I dont care about pitch accent

Japanese
#22

(OOPS, that’s long) TL;DR- Be aware of pitch accent. Beyond that, study it if you want, don’t if you don’t.

I have no intention of this being inflammatory, so if it happens to come across that way to anyone I apologize in advance.

As far as Dogen’s videos, I don’t think I’d go so far as to call him a typical “language bro”. The man got his Master’s degree in Japanese phonetics, and pitch accent is something he’s incredibly passionate about. Some people are passionate about kanji (I’m look at you, guy who can write 𰻞𰻞麺 from memory), some are passionate about 四字熟語, or translation, or 変体仮名 or etymology (語源), etc.
I think he harps on starting early being important purely because it’s easier to build good habits early than fix bad habits later, as well as there being actual biological reasons that make it harder to lose an accent the older you get. I’m not saying people should obsess over losing their accent, just saying it does get harder.

My background is in music and I did take some of Dogen’s phonetics course. I never finished it, nor did I dedicate days and months to shadowing like he suggests at some points, but it’s incredibly informational and honestly very high quality for the low cost of his Patreon. Anecdotally, my Japanese has reached a point that every once in a while people will assume I must have grown up here from a young age. I’m 100% confident that’s influenced by pitch accent in no small way.

Several lessons are (or were) free on his Youtube, so you could get an idea of what he covers without ever spending a cent. My advice to the average learner would be just to watch those, and be aware of pitch as you learn, but only really focus on studying it if you’re truly passionate about it.Grammatically coherent Japanese with an accent is better than perfectly pronounced word salad.

To each their own, as with all things. It’s not worth arguing with people over, just have fun studying what you like :man_shrugging:

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#23

This is fair, and maybe I maligned him a bit- I don’t really think he is, but I think people who are really into him generally are, if that makes sense? I think I’m just kinda wary of language influencers, and I dont know if he really falls into that category or accidentally gets treated as one

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#24

I think it’s fair to say he gets treated as one, but I don’t think that’s really his target audience. He’s been in the content creation game for nearly a decade (or even more?) and if you watch his more serious videos, you can tell he’s a super level-headed guy who just loves Japanese, and Japan. The internet has been trending towards a general attitude of superiority, and I think Dogen just finds himself in the unfortunate position of providing a service that allows certain types of people to feel “better than” in a way that is (as of now) less mainstream than kanji knowledge, or number of manga/novels read.

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#25

Isn’t pitch accent similar to stress accent in english? Like yeah, in english it’s stress accent but japanese pitch accent is more like the difference between “to record” (verb) and “a record” (noun) and not like tones in mandarin so as long as you can hear the difference in accent in english, you should be able to handle it by just listening to the native speakers carefuly, without analysing in detail wheter it’s atamadaka, nakadaka, odaka or heiban.

However maybe it’s different for english native speakers? I’m polish and in polish stress accent is very regular, like… very, very regular so when learning english I had to pay more attention to the stress accent because in english the position of stress accent moves quite a bit in comparison to my native language.

And there’s also a factor that I can’t reliably judge how well I actually hear the pitch accent in japanese since because of the number of homonyms in japanese (also with the same pitch accent) I tend to rely on context while listening. Also I’m not focusing on the pitch accent as much as other things (grammar, kanji, vocabulary).

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#26

They’re both accents but I don’t think they’re that similar. Some words in English are beyond unrecognisable when incorrect stress is applied because stress involves lengthening the stressed syllable. Of course I can’t hear pitch accent, but when I’ve talked to people about it, lots of Japanese people have been like “don’t worry about pitch accent, its regional anyway” but I haven’t met any English speakers be like “stress isn’t important.” But stress is different because English not only uses stress for meaning but is a stress timed language, so the rhythm of speech depends on applying stress. Japanese timing remains the same even if you mess up the pitch, so you’re not taking away as many layers of comprehensibility.

also ETA: I didn’t know that about Polish. Is there like a rule to how words are stressed?

