I've been studying Japanese for a few years now and I only heard about this for the first time a few days ago. No wonder why foreigners are always given away when they speak, I don't think most people are taught about pitch accent.
i had the exact same experience. ive been studying japanese from people who have not only lived in japan for many years, but some who were born and raised there. ive also used things like duolingo and rosetta stone, and youtube. not once have i ever heard this mentioned. i had no idea there were words like hashi, which are like chinese in that pitch can change the meaning of the word. i was shocked when i found out, i was like why did no one tell me???
@@stellarmori , l've read that the number of Japanese words that depend on on pitch pattern is relatively small. However, they are not the only reason why an effort should be made to have a decent pronunciation. It is very inconsiderate of the "victims" who will be subjected to listening to their native language being mangled.
@@michaels3003 yep. being in a high school japanese class, you hear the worst pronunciation known to man. they sound like southern cowboys reading romaji. it makes my ears bleed and im american. i cant imagine how my native japanese teacher feels
I dont mean to be off topic but does anyone know of a tool to get back into an instagram account..? I somehow lost my login password. I love any assistance you can give me!
I took three years of formal education in Japanese with one of those years in Japan, and not once did we ever go over this. This helps put all the pieces together, thank you very much for uploading this! どうもありがとうございました！
Spanish is my first language and its similar to Japanese in sounds. But I tried to compare the Japanese pitch accent with the Spanish stress accent and they differ completely :( In Spanish we have the words "ame" /á.me/ and "amé" /a.mé/, we have to stress one syllable in a word. However, they dont sound exactly the same as Japanese "a↓me" or "a↑me".
@@michaels3003 Thanks, Michael S. I thought that AV says that when a foreign person sings a Japanese song, he has less of his mother language accent and it sounds as if a native Japanese sings it. So I guess singing a Japanese song would be a good way to feel what the Japanese sounds are like and will help improve your pronunciation skills. I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding.
@@good1168 , no need to be sorry. I've just reread the original comment. It can be interpreted in different ways (in my opinion), so my interpretation could have been incorrect. I am disappointed that so little importance is being given to "proper" pronunciation. For most people, it is not possible to unlearn all the "bad" pronunciations that they have been using for a long time. This applies to any spoken language. In English, native speakers often fail to understand mispronounced words. This was a surprise to me when I first encountered this. They are also very quick to point out that somebody is speaking with "an accent."
That’s word stress in English though which this video just said is different from pitch accent. Pitch accent is easier to understand if you understand music. Pitch changes don’t change the stress of a syllable. They change the pitch like changing a vocal note. So think of how do-re-mi-fa have the same stress but each note has a different pitch.
Stress is fun to mess with in English. The letter was enveloped in the envelope. (to en-VElope vs. EN-velope) The music producer and the production artist aren't huge fans of freshly produced produce. Definitely depends on your dialect of English, but for me, I say "produce" (as in farm-crops) as 'prO-duce', while I say 'pruhduce' for "produce" (as in prodcuing food/music etc).
It is interesting that I never knew that there was a pitch accent in Japanese. I just copied the "intonation" or the way of speaking of the natives. And I realized that I do this pitch accent automatically. Sometimes it is really good to not know something. :D
@@sumyguck8094 I don't really know, this is what I'm trying to figure out. Because at least for me, the problem isn't understanding pitch accents. I've been listening to Japanese for over 10 years, watched well over 10,000 hours of Japanese variety shows, baseball, cooking shows, anime, drama etc etc etc. I felt like my Japanese was really good. At least in terms of listening and understanding accents. I can even hear different accents like Kansai-ben, hiroshima-ben, hokkaido-ben etc. But the problem I have, and I feel like most english speakers end up having once they're at a decent level of japanese is that *in addition* to Japanese pitch accent patterns, we also recognize incorrect English pitch accent patterns as "correct", even though it isn't. That's what trips us up. For example, take the Japanese word "最高”. It's a heiban pattern; it starts flat then goes up. But it sounds really close to the English word "cycle". And how do we pronounce "cycle"? The exact opposite. Starts flat then goes down. Another example is アメリカ. If we pronounce "America" in English, it's an "Odaka" pattern. But in Japanese it's a heiban pattern. But because we had English patterns drilled into our minds from a young age, we automatically recognize English patterns as "natural sounding", and we don't realize that it sounds weird to a Japanese person. This is why if you watched Dogen's videos (and particularly Kaz's nitpicking of Dogen's Japanese), you hear Dogen say "koto" with an Odaka pattern instead of Heiban pattern multiple times; Dogen *knows* in his head what the correct answer is, if it was a paper test and the question asked to indicate which patterns to use in each word Dogen would score 100%. but because the English patterns feel so natural he just ends up instinctively using it. So the hardest part about learning pitch patterns isn't learning of the patterns. It's forgetting the English patterns that have already been heavily ingrained into our minds.
@@YSFmemories im not at a very high level of japanese yet but this really explains why i have so much trouble saying those english katakana words that have been absorbed into japanese. im always trying to say them with american intonations because thats where my brain is pulling them from. its really hard to shake yourself out of it lol
I've read many people complain that no one teaches about Japanese pitch accents. Not even mentioned in any of my books or lessons (N4 level). I'm glad I found this to stop myself from creating bad pitch habits before they started. Thank you!
