I finally made the video! It’s a 20-minute video that should give critical insights and everything you need to get started with the ability to test yourself in discerning the pitch accent patterns. Feel free watch it at 1.5x speed as I tend to speak rather slowly!
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What you guys think? Can we get this to 5k views in a week? xD
I would love a disclaimer that if somebody straggles with pronunciation should not get too worried about, but otherwise great video. New yt star in making i guess 
I am honoured to know you before you became famous 
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Japanese is the 3rd language I learn after English and German (French native). I dropped off German at some point but I’ve studied English since middle school (I’m now 27) and my prononciation is still not perfect.
I’m only in my first year of studying Japanese seriously. So, why should I care? Why would I put efforts in a third language that I didn’t even bother to do for the first one?
English is FULL of quasi-homophone (like bought, boat, bot, but) and I’m fairly certain that I mispronounce quite a few of those (I was today’s year old when I learned that “thighs” and “ties” are pronounced differently, I will probably forget it tomorrow). I also speak a mix of American British and Global English. And guess what? I had no problem whatsoever when visiting UK. Because most people don’t care and even with mispronounced homophones and quasi-homophones, everyone will understand you perfectly. So, based on my English experience. I think it’s going to okay.
Also I don’t think people will not confuse 橋 and 箸 or 雲 and 蜘蛛 that easily. Just the other day, I saw a fellow Japanese-learner one time that wrote “おもいしろい”, based on sound alone I should read this as “重い白い” right? (or is it 思い白い ?) But because I’m not that stupid and because there is always a context, it took me less than a second to guess that he meant 面白い. And I’m just a language learner. A real native should be able to understand and auto-correct those kind of mistake even faster than me. And Japanese themselves make those kind of mistake in mails because they just choose the first kanji that is proposed by the input method and they sometime choose the wrong one. Guess what? People still understand even with this kind of typo.
I don’t need my Japanese to be perfect, I need my Japanese to be understandable.
Edit: When talking about English, I’m talking about mispronounced sounds, I’m not even talking about stress. Stressed words is supposedly important in English, but it’s not a language barrier either.
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説明がありがとう。アンキの図書館でもう２つにってるデッキあります。
Tap for English
Thanks! Also, there are two decks similar to this in the Anki shared library.
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As far as I know (from both online and discussions with Japanese people), pitch accent is just that: an accent. While if one wishes to have a more native accent, it’s just a nice thing to strive for. But I don’t think it is essential, in the same way it isn’t essential to fix your English accent. If it is part of your language goals to sound close to native then great. If not, that is fine too.
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I have no standings to say this about Japanese and other people. I would only guess it had to be true because of larger cultural difference. But my reasoning is simple:
It is far easier emotionally to assume people don’t “understand” you because your pronunciation (something you often can’t do anything about really) than accept the truth: there may be more important reasons. People may for example not want to “understand you” because of you conduct or they are not able to because you assume that something is common sense in your country has to be global, and they don’t get it. That humble realisation helped me 100 times more than trying to fix my pronunciations.
I will give an example from this thread. I am sorry to bring it up but this may be important information even if you will not like person giving it to you:
Before I made my mind to point it out I spoke to people that are all for pitch-accent to check if I am crazy and bias. They thinks similar though. I know it is as rude like "日本語上手” but I would much rather prefer to get this piece of information if I would be you:
It is very unlikely that your problem is purely accent based. It reach far too deep. Maybe you try to say thing as in english (o’s like in “go”)? Maybe your grammar is off as hell because you were misguided? Maybe you try to not conform to Japanese way of thinking?
I don’t know. I know only that this problem is very unlikely to be accent problem. I can only recommend testing with somebody fluent in Japanese. If it is grammar misunderstanding then maybe Cure Dolly will help.
I am very sorry but I just felt bad for you so I had to point it out. If my guess are anyway close you are just about spent 100’s of hours to learn pitch, when it maybe not the real cause of your real problem…
And this is why I believe scaring people with accent is not helpful. It happened to me with English. Best demotivator ever: something which you have no control over really (in my case at least) presented as necessary for success.
I do it in public for 3 reasons:
- My word means nothing.
- If I am wrong people will call me rude moron which is fine, and you will not be misguided be me.
- It help my case, and it looks like far price for help
@NickavGnaro — いいビデオです！今すぐそのアンキボタンを作るつまり。
Have you see any resources that lays out the “rules” for pitch-accent? (E.g. all I-adjectives can be [-1] pronounced in dictionary form, but retain their 平板 or [forgot second category] forms for conjugation)? I would love to get a deck going for these rules…
よろしくお願いします。And thanks again for the video and this thread.
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こちらも面白いかも:
Tap for English
Perhaps of interest
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I’m not sure if anyone has done a free deck on it. I know someone from Dogen’s patreon made one, but I personally didn’t use it because I didn’t need it (I took detailed notes, and I figured if I could get to the point where I could discern pitch in media, that would serve as enough reinforcement for me).
If you would like actually going over the types of rules I explained, then check out Dogen’s Patreon series! His stuff is top notch, he includes native recordings often, has several checkpoints and review videos, and he quite literally is a godsend for compiling complicated research in Japanese and compiling it into an easily understandable series.
I will say, though, that just knowing the things I said in the video + knowing the difference between 平板、尾高、中高、and 頭 should be enough for a strong start. One thing I want to emphasize from the basics is that the particle after a 平板 word remains high whereas there is a pitch drop right before the particle if it’s an 尾高 word. You can’t tell the difference without the particle. 頭高 and 中高 are probably the easiest to master.
I will say, though, that Dogen’s series is riddled with a lot of pitch “trends,” but there are so many exceptions to most of it that I eventually decided it wasn’t worth keeping track of most of them. However, a lot of it is really valuable and has stayed with me. I’ll summarize them and you can take note of them if you’d like:
- The most important aspect of pitch accent is to figure out where the drop occurs. Rise in pitch is not as important as drop in pitch in Japanese. In fact, the drop is the “accent,” and it is the only information you need to know to determine the pitch of a word.
- Most い-adjectives are 中高 with the drop right before い. If you say it in the plain form, you can always just put the drop right before the い, even if it’s technically a 平板 adjective.
- く、て、た conjugations of verbs and adjectives shift the pitch drop one mora to the left (if possible). If it’s a 平板 い-adjective, it will have a drop in these conjugations except for in the く conjugation. (i.e.: 赤い, which is 平板, would be あかく with no drop, but あか↓くて and あか↓かった, which is not displayed correctly on prosodykun).
EDIT: Apparently, the sliding rule does not apply to adjectives with four or more morae. But it does apply to verbs, and to adjectives with 3 or fewer morae. - Four-mora, two-kanji nouns are often 平板 (i.e.: no pitch drop). There are many exceptions to this, but if you have to guess, this is a good rule of thumb.
- Suffix Kanji such as 的 often transform the pitch of the word. In the case of X的, it will always end up being 平板 even if X on its own has a pitch drop. Be on the lookout for suffixes because they often have the same pitch pattern. (Some suffixes may cause it to always have a drop before the suffix.)
- ま↓す・ませ↓ん・た↓い・よ↓う (or お↓う, i.e.: volitional) always ensure that what comes before is high (even if it originally contained a pitch drop), but then has a pitch drop right before the last mora (as shown). These conjugations are always the same and you don’t even have to think.
(Ex.: たべ↓る becomes たべま↓す or たべませ↓んでした or たべた↓い or たべよ↓う). - ない has a downstep after な unless it’s appended to a 平板 verb (in which case it remains high). (Ex.1: あつ↓い becomes あ↓つく then you add な↓い and you have あ↓つく↑な↓い. Ex.2: げ↓んき becomes げ↓んきじゃ↑な↓い. Notice that in these cases there was a rise in pitch before な. Don’t worry too much about raising your pitch so much as being able to drop it a second time. By the way, prosodykun will not show あつくない properly. In general, it may not always be accurate.)
- Transitive-intransitive verb pairs always belong to the same pitch family. So if you know the pitch accent for the transitive verb, you immediately know the pitch accent for the intransitive verb. The only exception is は↓いる, which is 頭高, and its 平板 transitive partner, いれる.
- で↓す and でしょ↓う attach as particles, and if they start being spoken high, they exhibit the drops shown. (Ex.: げ↓んきです and げ↓んきでしょう, but がくせいで↓す and がくせいでしょ↓う).
One interesting thing is that らしい has two meanings: “I heard that” and “typical of.” Which one is being said can actually be heard by pitch. (This gives an extra argument in my favor. A very common grammar point with two plausible meanings is only distinguished by pitch). For the “I heard that” meaning らし↓い attaches low and remains low or it attaches high and drops as shown. (Whether it attaches high or low depends on whether the preceding mora was high or low). The “typical of” meaning makes the prior noun be 平板 always, and the drop occurs before い.
In other words,
にほんじ↓んらしい is “I heard they’re Japanese” whereas
にほんじんらし↓い is “They’re Japanese-like.”
If you need clarification on anything I said here, feel free to ask for clarifying examples. Other than the basics, as well as a willingness to train your ears, these rules are probably the only ones you really need to keep in mind.
There are several other rules Dogen goes over, especially for verbs, but I haven’t mastered them all yet, so I can’t type them away so readily. They’re also likely less important anyway. But I wanna emphasize that even if you don’t explicitly remember these rules, just knowing the four patterns and training to distinguish the pitch is more than enough. You can refer back to this as you notice your expectations be violated in some cases.
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Perhaps one wise thing to do would be to test yourself with specific words, put in your card the plain form pitch accent, and then ask where the pitch drop occurs in whatever conjugation.
It might be better to use the rules as reference for making your cards.
While I agree that pitch accent is certainly important, I would add that (at the beginner and intermediate level), if someone is not being understood, it is usually OVER emphasizing which is the issue.
In Japanese, flat tone is farrrrr easier to understand for natives, than ‘emphasized’ speech. For some reason, learners think if they clearly pronounce every syllable こ・れ・は・い・く・ら・で・す・か？, Then it will be easier to understand. Actually normal speed, but flat will be much better.
(Don’t stay flat forever though)
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That’s actually a good rule of thumb. If you don’t know the pitch, just say it flat. But eventually, as you learn more, it’s good to start putting in the accent where it belongs, at least on words you know the pitch for and want to emphasize.
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Agree 100%
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Also, it happens to be one of the patterns that Westerners struggle the most with… go figure.
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Kinda makes sense though. We naturally want to add emphasis to make things easier to understand. It just doesn’t carry over well to some languages.
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It is for sure not harder than remembering all the pitch.
and there are bigger problems first.
る、ふ、おう・ああ・えい・うう・いい、っ、ん
Helping those seems far more important. And many people - myself included - have not manage to get them right enough. first thing first
for example I do understand why we call 円 yen. It is hard to say as they do for many people. Yen look like the closest I can get at the moment.
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Oh definitely be able to pronounce the individual mora. And pitch is not all or nothing. It’s just something you can gradually improve on. I made this thread to motivate people not to put it off indefinitely, and specifically to motivate people to at least start having some awareness so they can improve over time without cementing bad habits.
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it would be hard to get pitch if ん is not separated mora for you, isn’t it?