Super demoralized by pitch accent

Japanese
#1

So, I’ve been doing the mininal pairs practice at コツ for over a week and haven’t seen any improvements at all.

I am consistently getting less than 50%, which means that me trying is even worse than just guessing randomly…

How much effort do you all put into pitch?
Should I just give up on it?
My goal is just to be able to consume content (listen/read), so perhaps I should just ignore this. The worry is that I would have to re-learn the pitch for all words in the future if I ever decide I want to be good at speaking…

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#2

Listening practice can help give you a sense of pitch accent, but you also don’t have to worry about it even if you do eventually want to speak Japanese regularly. Pitch accent makes very little difference in real speech, since so much is inferred from context and people intone in all manner of ways when speaking emphatically.

Sure, if you wanted to give formal speeches on a Japanese television network and be mistaken for a native Japanese person by potential listeners, you’d probably want to get your pitch accents nailed down, but I doubt you’re planning on doing that, so even if you sometimes pronounce words a little weirdly, it’ll simply be chalked up to your accent as a non-native speaker and won’t really bother anyone.

Even if you do choose to study it, I wouldn’t recommend prioritizing it over other forms of study if your time is even somewhat limited.

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#3

I’m not so sure about this. I come from a country with pretty noticeable pitch change in words and it’s definitely a bit rough to listen to someone who consistently gets it wrong in a way that’s not equivalent to a dialect.

Anyways to OP, if you don’t have an ear for it I can only recommend listening a lot. I don’t think people should focus on pitch accent before they’ve deeply immersed in the language.

#4

Wow, in yomitan audio pitch accents are so much more noticble! I got only 75% first time doing this, even though i though I would get much more.

#5

I come from a country with pretty noticeable pitch change in words and it’s definitely a bit rough to listen to someone who consistently gets it wrong in a way that’s not equivalent to a dialect.

I think that’s a very fair thing to say given your experiences. Japanese may not have as significant pitch accenting as the way language is spoken in your country, though. I speak from my experiences as a non-native speaker living in Japan. In years of being here I can count on a single hand the number of times my definitely-imperfect pitch accent has impeded a native speaker’s ability to determine what word I’m saying, so at least in my personal experience it’s not problematic.

Regardless of our differing opinions, I think your advice to OP is valuable and sound.

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#6

Ah thank you for reminding about コツ. I’ve tried it about year ago for several days and was very shaky, but just now went 15 out of 15.

You’ll get there for sure with more listening practice.

Dogen has some pretty useful videos with slow side by side comparison of words like 神・紙. And also he released a tool that draws a graph of pitch in your own speech, although I haven’t tried that yet.

I don’t do dedicated practice, but I do try to be mindful of pitch all the time. E.g. during Bunpro reviews I read sentences out loud (circumstances permitting) and compare myself to the VA. But of course it’s a bit of a catch-22 when you don’t notice the difference yet.

I wouldn’t give up on it personally. Even if you are just listening, it’s interesting to notice when a show character or a youtuber sounds non-native.
Maybe put it on the back burner, not stress too much, and come back to it in a month?

#7

I don’t focus any of my study time on pitch accent, seems like a waste of time for me. But my native language also uses pitch accent so my ears are already used to constantly marking the difference in words.

I think it’s better to just focus on studying grammar and building up your vocabulary. Understanding of correct pitch will come naturally with continued exposure, by immersing and using the language.

#8

Having already done this and ignored pitch, nanori, pronunciation practice and basically any output practice, if I was going to do it again I think it would have been best to have done them little and often as background activities. Partially because if you do things as you go along everything reinforces each other, and partially because it’s definitely strange to get to the point where you understand the language well but are otherwise pretty bad at using it.

Also there’s easier options to practice than minimal pairs here https://pitch-demo.migaku.io/

#9

I’ll tell you this as somebody who is often told has pretty good pitch accent. It’s not as important as the internet makes it seem. I see gaijin personalties on Japanese TV all the time with less than perfect pitch accent and horrible pronunciation even. But you know what, they’re getting their point across and thats what matters in the end.