Underrated video. Thank you so much. The other phonetic videos on Japanese ended up being more confusing the more I watched but this explanation really helped!
This video is a little over 1 year old, and I would just like to say THANK YOU. It is so hard to find good content in pitch accent for the japanese language... I remember how I naively thought japanese were flat for the first 3 years in my learning process... and took it for granted because my native language share 99% of japanese sounds, how wrong I was. Thanks for this!
Thank you for your kind comment. I'm pleased that you are interested in my videos. When I started teaching foreign Japanese learners, I found that many of them struggling how to figure the Japanese pitch accent. I hope this may help them.
I used to neglect pitch accent before and that even affected my listening skills. For example, I used to have a hard time recognising 受ける because the first vowel is lower pitch and I used to think that everything is supposed to be flat.
恐らく方言で一番ばらつきが出るのがpitch accentですね。私は標準語を話す日本人ですが、新しい単語に出会ったとき、たまに間違ってしまうことがあります😅 これは聞きまくって、耳で慣れてしまうのが一番良いかなと思います。 Even Japanese cannot perfectly guess the pitch accent on new words, so the best way is to listen carefully and imitate how native speakers pronounce.
After watching this lesson, I'm finding Portuguese pronunciation very similar to Japanese's. Maybe that's why I'm finding the rules of pitch accent for Nihongo strangely familiar to Portuguese pronunciation rules. Thank you for the excellent video! 💯👍
I'm so glad to be a Brazilian!! Portuguese has a lot of accent rules, so it's a little easier to understand. For example: Vovó - vo→ vo↗ - grandma Vovô - vo→ vo↙ - grandpa Bebe - be↗ be↙ - (He/She) drink Bebê - be↙ be↙ - baby
When you say it goes up at the first syllable and maintains its pitch, it actually just sounds like the descent in pitch is more gradual, the ending pitch is not as low as the beginning, but it gets lower than the second syllable gradually
This topic is very interesting. It seems like in actual speech it's more flexible than in theory. For example in your pronunciation of benkyou suru/shita you went down quite low on "suru" and "shita" although the illustration showed the pitch staying high.
Oh yes, I actually didn't notice that I surely went down from 'Benkyou' towards 'shita' until you pointed it out. I might have confused some learners. Thank you.
It also is relative to where you are in the sentence and stuff like that. In general, standard Japanese has an overall falling pitch throughout the sentence. You can see this by pasting something like this: 私は今勉強しています。 into www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/phrasing and pressing the Analyze button. It's also not quite this simple since stuff changes when you get to compound words and things like that (I think the second word becomes atamadaka, but I don't remember. I've stopped focusing on pitch accent and started focusing more on other things recently).
@@good1168 In fact, I just noticed that that you actually say べ at a higher pitch than the んきょう part of the word, but somehow it still manages to sound like the heiban accent! I was thinking maybe the most important part could be about what sound you stress the most, or maybe un-stressing the ''low'' part of the word. It really does seem to be a lot more flexible than it seems in theory, I've been struggling with it myself lately haha Great video anyway, cheers
I was looking for your comment in the comment section. Overall pitch drops over the course of a sentence, so in the case where two consecutive syllables (or mora, in this case) have the same pitch, the second will have a slightly lower pitch than the first. You can see the same happening in tonal languages.
I think I learned why I keep losing the first sound of so many words when listening. I think my hearing damage makes lower pitch muddier. It'll take a lot of time to train my ears to hear it.
I understand the rules explained and all the examples shown, but how do I know when to properly use it when I come across a word that I don't know the pitch accent for in Japanese? Because it's not like there will be arrows there that will tell me when to go high. (I might've missed something so please correct me/educate me.) Thank you very much for this lesson!
Thank you for your comment, The Random World. Honestly, you can't tell the pitch accent just from a written word even a normal dictionary. The native Japanese also are not able to know the right pitch accent when they come across a word that they don't know. You will know it when you hear how others say the word or look up with a pitch accent dictionary.
@@good1168 I see! This is super helpful. I also just downloaded a pitch accent dictionary app. Thank you again. Your videos are always super helpful! ❤
Great vid, just subscribed! I was wondering if japanese people are conscious of the pitch accent pattern for each word or you guys have to think first when asked about it? I was thinking, since im portuguese, in some romance languages we have genders for objects, like table is feminine in portuguese, but when we are asked what gender that word is we know the answer immediately so i was wondering if japanese people can answer immediately as well
Thank you for your comment, Daniel Nunes. In fact, normal Japanese don't know that the pitch patterns exist in Japanese. They don't know what the pitch accent is. Some Japanese aren't even aware of the fact that voice has the pitch when speaking. But, interestingly, they always speak with the right pitch accent. They probably aren't able to answer how to do that.
Actually, the down-step in Japanese generally needs more than the Major third interval. A small gap in pitch, especially less than semitone is ignored. Sorry for confusing you. I hope this makes sense. Thank you!
