Accent guides

Your accent isn’t the problem. Some sound contrasts are.

sayit doesn’t score you against a single “native” accent. It flags the specific sound contrasts that change what a listener understands — and stays quiet about everything else. Read the 40-word passage on the right and see which ones, if any, are actually yours.
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Who this is for

If English isn't your first language, start here

Every first language leaves a few specific, well-documented fingerprints on English pronunciation — not because of effort or talent, but because some English sound contrasts simply don’t exist, or work differently, in the language a learner grew up speaking. Knowing which two or three apply to you is faster than guessing across all 44 English sounds.

What sayit actually checks

A verdict on every word you say, and — when a sound is off — your IPA next to the target IPA. It never marks a word wrong for sounding like it came from India, Lagos, Manila or Warsaw. It marks a word only when the sound that changed is one a listener would hear as a different word.
20 languages

Find your first language

Indo-Aryan

Hindi

For most Hindi speakers, three things do the most damage to clarity: v and w collapsing into one sound, th coming out as a dental t or d, and English's retroflex-free t/d landing too far back in the mouth. Fix those three first.

Urdu

Urdu shares most of its sound system with Hindi, so the biggest three are the same: v and w merging into one sound, th becoming a dental t or d, and retroflex t/d landing in the wrong place in the mouth. Urdu's Persian and Arabic loan consonants add a smaller fourth issue around g and k.

Punjabi

Punjabi's three biggest transfers into English are an inserted vowel before words that start with a consonant cluster (school becomes iskool), the same v-w merger found across the region, and a pitch pattern — left over from tones that replaced older aspirated consonants — that can land stress on the wrong syllable.

Bengali

For Bengali speakers the biggest three are v being replaced outright by b (not merged with w, but overwritten), z shifting toward the j sound, and th coming out as a dental t or d. All three change which word a listener hears, not just how it sounds.

Marathi

Marathi speakers typically carry over three things: the same v-w merger found across much of the Hindi-Urdu belt, a habit of adding extra aspiration (a small puff of air) to consonants that don't need it in English, and th coming out as a dental t or d.

Gujarati

For Gujarati speakers, the three biggest transfers are the region-wide v-w merger, vowels that nasalize more readily near m and n than English vowels do, and a schwa-deletion pattern that differs from Hindi's — Gujarati tends to drop word-final vowels that Hindi keeps, which can make English word endings land unevenly.

Dravidian
East & Southeast Asian
European & Semitic

Spanish

Spanish speakers most often transfer three things into English: b and v collapsing into one sound, an extra e added before words that start with s plus a consonant (student becomes estudent), and English's rich vowel system — especially ship vs sheep — being flattened toward Spanish's five vowels.

Portuguese

Portuguese speakers (especially Brazilian Portuguese) most often carry over three things: a short vowel inserted to break up English consonant clusters ("hot dog" gaining an extra syllable), a final l that turns into a w-like glide, and both th sounds being replaced since Portuguese has neither.

French

French speakers most often carry over three things: a uvular (throat-based) r in place of English's tongue-based r, a silent h that leads to dropping English's h entirely, and both th sounds, which don't exist in French and get replaced with s/z or t/d.

German

German speakers most often carry over three things: devoicing consonants at the end of a word (bag can sound like back, rise like rice), pronouncing English w as a German v, and both th sounds, which German doesn't have and replaces with s/z or f/v.

Russian

Russian speakers most often carry over three things: no native th (replaced with s/z, t/d, or f/v depending on the word), no native w (replaced with v), and the same final-consonant devoicing pattern found in German, which can turn bed into bet or rise into rice.

Arabic

Arabic has no p sound at all (b substitutes for it), a smaller set of short vowels than English (which flattens contrasts like pin vs pen), and word-initial consonant clusters are usually broken up with an inserted vowel, since Standard Arabic doesn't start syllables with two consonants together.

Questions

Straight answers

Will sayit mark me down for having an accent?

No. sayit scores clarity, not accent — it flags a sound only when the contrast changes what a listener would understand, never for sounding like you're from somewhere. Two accurate ways of saying the same word both score well.

How is this different from a general pronunciation checker?

These guides name the specific sound substitutions that are well documented for your first language, so you can go straight to the two or three contrasts that will move the needle, instead of guessing across all 44 English sounds.

Do all speakers of a language make these mistakes?

No — these are common transfer patterns, not universal ones. Region, education, and how long someone has spoken English all change which of these apply to any one person. Use the diagnostic line to see which ones are actually yours.

My first language isn't listed. What should I do?

Start with the diagnostic line on this page, then open the sound pages for whatever it flags. The 44-sound guide and minimal pairs work the same way regardless of where you started from.