Pitch Accent Implementation Ideas

Bunpro
#1

Hello!

First of all, I’ve been using Bunpro consistently for over a year now as one of my primary tools for mastering Japanese grammar. I’ve completed up to the N1 deck and have delved into Kansai Dialect grammar, though I have yet to master it all. It has been truly vital to my Japanese Learning Journey and I truly appreciate this resource/service!

One aspect I’ve been pondering for some time, but have not pitched up until now, is the possibility of a more comprehensive pitch accent implementation. While I appreciate that certain vocab decks include pitch accent information for select words, as a mobile user, I find myself constantly tabbing in and out of the app to look up individual pitch of words not listed or resorting to tools like OJAD’s Prosody Tutor.

Here are a few ideas I’ve been considering:

  1. Basic Pitch Accent Deck/Starter Course: Provide explanations of each pitch accent pattern along with example words, and perhaps outline principles to aid in guessing a word’s pitch accent.

  2. Grammar Point Pitch Accent Information: Include the general pitch accent of each grammar point, as well as how it might vary depending on its placement in a sentence and the pitch accent patterns of the words around it.

  3. Show Pitch Accent in Review Sentences/Words: This could be immensely beneficial. Users/sentence creators could input the pitch accent of example sentences/words manually or even have it generated automatically (AI?).

  4. Highlight Spoken Characters/文字 while Listening to Recordings/Playback: Though not directly related to pitch accent, this could enhance listening and reading comprehension, akin to karaoke.

I strongly believe these enhancements could elevate Bunpro’s already excellent quality to new heights. Naturally, having the option to enable/disable each feature would be advantageous.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any additional ideas?

9 Likes
#2

I enjoy the idea of pitch accents, to an extent. Like all things, there are exceptions for rules. one that I find realy interesting and something I myself have a habit of doing is that some areas have different pitch accents for words.

Take 椅子 for example. where I live い has more intonation, however in tokyo the pitch accent has す as the stronger pitch and that’s just one common word. obviously the site would focus more on tokyo accent, but actually living in Japan you’ll find a lot of different ways that people talk. Maybe it’s just me, but instead of learning pitch via text, learn pitch through usage and actually listening to how people speak, (not V-tubers, either.) (sorry if that sounds condescending, it isn’t my intention, I just can’t think of a way to say it nicer.)

4 Likes
#3

No offense taken at all, I understand where you are coming from! While it may not be necessary to learn the standard or a specific dialect, there is still definitely an audience that may want to learn it (including me). Who knows, if possible, maybe have an option to set which dialect/pitch accent you would prefer. Though, that’s probably a ton of work and would probably be unlikely (but still super cool lol).
Also, I definitely agree with watching native content. But, I also find the sentence audio playback feature to be very very helpful in my listening comprehension and pitch accent detection. As for the use of being able to actually see the pitch accent, it’s very helpful to put what you hear with what you see together in order to gather a better sense of how how a word may be read or spoken without any audible cues for more ambiguous words.

1 Like
#4

I agree that studying pitch accent is really good. I’ve been using an app called “aomi japanese” for it. It uses AI to judge your pitch, and records your audio so you can play it back and compare. It’s definitely not perfect, but it’s been really helpful so far

#5

I’m personally not a huge fan of pitch accent stuff as like other persons have mentioned there’s just so many different ways people speak Japanese and it isn’t necessary imo to focus on.

I do like ideas #1 and #4 however. It can’t hurt to know pitch accent exists and if I remember correctly satori reader highlights at least phrases in the sentences as the narration goes on which is useful simply for following the sentence not even necessarily pitch accent.

However 2(especially) and 3 seem like infinite and very expensive what imo amount to unnecessary tasks.

1 Like
#6

While I don’t necessarily trust AI with pitch accent, I like the overall ideas and will reiterate a point I made recently in the feedback thread:

The ability to display pitch accent under vocab before revealing/entering answer would be nice so you can read it in your head properly and avoid accidentally reinforcing incorrect pitch.

Just show the number designation (0 for 平板, 1 for 頭高, etc) or name (e.g. 頭高) or the visual pattern or something without showing the actual reading (until you reveal it ofc) :+1:

#7

Pitch accent training is very interesting, the problem is that I feel the AI readings in bunpro would hardly match the pitch accent information at least from its current state, I am extra careful with readings in bunpro currently but I am sure the evolution will be impressive.

I am also more in the camp of learning it from native material not only because of regional differences but because the source has to be absolutely natural for the study to be efficient and safe. I had kind of a similar prior experience to a stronger extent with tones in Mandarin Chinese which I retained way better by conversation than more isolated study.

I fail to see how a study tool could give me this larger sentence context better than simple native material that is already perfect for the job. I personally would need nothing more (and plenty of time!).
To me it is purely an experience matter, but maybe I am too short-sighted and missing on shortcuts though as this is quite a massive amount of knowledge to acquire obviously.