@@good1168 I appreciate your answer, thank you very much. Its very hard for me to distinguish if its a real pitch down-step or just a "semitone" as you say. I guess I need more language input and immersion. I will come back to this video in a few months and see if I can hear the pitches better. :)
With all these arrows it's starting to look like the inputs for a fighting game. Seriously though, thank you for making this video. I've been learning Japanese for a few months now and I'm constantly worried that I'm getting the pitch wrong and sound weird.
So is pitch accent a major reason that Japanese employs Kanji? Because with Hiragana and Katakana alone, there is too much to uncertainty with meaning that can only be clarified with pronunciation, but with Kanji that doubt is removed and the accent when speaking remains?
I don't get it. Starting from 7:43 - 8:27 the pitch you're making does not match the pattern your describing. You're actually lowering in pitch after the first syllable. What am I missing. Perhaps you're not aware of this? I'm a musician and I speak Mandarin so I'm pretty tuned into pitch. What am I missing?
Benjamin Moses Lieb, Thank you for your comment. You're right. I'm sorry I confused you! Honestly, I didn't notice I actually did lower the pitch until some other people had pointed the same thing. Funnily, they still sound like the same in pitch for me.
how come learning software programs don't just teach us to pronounce words with the correct pitch accent from the beginning? it's a new word we don't know how to pronounce anyway so we will just think "oh so this is how we should say the say it" without us thinking "oh no is that a pitch accent" do you know if rosetta stone teaches pronunciation with pitch accent or not?
Phrases / sentences recorded and spoken by the native speakers will have the correct pronunciation, but quality of the speakers vary. A question whether accent patterns are explicitly taught should be directed to the company that makes the Rosetta Stone products.
Your videos are really great, but as others have said in the comments, it's confusing for us after we've been made to open our ears we can now pick up that heiban generally goes gradually down and down after the 2nd mora and this is more noticeable across longer phrases, yet we are told "you have to maintain the same pitch towards the end".
For long へいばん words, I hear the pitch drop a little over the length of word. Can I assume that pitch in this context means more like two ranges of pitch rather than an exact pitch definition
Thanks for the video! I think I've been confusing heiban with odaka for quite a while. I wonder why it's called heiban, when it's not flat, but actually goes up in pitch. Hmm. Anyway, I'm curious as to why the pitch accent of the words in the example overrides the pitch accent rules of the following words? For example, At 4:28 you listed 好き as having a heiban pattern. But at 7:46 you had 勉強がすき, where it looks like 好き was all the same tone (all high). Should it not drop after the が, and then go up again after the す? Also at 13:22, there is 花が咲いている. How come 花 makes 咲いている be pronounced all low? Shouldn't it go up again after the さ, because 咲 is heiban? So that it becomes 「は↗な↘がさ↗いている」? Thanks!
Hi, Spiriax. Thank you for your comment. >why it's called heiban, when it's not flat, but actually goes up in pitch. In Japanese, upstep is not a rule. You can raise the pitch but you don't have to. So you can say a Heiban word flat. I think that's why it is called 'Heiban'. >Should it not drop after the が, and then go up again >after the す? A good question! When words are connected in a sentence, the upstep of each word often disappears. Likewise, at 13:22, the upstep is almost ignored. Normally, the upstep of a verb in a sentence is not emphasized.
There seems to be a misunderstanding about 好き: This is NOT a heiban word, but the pitch drops immediately after き, which makes it odaka. The same is true for the next alleged heiban example 山, by the way. (If the instructor had attached appropriate particles to the example words, I am sure he would have noticed - but in a stand-alone word, heiban and odaka sound exactly the same.)
I wonder how correct I am in assuming that if you just immerse in content and people speaking Japanese (I.E. Natives) you pick up on this without having to think about it consciously?
Different with chinese usually we dont learn the pitch which is SO CONFUSING I cant tell the difference, why we dont learn the pitch together with the words? なんとなく真似するしかないですよね😔
I have a question. So does the particle before the word have the same as the following letter? For example, would に来た be pronounced に↑き↓た or にき↓た. Would に be the same pitch as き since に is a particle?
Thank you for your question, V e g e t a. First of all, there is no concept of "particles in front of words" in Japanese. A particle is to be attached after a word. Basically, all letters are pronounced in the same pitch except for Odaka or Nakadaka words. But you can raise the pitch whenever you like in a sentence unless there is the Down-Step because there is no rule as to the rising tone,.
There is a web pitch accent dictionary. www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/search/index/accent_type:2/sortprefix:accent/narabi1:kata_asc/narabi2:accent_asc/narabi3:mola_asc/yure:visible/curve:invisible/details:invisible/limit:20
Thank you for your comment, Rin] Kagamine 02] Rinny :3. Basically, you can't tell how to read it when you only see the word 'ここ' in Hiragana. But you can tell by the context. Also, we usually use Kanji 個々(ここ) for 'individual'. So ここ is normally read with the Heiban accent.