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#27

Yeah, in most cases it’s the second syllable from the end of the word. There are exceptions but this rule applies to most of the words. Like in a word komputer, the accent is on pu so kom-PU-ter or in calineczka it would be ca-li-NE-czka, or in mama it would be MA-ma.

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#28

oh that’s interesting, I didn’t expect it to be kind of back loaded!

#29

I also think it’s fine to have an accent in general. But I once read this article that stuck with me. Apparently native speakers can trust less the other person if they speak with an accent.

Has this been verified by multiple studies? I don’t know. Does this even matter? Probably not in most cases.

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#30

My goal is to read and listen for now so pitch accent is not on my priority list initially.

However, I did read up a bit and have an awareness of pitches, but did not go too deep in it. I just updated my Anki deck with pitch accents and try to remember it but no biggie if I got it wrong.

Personally for me, I think my listening skills got better as I feel like I can hear the nuances and context better. Or maybe I’m just imagining things. But it does seem my ear/brain can pick up the flow of the conversation a bit better.

But yes, I don’t mind having an accent in the end. It probably makes me stand out better if I can outputs correctly, even with an accent.

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#31

I have also heard this! But I wonder how much it is affected by degree of accent, too. I.e. Having a thick accent vs a milder one.

You’re probably not imagining things tbh! You just have better ears than me hahaha. I assume you meant “does” instead of “doesnt”?

Also, in a VERY slight vindication for this post, my friend who CAN hear pitch accent told me mine isn’t that bad so… I’ll take that as proof that immersion does some heavy lifting.

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#32

I feel like pitch accent is something you pick up naturally through just…you know…studying. I didn’t even hear other foreigners living here talking about it AT ALL until it became a “thing” on social media because one particular Youtuber mentioned it. Unless you’re living in a cave looking at flashcards by candlelight with no interaction with the outside world I doubt you’ll have serious need to FOCUS on pitch accent. Literal generations of people have lived here and speak fluent Japanese without the necessity of extensively studying pitch accent.

On a simultaneous side note I noticed the number of people incorrectly lecturing me about the psychology of language learning at parties dramatically increased when Japanese language learning became a big way to get money on YouTube and TikTok.

If it’s not evident I’m approaching the age where I’m just going to get mad about what “the kids” are into these days and lately it’s social media.

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#33

I think this is just a factor of the “This person is in my out-group so IDK if they’re trustworthy” ape hindbrain we all have. (I’m pretty sure that the psych elective I took in college gave it a name, but I’m too lazy to look it up and I don’t have my notes after a decade+…) The Australian accent also took more brainpower, and I know that it may sometimes feel like Aussies are from a different planet, but they tend to be native English speakers too.

I’m pretty sure that whenever I visit Osaka, my terrible Tohoku-influenced foreigner-accented Japanese makes people a bit confused just like when my uncle moved to Florida and confused everyone with his heavily-Brooklyn-influenced Spanish-accented English. It’s just weirdly foreign for everyone trying to understand it.

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#34

I am curious what they lecture you about! (I do not go to parties rip)

I think Japanese also has the added layer of not usually having to deal with foreign accents, since it is so insular and the population of foreigners is low. On the other hand, English speakers are wayyy more used to accented English, imo.

For the record my cousins in America dont understand how I speak English sometimes either LOL but thats the Aussie thing youre alluding to (though I am from the smaller, cuter country). But yeah, regardless, when talking to someone from a different region, some recalculations are going to be necessary- even if they are a native speaker of the language.

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#35

Now I am going to have a really hot take though… I think assuming that someone who has an accent has not tried to improve at a language is kind of racist. I think communication is a two way street and native speakers shouldnt find it painful to accommodate non native speakers. I feel this way about both English and Japanese. But maybe thats because I teach English, and I am used to dealing with non native accents and I know that pronunciation is often necessarily sacrificed in favour of reasonable comprehensibility.