If your goal is to sound as “Japanese” as possible, I guess it’s something worth investing time into. If not, deepening your vocab and grammar will better benefit you.

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#10

If your current goal is “only” consuming Japanese content, then I think you don’t need to consciously bother with pitch accent.
However, if you already have the feeling you might want to also speak Japanese - and that with a somewhat decent accent (not necessarily like a native, but at least not too exhausting for your conversation partner) -, then you might want at least listen more carefully to what you hear (hopefully native stuff) and try to parrot that (you can find some tips about that with the term “shadowing” or something like that, if you wanna do that in a very dedicated way).

But I think even if you still only focus on your initial goal of just consuming, as long as you listen carefully to what you consume, you should be able to pick up the differences unconsciously. The more you hear certain expressions, the more they stick as you heard them, and therefore the more likely you will be able to say them similarly without even thinking about it.

How much effort you need to put into your language studies always depends on your goal you want to achieve.

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#11

Just keep at it, it will improve over time. One trick that helped me was to “hum” whatever is said. That way you keep just the pitch, without the other phonological features.

#12

I loved that you posted this because I just recently started trying to learn a bit about pitch (watching some of Dogen’s videos, of course).

Does anyone else have any good pitch accent focused resources (listening, shadowing, etc.)? Maybe I will just check out the migaku link someone suggested.

#13

In all honesty, I haven’t practiced pitch accent. I’ve just copied the intonation over time from listening to Japanese people I have conversations with, videos I watch etc. So my advice would be to keep 頑張ってる with listening.

I still quite obviously make mistakes, such as someone thinking I said 5日 (いつか) when I meant いつか as ‘someday’.

If anyone pays for Migaku, they have a pitch trainer course, I tried it a while ago and noped out of there when I realised how difficult it was for me. I’ll return いつか :pleading_face:

https://pitch.migaku.io/

Still, I’d recommend it to anyone if you already use Migaku.

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#14

is 5 days really enough time for you to learn enough to return, though?

As far as pitch accent is concerned, it’s something that comes with time, especially if you know a bit about it already. The real part about it is knowing it exists, after that you need to hear the word and you’ll catch on naturally, so long as you’re open to listening.

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#15

Honestly, some of the internet obsession with pitch accent is a bit crazy. In real life it’ll rarely be what makes it hard for people to understand you, or for you to understand them. I often muse to myself that my pitch and pronunciation sucks, but then my native tutor is pretty happy with it and it’s not something we focus on much at all (she does absolutely pull me up on pronunciation mistakes when I do make them though).

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#16

Deliberately learning pitch accent is pointless imo, and it’s debatable whether Japan really has pitches anyway so don’t let it get to you. As someone living in Japan, I see it as just a language learning gimmick that’s only come to prominence in recent years. Within Japan, the so called “pitch” accent will change dramatically depending on the region anyway (E.g. in many cases, Kansai Japanese is the opposite to Tokyo Japanese).

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#17

I’ve got 99 problems and a pitch (accent) ain’t one…

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#18

So, pitch accent is tough for native speakers too.

for instance I asked “is kumo - spider and kumo - cloud the same”
Japanese friend “no no, not the same.” sounds it out slowly “actually, I think the pitch is the same”
Me:“Japanese, why do you do this to me???”

For example a Japanese person asked me, when is it pronouced thee- like the end, and when is it pronounced The like Genki is the best beginner textbook

I said, this one is hard for native speakers, don’t worry too much. Worry about a/the instead. If you only say it like ‘the’ it is OK

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#19

No idea what happened today.
Improvement just by complaining :slight_smile:

image

Anyways, I think I will simply treat this as super low priority then.
Will continue to do a 50 minimal pairs training every day, but not a priority.

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#20

Wow I’m don’t know that website!
Amazing :star_struck:
As pretty much anyone one else said, loads of 聴く練習 and it’ll come natural.
Thanks and keep it up!