Such a clear explanation! Thank you! I have one question. I've seen a pitch accent chart that lists the 一拍語 with the pitch for the particle going down as 頭高型 instead of 尾高型. Is that chart wrong?
one thing that really confuses me is that you said that in heiban words, the pitch stays the same for the second syllable and onwards. But when you (and other Japanese speakers ) say, for example , watashi, I can hear that the shi has a clearly lower pitch than the ta, even though it might not be a dramatic drop.
What you point out is interesting. Actually, I remember that some of my students have told me the same thing. Sorry, the explanation about the pitch accent sometimes confuses non-native speakers. Yes, I have to admit that Japanese native speakers tend to slightly go down in pitch toward the end in a Heiban word or in a sentence although they don't notice. So, I usually tell my students that the down-step in Japanese needs more than the Major third interval: Mediant because a small gap in pitch, especially less than semitone can be just 'intonation' or nuance. I hope this makes sense. Thank you very much!!
@@good1168 it does make sense ! what helps me is indeed to focus on downstep as it is always a big interval. I also noticed that (taking watashi as an example once again) although the si might be a semitone lower than the ta, it stays higher than the wa, which was like a third below the ta, so it works, it what you're saying!
Is it similar to 4 tones in chinese? I mean the concept? In chinese as far as I know if the same initial pronounced with the different tone, the will have different meaning. Is it similar like that?
Not all Chinese languages has tones, don't generalize "Chinese" has only one language. Shanghainese which is a dialect of Wu chinese language is also a pitch accent language/dialect.
@@kokolexx it mean "common language". Also called Zhong Wen. Chinese is not the correct translation. The same way Zhong Guo is not China, it mean Middle Nation or Middle Kingdom. So Zhong Wen mean Language of the Middle Nation.
@@michaels3003 Thank you for your compliment on my sounds. I don't exactly remember but probably used the SM58 microphone and an Apogee Audio interface at the time.
bennemann さん、コメントありがとうございます。 That's a very keen point of view！Different from English, lyrics don't necessarily need to be sung with the correct pitch accent. At least over a few decades, many writers have made many songs including the wrong pitch accent in its lyrics and they have been accepted by almost all Japanese. Some don't even notice that it is different from the pitch accent that they usually use.
When English words have the wrong syllable stressed, at the very least it makes it more difficult to understand and it can sound quite irritating (depending on the listeners tolerance level). More importantly, some words are not understood at all. I disagree with an idea to learn English with incorrect pronunciation if the spoken form of the language will be used (especially in a "formal" setting like university or a workplace in the English speaking country). I don't see why this should be different for the Japanese language where the correct pronunciation is not expected.
I've been studying Japanese for a few years now and I only heard about this for the first time a few days ago. No wonder why foreigners are always given away when they speak, I don't think most people are taught about pitch accent.
Sadly, you are very correct. The typical explanation is that they do not want to overwhelm the learners/ foreign students.
i had the exact same experience. ive been studying japanese from people who have not only lived in japan for many years, but some who were born and raised there. ive also used things like duolingo and rosetta stone, and youtube. not once have i ever heard this mentioned. i had no idea there were words like hashi, which are like chinese in that pitch can change the meaning of the word. i was shocked when i found out, i was like why did no one tell me???
@@stellarmori , l've read that the number of Japanese words that depend on on pitch pattern is relatively small. However, they are not the only reason why an effort should be made to have a decent pronunciation. It is very inconsiderate of the "victims" who will be subjected to listening to their native language being mangled.
@@michaels3003 yep. being in a high school japanese class, you hear the worst pronunciation known to man. they sound like southern cowboys reading romaji. it makes my ears bleed and im american. i cant imagine how my native japanese teacher feels
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I somehow lost my login password. I love any assistance you can give me!
this is by far the most clear explanation i've ever aeen
ありがとうございます。うれしいです。
i think pitch accent should be taught and included as a basic theory in classes... if not it's going to be confusing
+1
I really wish Japanese teachers had taught me this when I first started studying Japanese.
I took three years of formal education in Japanese with one of those years in Japan, and not once did we ever go over this. This helps put all the pieces together, thank you very much for uploading this! どうもありがとうございました！
I'm really glad to hear that. Thank you for watching my videos.
Excellent video on understanding Japanese pitch accent.
和也 The Elfさん
Thank you for watching! ありがとうございます！
Spanish is my first language and its similar to Japanese in sounds. But I tried to compare the Japanese pitch accent with the Spanish stress accent and they differ completely :( In Spanish we have the words "ame" /á.me/ and "amé" /a.mé/, we have to stress one syllable in a word. However, they dont sound exactly the same as Japanese "a↓me" or "a↑me".
That's interesting. Thank you for sharing.
languages are amazing!
@Luis Vargas: La gramática japonesa es muy diferente al español, recordemos que el español tiene acentos atónos y suena más "fuerte" que el japonés.
@@good1168 uP
We don't use stress in our syllables, that's English... In Spanish it's called syllable timed language
This is why when foreigner sing in Japanese they lose the accent and sounds Japanese because the language tones are gone.
Totally right! Singing might be a good way to learn the pitch accent.
@@good1168 , he said the opposite, so it wasn't correct assuming that your reply was correct.
