Per my discussion in this thread: https://community.bunpro.jp/t/bambis-h1-2021-study-plan/29207/6
EDIT: For humility purposes, these are just my arguments. Pitch is important, but it’s of course only one piece of the equation. People have different priorities too. But I think these are the most compelling reasons, and I hope to save you all heartache, so if I can get one person to take up pitch accent studies and avoid heartache later, that’ll make me very happy.
I’ll come right out and say it: I highly recommend against being lazy, and for being proactive on Pitch Accent, because the more you neglect it, the more you will come to regret it later on in your studies.
In Japanese, there are four major pitch accent patterns. Which word you are saying depends not only on the syllables (the hiragana/katakana), but also on the pitch of the word.
So why should one care about pitch accents? I’ll start with a general fact about Japanese: there are A LOT of words that cannot be distinguished from the syllables alone. However, they are not homophones once you account for pitch.
What this means is that if you are decoding what someone is saying in real time, but have not internalized the different pitch accents, you will be working harder to discern, from context, what is being said, rather than intuitively narrowing down the possibilities of what was said just from the pitch of the sentence alone. In conversation, you don’t see Kanji. Instead, pitch accent serves as your auditory tool for disambiguation. If you ignore it, you are doing away with a massively beneficial tool for comprehension.
Just as an example, consider this sentence: かみとかした。
Depending on the pitch, this means either 神と化した (became a god) or 髪とかした (combed hair).
Of course, you would never misunderstand someone in context. The problem is that you may inarguably end up saying “I became a god” instead of “I combed my hair.” There are several situations where you could say some really messed up things just by messing up the pitch accent.
Now, what about if you don’t care about producing (i.e.: speaking)? Well, consider this classic example: はしでたべる。
Without knowing the pitch, this could be either 橋で食べる (eat at a bridge) or 箸で食べる (eat with chopsticks). There are many contexts where it would be hard to distinguish between the two just from context alone.
So my two main arguments for caring about pitch accent are: it prevents you from saying messed up things, and it acts as an auditory disambiguation tool (sort of like Kanji, but less effective, but way better than nothing).
Now, I believe that there should be no shadow of a doubt that pitch accent is essential. The only question is, should it be prioritized? Or can it just be put off for later?
I will just give two simple arguments in favor of getting started on pitch accent now, rather than later.
First, the longer you go without focusing on pitch accent, the more you may build up bad habits, especially if you practice speaking often. To remedy this, getting started now can fix your mistakes sooner and prevent you from cementing bad habits.
Second, the research is clear that the human brain starts losing the ability to detect pitch with age. So if you put it off for a couple years, you may actually be less capable of learning then than now. But if you learn to distinguish and hear pitch now, that skill stays with you.
Now what about the idea that one can just immerse and eventually pick up on pitch?
Simply put, this is a fantastical idea, unless you are a native speaker in a tonal language such as Cantonese.
To a normal Westerner, you will struggle to identify 平板 words, or whether you even said it correctly. I don’t have any studies on this, but I do have a strong anecdote: Khatzumoto, one of the first to champion immersion for learning Japanese, managed to speak extremely naturally, but still often messed up on pitch accents because he never factored it into his studies.
Now, while I may disagree with a lot of his philosophy, he’s certainly learned Japanese from immersion alone, and still could not come out with the correct pitch. In short, unless you are consciously making an effort, you will not pay attention to pitch, as it is not an aspect of most Western languages.
What about the idea that pitch is relative to location? This is a common argument against learning pitch accents, but it holds no water.
Certainly, not all regions speak with the standard Tokyo pitch accent. A person with non-standard pitch will still speak according to the pitch of their region. While their pitch will not line up with the standard, it will be standard for their region.
The problem is, if you don’t pay attention to pitch, you will end up mixing and matching pitch like a fool. In one sentence, you will sound like you’re from Tokyo, and in another, you will sound like you’re from some random other region in Japan. To put it bluntly, if you don’t follow a standard, you will mix the standards and sound extremely weird no matter where you go. You will also not get the benefit of pitch accent as a disambiguation tool.
I recommend either studying the standard pitch, or the local dialect that is applicable to you. The standard pitch has the advantage of being the one used in broadcasts around the country, as well as of being understood throughout, so that’s something to consider. It may also be easier to learn a dialect when you can tell how it differs from the standard. Finally, there’s not a lot of information on dialects, so it may be hard to learn regional pitch directly without the background of knowledge on standard pitch.
Finally, how much should one incorporate studying pitch? This part is purely my opinion.
First, you should learn the four pitch accent patterns: 平板式、尾高型、中高型、and 頭高型.
Then, I recommend finding a way to test yourself on the ability to distinguish which pitch a word is being spoken with.
Finally, I recommend making sure you learn a word together with its pitch accent pattern.
Two awesome tools for doing these crucial steps (and more) are:
- Dogen’s Patreon series, and
- Migaku Japanese Anki add-on
From here on out, I also recommend always being attentive to the pitch of the words in a sentence. Your goal is to be able to recognize the difference in pitch, especially for words that rely on pitch (to avoid being some other word). You can also focus on undoing your current bad habits in pitch. Many Westerners (like me) will struggle with 日本、日本語 (these have different pitch patterns!)、弟、学生、先生 and many more. Dogen’s series goes over many problem areas and overall strikes a good balance between being comprehensive and succinct for the sake of pushing you to incorporate pitch accent studying in your own immersion.
In general, I would say to focus on learning the basics of pitch accent. After that, it takes very little extra effort to always be cognizant of pitch, and it can save you a lot of heartache in the future.
Alright that is all I’ve got to say, hope this thread will have some nice discussion.
because I didn’t have the basics to even understand their corrections.