Hayane Pinyin vs Pinyin Starter

Hayane Pinyin trains the most overlooked yet pedagogically critical contrast in Mandarin pronunciation: aspiration. The pinyin pairs b/p, d/t, g/k look familiar to learners worldwide, but they don't work the way you think. Both members of each pair are voiceless. The difference is whether breath escapes after the burst — what phoneticians call Voice Onset Time (VOT). Most learners produce these stops by mapping them to similar-looking sounds in their first language (Japaneseば for pinyin b, English p for pinyin p). The result is systematic, hard-to-correct accent errors that ear-based feedback alone won't catch. Hayane Pinyin solves this with three things textbooks cannot: • Real-time VOT measurement — your pronunciation gets an exact millisecond reading the moment you finish speaking. • Three-way verdict (good unaspirated / borderline / good aspirated), per phoneme, with research-grounded thresholds. • Visual feedback: a VOT bar showing where you landed relative to native targets, plus the actual waveform of your recording with burst and voicing-onset markers. Special detection for the most common Japanese-learner error: voiced ば substitution (pre-voicing, negative VOT) is flagged in red so you can correct it directly rather than guess. Each example word is read out by high-quality on-device Mandarin speech synthesis, so you can hear the model and immediately mimic. How it works: 1. Choose a phoneme pair (b/p, d/t, g/k). 2. Listen to the model word. 3. Tap record and produce the syllable. 4. Read your VOT value, the three-way verdict, and the burst-to-voicing waveform. UI available in English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. Privacy first • Microphone audio never leaves your device — all analysis is on-device. • No accounts, no analytics, no third-party SDKs, no tracking. • Works fully offline. Built on the academic phonetics literature (Chen, Chao & Peng 2007; Li 2013; Lisker & Abramson 1964; Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996) as the design foundation, with threshold derived from native Mandarin distributions.

Pinyin Starter is a focused learning app for Chinese beginners worldwide. It helps learners build a clear foundation in Mandarin pronunciation by practicing Hanyu Pinyin step by step. The app organizes Pinyin into initials, finals, whole syllables, and tones. Each card includes audio playback, so you can listen, repeat, and become familiar with the sound system behind spoken Mandarin. Whether you are starting Chinese from zero, reviewing pronunciation, or supporting classroom study, Pinyin Starter gives you a simple place to practice the basics every day. Key features: - Learn Mandarin initials - Learn simple, compound, special, and nasal finals - Practice whole syllables - Study the four tones and neutral tone - Tap Pinyin cards to hear pronunciation - Track today’s study count and study time - Works in English and Simplified Chinese Pinyin is the first step toward reading and speaking Mandarin. Pinyin Starter keeps that first step clear, structured, and easy to repeat.