@@michaels3003 Thanks, Michael S.
I thought that AV says that when a foreign person sings a Japanese song, he has less of his mother language accent and it sounds as if a native Japanese sings it. So I guess singing a Japanese song would be a good way to feel what the Japanese sounds are like and will help improve your pronunciation skills. I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding.
@@good1168 , no need to be sorry. I've just reread the original comment. It can be interpreted in different ways (in my opinion), so my interpretation could have been incorrect. I am disappointed that so little importance is being given to "proper" pronunciation. For most people, it is not possible to unlearn all the "bad" pronunciations that they have been using for a long time. This applies to any spoken language. In English, native speakers often fail to understand mispronounced words. This was a surprise to me when I first encountered this. They are also very quick to point out that somebody is speaking with "an accent."
present vs present
(pre-ZENT) vs (PRE-zent)
(pre-ZENT): to present something
(PRE-zent) : a gift/the period of time occurring now
That’s word stress in English though which this video just said is different from pitch accent.
Pitch accent is easier to understand if you understand music. Pitch changes don’t change the stress of a syllable. They change the pitch like changing a vocal note. So think of how do-re-mi-fa have the same stress but each note has a different pitch.
I had no idea they had different intonations wow and I'm native
Stress is fun to mess with in English.
The letter was enveloped in the envelope. (to en-VElope vs. EN-velope)
The music producer and the production artist aren't huge fans of freshly produced produce.
Definitely depends on your dialect of English, but for me, I say "produce" (as in farm-crops) as 'prO-duce', while I say 'pruhduce' for "produce" (as in prodcuing food/music etc).
@@susie2251 I heard people saying that english stress is related to pitch though... but not quite the same thing for sure!!
I'm so glad my native language is Swedish. We also have a pitch accent
Oh thanks for confirming... I read it on Reddit but I thought it was complete BS 😆
It is interesting that I never knew that there was a pitch accent in Japanese. I just copied the "intonation" or the way of speaking of the natives. And I realized that I do this pitch accent automatically. Sometimes it is really good to not know something. :D
ありがとうございます！！To copy is a great way.
99.999% you are doing it wrong. I thought I unconsciously got all the patterns too. Turns out I'm very wrong.
@@YSFmemories What would you recommend for learning pitch accents?
@@sumyguck8094 I don't really know, this is what I'm trying to figure out. Because at least for me, the problem isn't understanding pitch accents. I've been listening to Japanese for over 10 years, watched well over 10,000 hours of Japanese variety shows, baseball, cooking shows, anime, drama etc etc etc.
I felt like my Japanese was really good. At least in terms of listening and understanding accents. I can even hear different accents like Kansai-ben, hiroshima-ben, hokkaido-ben etc.
But the problem I have, and I feel like most english speakers end up having once they're at a decent level of japanese is that *in addition* to Japanese pitch accent patterns, we also recognize incorrect English pitch accent patterns as "correct", even though it isn't. That's what trips us up.
For example, take the Japanese word "最高”. It's a heiban pattern; it starts flat then goes up. But it sounds really close to the English word "cycle". And how do we pronounce "cycle"? The exact opposite. Starts flat then goes down.
Another example is アメリカ. If we pronounce "America" in English, it's an "Odaka" pattern. But in Japanese it's a heiban pattern. But because we had English patterns drilled into our minds from a young age, we automatically recognize English patterns as "natural sounding", and we don't realize that it sounds weird to a Japanese person.
This is why if you watched Dogen's videos (and particularly Kaz's nitpicking of Dogen's Japanese), you hear Dogen say "koto" with an Odaka pattern instead of Heiban pattern multiple times; Dogen *knows* in his head what the correct answer is, if it was a paper test and the question asked to indicate which patterns to use in each word Dogen would score 100%. but because the English patterns feel so natural he just ends up instinctively using it.
So the hardest part about learning pitch patterns isn't learning of the patterns. It's forgetting the English patterns that have already been heavily ingrained into our minds.
@@YSFmemories im not at a very high level of japanese yet but this really explains why i have so much trouble saying those english katakana words that have been absorbed into japanese. im always trying to say them with american intonations because thats where my brain is pulling them from. its really hard to shake yourself out of it lol
I've read many people complain that no one teaches about Japanese pitch accents. Not even mentioned in any of my books or lessons (N4 level). I'm glad I found this to stop myself from creating bad pitch habits before they started. Thank you!
Underrated video. Thank you so much. The other phonetic videos on Japanese ended up being more confusing the more I watched but this explanation really helped!
Thank you! I'm so glad to hear that. I hope this video helps you!
This video is a little over 1 year old, and I would just like to say THANK YOU. It is so hard to find good content in pitch accent for the japanese language... I remember how I naively thought japanese were flat for the first 3 years in my learning process... and took it for granted because my native language share 99% of japanese sounds, how wrong I was. Thanks for this!
Thank you for your kind comment. I'm pleased that you are interested in my videos. When I started teaching foreign Japanese learners, I found that many of them struggling how to figure the Japanese pitch accent. I hope this may help them.