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#36

I think assuming that someone who has an accent has not tried to improve at a language is kind of racist. I think communication is a two way street and native speakers shouldnt find it painful to accommodate non native speakers.

I agree, though only under the (presumably) false pretense that imperfect pitch accent is something a native must ‘accommodate’ to begin with.

My understanding of how Japanese pronunciation works is that in 99% of cases a poor accent doesn’t really affect comprehension, but rather how you’re perceived as someone who’s native language is not Japanese. The impression I get from people like Dogen and other pitch-heads is that it’s not really a matter of having other people understand you and is instead a means to simply sounding more native (or perhaps less foreign!). I think the appeal of this path largely varies by an individual’s mindset.

If your accent is poor enough to the point where people are consistently having a hard time understanding you, then I’d say there is a bit of social responsibility in trying to improve, but luckily this doesn’t seem to be an issue with Japanese! I’m mostly speaking out of my ass here, so if anyone has points to the contrary please let me know.

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#37

How did you come to the conclusion that you cannot hear pitch accent?
Also I’m curiose how you actually hear 橋 and 箸
For me it’s similar to a regular accent on the first or last syllable.
Or for example the name カナ I just kind of hear stress on カ, while someone says かな〜 I hear that な is stressed as well or something like that

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#38

That’s a fair point!
Also the term pitch-head is quite funny

I hear them as hashi and hashi. I came to the conclusion I can’t hear it by listening to lots and lots of audio, rip. And my teacher quizzing me and me getting it wrong every time. Even diagrams don’t help. For reference, I didn’t grow up playing music or anything and I think I have a pretty poor ear for sounds in general. I actually wanted to study linguistics for a bit, but my uni department focused on sound changes and I couldn’t decipher a lot of what they studied. FWIW I don’t think being musical is a prerequisite but studies show that people with musical backgrounds have a much easier time acquiring new accents as adults, which I don’t think is a coincidence.

What is a regular accent for you? In English, accent is stress based and involves three things - lengthening the stressed syllable, saying it more loudly, and changing the pitch (allegedly? I can’t hear it LMAO). When I sound out words to find the stress in English (my native language) I actually struggle to get it on the first go (I guess because it’s pretty ingrained?), but usually I find it by lengthening different syllables.

Japanese isnt typically stressed like English, so the name “Kana” has no stress. Sometimes we might perceive it as stress tho. As for the sentence ender, I guess people do lengthen it, which might seem similar to stress, but isn’t quite.

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#39

Yo cannot hear even a slight difference? Even the small one, not to differentiate but to know if it were 2 different words played one by one or 1 for two times?

Eh ye.
What if you do like this:
Say HAshi doing like a literal stress on the first syllable, like you are trying to speak Japanese with a really heavy English accent.
And then remove one by one lengthening and loudness, so you are left with just a pitch. Then you can try it for haSHI where you stress i at the end.

Here I mean if I speak English I’ll say KAna and not kaNA, because the second one just doesn’t feel like a name and feels like something interrogative “soukaNA〜?”
And I feel like this can be transfer from hearing stress (if you can hear it, but if you speak a stressed language you define lay can, not sure thou which part of a stress you hear thou, maybe pitch is unavailable and it’s all loudness and lengthening?) to hearing just pitch. Idk thou, there are definitely pitch deaf people. Btw can you differentiate 2 notes one from another? Or sing a tune?

Sorry if I bother you, but I’m just really course because I didn’t know it’s possible to not hear it, and I’m trying to figure out how it is

#40

I just watched this like 3 times and I swear they all sound the same :sob:

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#41

I don’t think this thread was really intended to help you discover pitch accent, so I apologize for derailing a bit further, but something that helped me ingrain certain pitch accent patterns was overly exaggerating by literally singing the syllables at higher/lower pitches to try and give myself a basis to listen to in conversation. It may help, it may not, you’ve already stated you don’t care anyway, but just my two cents :joy: