I dont care about pitch accent

Japanese
#1

Basically, title (somewhat inflammatory perhaps)

I was already well into Japanese learning when I heard about the concept of pitch accent, and to be honest, for the life of me I CANNOT hear the difference between 雨 and 飴 or 橋 and 箸. I’m not tone-deaf but when it comes to Japanese I feel that I basically am.

However, pitch accent has gotten very popular in recent years, especially with YouTubers like Dogen selling pitch accent courses (or at least this what I understand that he does?)

I think if you care about having a native accent that’s fine but it now feels like (and this seems to happen with EVERY aspect of Japanese learning) that people go feral about it- you’re either pitch accent or die.

For me, I think its okay to speak with an accent. God knows there’s enough of Japanese to learn without having to learn a musical instrument or something just so I can figure out how to differentiate pitches.

That being said, if you can hear and pronounce the difference- massive kudos!

Anyway, feel free to share your opinions about pitch accent (and pitch accent discourse), cause I’m curious- how many of you are actually learning it?

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#2

hahaha. yeah, I don’t care about pitch accent either ^^ Inbetween immersion as my only goal (i dont care about speaking at all) and being quite tone deaf (i cant even hear if pitch goes up or down, just that it changes? like its going just sideways for me :sweat_smile:)

pitch accent has always been this weird thing for me, where I don’t even understand why people are fighting over it. Sure, learn it if you want, or don’t if it’s not important for you. But some people are very intense on the “learn pitch accent right after hiragana or you will never learn or understand japanese” front and thats just… huh?

personally i think pitch accent is rather optional for most learners. but some people like obsessing over it, and they should if that’s what brings them joy ^^

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#3

Yep, it has just been revealled to me that there is a thing called pitch accent in Japanese two three weeks ago, and now I have to look up all those words again for its correct pronunciation. It’s super tedious…, so I can totally understand why people don’t need pitch accent.

Sometimes, thats what learning all about, you chose what you like to learn and forgo the part you don’t like. Nobody learning Japanese HAS to learn all its things.

And yeah, every clickbaity Japanese learning videos in Youtube ever.

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#4

To be honest, I feel like pitch accent is just the most comfortable way to say a given word in its usual context :woman_shrugging:t2: it’s not as important as tones in Chinese I’ve found. It’s basically just an accent.

I actually asked on HiNative whether it matters and they basically said “nah, as long as your grammar is ok then it’s fine.”

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I always have to tell myself that language is just being able to understand and be understood, and if you’re understood who cares? I’m an American living in England, and theres quite a few people that struggle with my accent or find it a bit grating- bc of that I don’t care if I sound off in Japanese so long as people know what I’m saying :laughing:

Edit: @Chimmsen , If you ever start speaking you’ll probably have the pitch accent down with an immersion heavy study style. I recon your brain will be more wired to know what sounds natural/ comfortable :face_with_monocle:

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#5

To keep in the inflammatory spirit of the topic, you don’t HAVE to try to match a song’s pitch when singing, but your friends’ ears might bleed if you don’t even try.

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#6

Thanks! i keep saying this to my friends, too :sweat_smile:

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#7

After understanding how it works I just added pitch accent dictionary to my decks, and was still just trying to perfectly replicate sound of a native who reads the audio.
The pitch graph gave me the idea of what I actually pronounce, basically giving some sort of confirmation, it’s like a visual help for what I hear, was quite useful at first.

My goal is learning Japanese, and pronunciation is a part of Japanese, so I think learning about it makes sense for me. But I think as long as learning includes audio and a Lerner can reproduce it, it doesn’t matter too much.

On the other hand when I was staring learning French I wanted to get a perfect accent, which came to taking a nice deck with a bunch of audio and trying to guess and reproduce words perfectly, where IPA came in handy, helping me make sure I hear what’s actually there.

Another thing is, I feel like trying to identify and reproduce pitch can help with reproducing it much better then just listening to Japanese. Why I think so is because of my recent experience with music.
I really like listening to music, and decided to create a vocaloid song, jumped straight into daw, and then understood that I need to learn a bunch of staff, started learning music theory, and understood that I don’t know how to listen to music.

I started learning a relative pitch, a thing that allows hearing relationships between notes, and I started using a few apps (SET and FET ear trainers) to get going. After 3 weeks of dedicated study, I was able to identify a degree based on the tonic when it’s outside the melody (I was basically just listening and trying to identify what I hear).

I still can not transcribe even simple melodies as I want to, but there were 2 other large benefits I’ve caught.
First one was when I tried listening to my Japanese voice, and I liked it, next I’ve tried listening to my native audio and liked it as well! Something that never happened before. I think I just developed my ear well enough to start hearing myself and got accustomed to my voice.

Another one, is that I finally can sing with songs and hear if I’m in tune or not, and adjust accordingly! Not only that but I started just singing better, and my sister finally isn’t cursing me when we are trying to sing something together for fun!

After that I just came up with the idea that listening to details of pronunciation the way I did it for music, can help hearings them really well, and help hearing my own mistakes, so I notice them and fix without hesitation.

I guess that’s what people mean by saying musicians have an advantage in music. Musicians can hear what they say, and if they know how it actually should sound they can fix it as they do while practicing.

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#8

Doesn’t this come rather naturally? It’s like mispronouncing words that are new to you in English. Maybe you are reading the name of a brand and there might be different ways of pronouncing it (e.g. Adidas, Porsche, Gucci, Nutella), but eventually you stick to the one that most people say.