How come nobody mentioned Dougen san videos here in this comment section? 日本語上手ですね。
Thank you. I am a native Japanese speaker.
ここ (此処) (here, this place) vs. 個々/個個 (ここ) (individual, one by one)
橋 (はし) (bridge) vs. 箸 (はし) (chopsticks)
飴 (あめ) (candy) 🍬🍭 vs. 雨 (あめ) (rain) 🌂
花 (はな) (flower) 🌷 vs. 鼻 (はな) (nose) 👃
Thank you for this!
ありがとうございます！
I used to neglect pitch accent before and that even affected my listening skills. For example, I used to have a hard time recognising 受ける because the first vowel is lower pitch and I used to think that everything is supposed to be flat.
Thank you for your comment. Yes, I believe that understanding how to pronounce can improve not only your speaking skills but also listening skills.
恐らく方言で一番ばらつきが出るのがpitch accentですね。私は標準語を話す日本人ですが、新しい単語に出会ったとき、たまに間違ってしまうことがあります😅
これは聞きまくって、耳で慣れてしまうのが一番良いかなと思います。
Even Japanese cannot perfectly guess the pitch accent on new words, so the best way is to listen carefully and imitate how native speakers pronounce.
The hardest part of pitch accent is having to memorize odaka words to differentiate them from heiban words... If there was a rule I'd be pleased
After watching this lesson, I'm finding Portuguese pronunciation very similar to Japanese's. Maybe that's why I'm finding the rules of pitch accent for Nihongo strangely familiar to Portuguese pronunciation rules. Thank you for the excellent video! 💯👍
ありがとうございます！お役に立てれば幸いです。Thank you! I hope it helps you.
I'm so glad to be a Brazilian!!
Portuguese has a lot of accent rules, so it's a little easier to understand.
For example:
Vovó - vo→ vo↗ - grandma
Vovô - vo→ vo↙ - grandpa
Bebe - be↗ be↙ - (He/She) drink
Bebê - be↙ be↙ - baby
Voce esta confundindo.. nao e' assim que funciona o pitch accent..
This should make perfect sense to anyone who speaks Chinese as well.
私は日本語が好きです!!ありがとうございました,先生。
Grettel Vargasさん、こちらこそ見てくれてありがとうございます！
@@good1168 こちらこそありがとうございます。😊👍👘
When you say it goes up at the first syllable and maintains its pitch, it actually just sounds like the descent in pitch is more gradual, the ending pitch is not as low as the beginning, but it gets lower than the second syllable gradually
This topic is very interesting. It seems like in actual speech it's more flexible than in theory. For example in your pronunciation of benkyou suru/shita you went down quite low on "suru" and "shita" although the illustration showed the pitch staying high.
Oh yes, I actually didn't notice that I surely went down from 'Benkyou' towards 'shita' until you pointed it out. I might have confused some learners. Thank you.
It also is relative to where you are in the sentence and stuff like that. In general, standard Japanese has an overall falling pitch throughout the sentence. You can see this by pasting something like this: 私は今勉強しています。 into www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/phrasing and pressing the Analyze button.
It's also not quite this simple since stuff changes when you get to compound words and things like that (I think the second word becomes atamadaka, but I don't remember. I've stopped focusing on pitch accent and started focusing more on other things recently).
@@good1168 In fact, I just noticed that that you actually say べ at a higher pitch than the んきょう part of the word, but somehow it still manages to sound like the heiban accent! I was thinking maybe the most important part could be about what sound you stress the most, or maybe un-stressing the ''low'' part of the word. It really does seem to be a lot more flexible than it seems in theory, I've been struggling with it myself lately haha
Great video anyway, cheers
@@starmechlx. Thank you for your comment!
@@not26pls こんにちは, Oh, really? I myself didn't think I raised the pitch of ’べ’.As you said the Japanese pitch accent can be quite flexible.
I searched for a long time for an video like that. Thanks it is very helpful :D
I'm so glad you liked it! ありがとうございます！
Very well explained
ありがとうございます！
The pitch actually is dropping for the heiban examples sometimes though. Eg: 7:25 ここが goes A, up to D, then down to B.
I was looking for your comment in the comment section. Overall pitch drops over the course of a sentence, so in the case where two consecutive syllables (or mora, in this case) have the same pitch, the second will have a slightly lower pitch than the first. You can see the same happening in tonal languages.
Also they are saying heiban means flat but telling us that it’s actually rising. No wonder it’s impossibly confusing.
@cameron -- you have a fine ear!
So lucky I found Yasさん's channel!!! This is a blessing that the new year brings to me. 本当にありがとうございます！
Jadee Leeさん、ありがとうございます！そう言っていただけて嬉しいです。Thank you! I am so glad to hear that.
I think I learned why I keep losing the first sound of so many words when listening. I think my hearing damage makes lower pitch muddier. It'll take a lot of time to train my ears to hear it.
Thank you for watching.Hope you are enjoying the videos!
Thank you soo very much for making this video せんせい！わたしはまっとたくさん感謝しています！😁
I learned a lot, thank you!
Thank you for watching!
どもありがとございます！
This video series is so helpful!
