saying it flat are different problems
One score is whether the morae you produced are the morae the word is made of. The other is whether the pitch moved where a native reading moves. Collapsing them into a single number tells you that something was wrong without telling you which thing, and the fix for each is completely different.
Timing is handled separately again: your take is aligned to the reference so that speaking slowly is not scored as speaking wrongly. What is compared is the shape of the melody, not the clock.
Where it shows up
Not a separate mode you have to remember
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On every word you tap
The panel that gives you a reading and a meaning gives you the accent pattern in the same breath, while you are reading. Pitch you only meet in a drill is pitch you forget.
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Across whole sentences
Sentences get a contour too, phrase by phrase, so you can see how the accent of a word changes once it sits inside a phrase rather than alone.
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On the Anki card
The drop number rides along into your deck as an ordinary field — stock Anki, no add-on, no accent-dictionary install. How the cards are built.
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A voice to imitate
A speaker button reads the target first, so you have something to copy before you are scored on copying it. An optional neural voice makes that model a person rather than a phone.
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Silence where there is no data
Some set phrases genuinely have no documented accent. rikAI shows nothing for those rather than drawing a plausible line — a contour you cannot trust is worse than none.
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Entirely on the phone
The accent data, the reference voice and the scoring all run on the device. Your recording is never uploaded.
Asked before
Questions about pitch accent
- What is Japanese pitch accent?
- Japanese distinguishes words by where the voice drops rather than by which syllable is stressed. はし said with the drop after the first mora is chopsticks; the same kana with no drop until later is bridge. The pattern is written as a number — ［0］ for a word that never drops, ［1］ for a drop after the first mora, and so on.
- Does rikAI show pitch accent for every word?
- For every word the accent dictionary documents, which is most of what you meet in ordinary text. Where a word has no documented pattern — some set phrases and fixed expressions genuinely have no entry — rikAI shows no number rather than guessing one. A drawn contour you cannot trust is worse than none.
- Can I practise my own pitch accent and get scored?
- Yes. Tap the mic and say the word or read the whole sentence; the take ends by itself after a natural pause, so there is nothing to hold. rikAI then scores two separate things: whether you said the right sounds, and whether the melody moved where a native reading moves — reported as which pitch movements you matched and which you missed.
- Which accent does rikAI teach?
- The Tokyo standard, which is what the accent dictionaries record and what broadcast Japanese uses. Pitch accent varies by region and to some degree by speaker, so a Kansai speaker will correctly say a word with a pattern the dictionary does not list. rikAI is scoring you against the standard, not against every valid Japanese.
- Does the pitch accent go onto my Anki cards?
- Yes, as an ordinary note field holding the drop number, so it renders in stock Anki with no add-on and no accent-dictionary install. You choose which field of your own note type receives it.
- Does the pitch grader need an internet connection?
- No. The accent data, the reference voice and the scoring all run on the phone. Your recording is never uploaded.
Where your voice goes
Nowhere
Recording, scoring and the reference voice are all on the device. Airplane mode is a supported configuration — the microphone never feeds anything but the phone in your hand.
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