So this isn’t even something that requires speaking practice - just hearing people say the word enough times will make you learn it. The only requirement is being able to differentiate the pitch accent.

I’m not advanced enough to know, but my guess is that using the wrong pitch accent might lead to some confusion at first, but you would still be able to get across and comunicate normally.

Edit: Alright! I missed this

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#9

honestly, in the (too many to admit to given my ability) hours of speaking practice I’ve done, I’ve experience someone misunderstanding which word I meant due to pitch accent, maybe once ever?

now, getting the correct letters for a word but in the word order, oh yeah, every other sentence…

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#10

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#12

Ohhh boy, we gettin’ salty in the new year.

I’ve seen both the benefits and drawbacks of pitch accent over the years. Honestly, my first encounter with the acknowledgement of pitch accent in Japanese was at a language school in Tokyo several years ago. This was years before language bros packaged it up and put a price tag on it.

Over the years, I have come to realize how important it is as I had unintentionally been doing it for several years by just mimicking what I was hearing. In study groups I do correct learners pitch accent and do the same for Japanese people learning English. Not at nauseam, but more in examples where it’s necessary. In my experience I have learned alot about Japanese by acknowledging the pitch accent, but also about my own language and the pitch accent I didn’t know was there before.

As far as the negative, the internet. Dogen and Matt vs Japan created an army of elitist perfectionists who swear by certain methods and pitch accent is often in the conversation. Matt vs Japan and other language bros have spread so many lies and misinformation in order to sell courses and tout themselves as the Japanese Language Messiahs. Going as far as to say that bad pitch accent will prevent you from advancing in Japan or Japanese people taking you seriously, when that is just not true. I’ve seen foreigners with ultra heavy accents and bad pitch accent speak about economics and other high level topics on Japanese TV. Pitch accent didn’t matter then because it wasn’t the most important thing.

Personally, it is important to me, but I would never put it above Vocab, Grammar, Kanji and other essential things Japanese requires.

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#13

pitch accent and long vowels were things that took me a long time to actually hear!!! it really does just take a lot of training, ideally through immersion of course!

i do agree that it is not the most important thing. context and grammar will save you and your convo partner from misunderstandings 95% of the time.

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#14

This is a pet peeve of mine. I have a co-worker like this, who never bothered much with learning the exact pronunciation of words or which syllables are stressed and retains a thick accent despite living here for something like a decade. Yes, I can mostly understand him; no, I don’t appreciate how I still have to puzzle out everything that leaves his mouth because he can’t be bothered to learn the language or speak it intelligibly.

If your goal is just reading or watching anime, ignore the various facets of pronunciation if you want, I guess. But if you’re going to talk to other people, have some empathy for the people you’re talking to. Nobody expects a tourist, for example, to have perfect fluency or a black belt in Dōgen-fu, but it’s despicable to expect someone else to puzzle out what you’re saying if, for your part, you can’t be bothered to even TRY pronouncing words correctly. You should TRY to share in the burden of making yourself understood because intentionally dumping 100 percent of the burden on the person you’re talking at is asshole behavior.

Even if (especially if!) you find an entire forum full of people so patient and generous they insist that it’s fine, you should not intentionally abuse the patience and generosity of such kind souls. The patient and generous and kind are the LAST people you should be an asshole to! You should instead return that kindness with at least a token effort at normative pronunciation if you happen to intend to speak with them.

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#15

Is this Japanese or English? Japanese doesn’t have stress. I would argue poorly stressed English words are MUCH harder to understand than poorly pitched Japanese words.

Despite peoples assertions about this, no persons ears have bled at my Japanese, and I even got told in Kyoto that my Japanese is easy to listen to… I don’t think its that big of a problem TBH. One Japanese friend comments on my pitch sometimes, but she’s a musician and minds more than most, as every other Japanese person I know does not care.

I try in lots of other aspects of pronunciation. This is one part that lots of people deem is ok to skip. Actual Japanese people I know don’t mind. I CANNOT hear pitch accent. At all. Learning to hear pitch would be more than a “token” effort. And I already make significantly more than a token effort in learning this language, including pronunciation, but I CANNOT hear pitch and do not want to dedicate a significant portion of my time to learning to hear something I can’t. Doing that would be so much more than a token effort.

Not sure if this is for me but don’t know what this is about

I am confused about who I am being an asshole to.

I live in Japan. I communicate with Japanese people every day. My pitch accent and not wanting to learn it is not the problem you think it is. I know my post title was a bit inflammatory, but let’s not make wild assumptions beyond what’s necessary. I get that some people find it annoying and find my attitude annoying, but a lack of pitch accent is generally not the huge impediment you’re saying it is and nor does it make me an asshole. I can accept I’m annoying, but I won’t accept that I’m an asshole.

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#16

I know this is tongue in cheek but I think it’s a pretty poor equivalent all the same :stuck_out_tongue:

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#17

Tbh this may well be happening to me with a lot of words but I can’t hear if I’m getting it right or wrong LOL

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#18

I also don’t think speaking with an accent is a bad thing for someone to do in any language for clarification tbh

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#19

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

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#20

Pitch accent vary even across Japan itself, so I generally don’t worry about them too much as long as I am comfortable with the flow of a sentence.

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#21

I get that I rubbed you up the wrong way but you are being quite rude. I really don’t like it and I would appreciate if you disengaged with this subject.

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