こちらこそ、ありがとうございます！
Has he made this 50X clearer than it should be or have I been pronouncing pitch accent correctly accidently?
Interesting
this is so helpful,, !!
ありがとうございました:D
見ていただき、ありがとうございます！
本当に分かりやすいです！
ありがとうございます！！🤗❤️
ありがとうございます！
your video is so thorough
it was helpful for me! thank you!!
Thank you for watching!! I hope this will help you.
Thank you very much!
ありがとうございます！
I understand the rules explained and all the examples shown, but how do I know when to properly use it when I come across a word that I don't know the pitch accent for in Japanese? Because it's not like there will be arrows there that will tell me when to go high. (I might've missed something so please correct me/educate me.) Thank you very much for this lesson!
Thank you for your comment, The Random World.
Honestly, you can't tell the pitch accent just from a written word even a normal dictionary.
The native Japanese also are not able to know the right pitch accent when they come across a word that they don't know.
You will know it when you hear how others say the word or look up with a pitch accent dictionary.
@@good1168 I see! This is super helpful. I also just downloaded a pitch accent dictionary app. Thank you again. Your videos are always super helpful! ❤
いい説明です！教えてくれてありがとうございます〜
ありがとうございます！
Great vid, just subscribed! I was wondering if japanese people are conscious of the pitch accent pattern for each word or you guys have to think first when asked about it? I was thinking, since im portuguese, in some romance languages we have genders for objects, like table is feminine in portuguese, but when we are asked what gender that word is we know the answer immediately so i was wondering if japanese people can answer immediately as well
Thank you for your comment, Daniel Nunes. In fact, normal Japanese don't know that the pitch patterns exist in Japanese. They don't know what the pitch accent is. Some Japanese aren't even aware of the fact that voice has the pitch when speaking.
But, interestingly, they always speak with the right pitch accent. They probably aren't able to answer how to do that.
Very Impressive and Interesting.
ありがとうございます！
8:08 You definitely go down with the pitch at the end. I'm now utterly confused.
Actually, the down-step in Japanese generally needs more than the Major third interval. A small gap in pitch, especially less than semitone is ignored. Sorry for confusing you. I hope this makes sense. Thank you!
@@good1168 I appreciate your answer, thank you very much. Its very hard for me to distinguish if its a real pitch down-step or just a "semitone" as you say. I guess I need more language input and immersion. I will come back to this video in a few months and see if I can hear the pitches better. :)
I am so interested in this type of stuff. More?
Thank you. Look forward to it.
ああ とても勉強になりました。ありがとうございます
Steve さん、ありがとうございます！良かったら他のビデオも見てくださいね！
With all these arrows it's starting to look like the inputs for a fighting game.
Seriously though, thank you for making this video. I've been learning Japanese for a few months now and I'm constantly worried that I'm getting the pitch wrong and sound weird.
ありがとうございます。
Thank you for watching. Don't worry about the pitch accent when you talk.
Thank u for making this great video, it helps me a lot to understand japanese pitch accent. I was confused about this
ありがとうございます！Thank you!
So is pitch accent a major reason that Japanese employs Kanji? Because with Hiragana and Katakana alone, there is too much to uncertainty with meaning that can only be clarified with pronunciation, but with Kanji that doubt is removed and the accent when speaking remains?
Just add characters that indicate pitch ez
とてもわかりやすくて参考になりました 😊
ありがとうございます！
I don't get it. Starting from 7:43 - 8:27 the pitch you're making does not match the pattern your describing. You're actually lowering in pitch after the first syllable. What am I missing. Perhaps you're not aware of this? I'm a musician and I speak Mandarin so I'm pretty tuned into pitch. What am I missing?
Benjamin Moses Lieb, Thank you for your comment.
You're right. I'm sorry I confused you!
Honestly, I didn't notice I actually did lower the pitch until some other people had pointed the same thing.
Funnily, they still sound like the same in pitch for me.
This was driving me crazy too.
how come learning software programs don't just teach us to pronounce words with the correct pitch accent from the beginning? it's a new word we don't know how to pronounce anyway so we will just think "oh so this is how we should say the say it" without us thinking "oh no is that a pitch accent"
do you know if rosetta stone teaches pronunciation with pitch accent or not?
Thank you! Sorry, I don't know about Rosetta Stone. You can check how to pronounce words at the website 'Forvo'.
Phrases / sentences recorded and spoken by the native speakers will have the correct pronunciation, but quality of the speakers vary. A question whether accent patterns are explicitly taught should be directed to the company that makes the Rosetta Stone products.
Not a single language app for Japanese teaches pitch accent. It’s kind of insane.
This video made it clear
ありがとう！
Although I'm no good English but understand about you teaching
Your videos are really great, but as others have said in the comments, it's confusing for us after we've been made to open our ears we can now pick up that heiban generally goes gradually down and down after the 2nd mora and this is more noticeable across longer phrases, yet we are told "you have to maintain the same pitch towards the end".
Merci!
For long へいばん words, I hear the pitch drop a little over the length of word. Can I assume that pitch in this context means more like two ranges of pitch rather than an exact pitch definition
Hello, pepijnee. Yes, the pitch here means a gap in pitch within a word. Thank you.
Very useful😁
ありがとうございます！
Please tell us how to pronounce the letter T & D respectively in Japanese. 😇🙏🏻💐
Sounds nice! That's one of what I want to try to make next.
Thank you very much for your video:)
ありがとうございます！！
4:46 平板アクセント
9:31 尾高アクセント
I would think someone with musical training would hear this more readily than a non-music-oriented person.
Thanks for the video! I think I've been confusing heiban with odaka for quite a while.
I wonder why it's called heiban, when it's not flat, but actually goes up in pitch. Hmm.
Anyway, I'm curious as to why the pitch accent of the words in the example overrides the pitch accent rules of the following words?
For example, At 4:28 you listed 好き as having a heiban pattern. But at 7:46 you had 勉強がすき, where it looks like 好き was all the same tone (all high). Should it not drop after the が, and then go up again after the す?
Also at 13:22, there is 花が咲いている. How come 花 makes 咲いている be pronounced all low? Shouldn't it go up again after the さ, because 咲 is heiban? So that it becomes 「は↗な↘がさ↗いている」? Thanks!
Hi, Spiriax. Thank you for your comment.
>why it's called heiban, when it's not flat, but actually goes up in pitch.
In Japanese, upstep is not a rule. You can raise the pitch but you don't have to. So you can say a Heiban word flat. I think that's why it is called 'Heiban'.
>Should it not drop after the が, and then go up again >after the す?
A good question! When words are connected in a sentence, the upstep of each word often disappears.
Likewise, at 13:22, the upstep is almost ignored.
Normally, the upstep of a verb in a sentence is not emphasized.
There seems to be a misunderstanding about 好き: This is NOT a heiban word, but the pitch drops immediately after き, which makes it odaka. The same is true for the next alleged heiban example 山, by the way. (If the instructor had attached appropriate particles to the example words, I am sure he would have noticed - but in a stand-alone word, heiban and odaka sound exactly the same.)
教科書にアクセントの説明があまりない理由は方言によってアクセントが違うことかもしれません。
僕は今まで例文を聞いて日本語のアクセントに慣れるつもりでしたが、効率的ではなかったので、これからちゃんと勉強しようと思っています。説明してくれてありがとうございます。
ありがとうございます！そうですね。ピッチアクセントは時代によっても変わってしまうのでなかなか定義しにくいです。
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for watching! I hope it will help.
I wonder how correct I am in assuming that if you just immerse in content and people speaking Japanese (I.E. Natives) you pick up on this without having to think about it consciously?
Cool
this is a bit of an old video so i dont know whether someone has corrected this yet but すき and やま are odaka not heiban 4:28
You're right. Sorry for that.Thanks
Excellent video, thank you so much!
ありがとうございます！うれしいです。
great tutorial!! thank you
Cora K, Thank you for watching it! I hope it will help you.
Wow, that is useful! Thank you!
_ninja _nic, thank you for your comment!
Is it just like chinese tones? How do I know the pitch when I found a new word
I guess it's like Chinese. You can't tell which pattern to use from just seeing the letters. You can look in the pitch accent dictionary such as OJAD.
Different with chinese usually we dont learn the pitch which is SO CONFUSING I cant tell the difference, why we dont learn the pitch together with the words? なんとなく真似するしかないですよね😔
Chinese tones are a totally different thing...
what confuses me is that i learnt that in japanese language each word is spoken equally & doesn't stress one word more than other other....🤔
Thank you for your comment. There is no concept of stress in Japanese. It sounds like a metronome.
@@good1168 , I think this comparison would apply more to the spoken Korean language.
I have a question. So does the particle before the word have the same as the following letter? For example, would に来た be pronounced に↑き↓た or にき↓た. Would に be the same pitch as き since に is a particle?
Thank you for your question, V e g e t a.
First of all, there is no concept of "particles in front of words" in Japanese.
A particle is to be attached after a word.
Basically, all letters are pronounced in the same pitch except for Odaka or Nakadaka words. But you can raise the pitch whenever you like in a sentence unless there is the Down-Step because there is no rule as to the rising tone,.
@@good1168 Thank you. I love your channel, it has drastically improved my Japanese studies
1:40 Did you mean "individual"?
Oops! Yes. individual. Sorry.
No worries! Thanks for the fantastically useful video, I learned a lot. :)
@@evilparkin Thank you. I hope it would help you.
And how do I know which word has which accent when I´m learning vocabulary?
Wiktionary shows types of pitch accents for words, so you may wanna try.
There is a web pitch accent dictionary.
www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/search/index/accent_type:2/sortprefix:accent/narabi1:kata_asc/narabi2:accent_asc/narabi3:mola_asc/yure:visible/curve:invisible/details:invisible/limit:20
How do they read their pitch accents? Like if ここ as in here and individual are spelled the same. Just confused 😅
Thank you for your comment, Rin] Kagamine 02] Rinny :3.
Basically, you can't tell how to read it when you only see the word 'ここ' in Hiragana. But you can tell by the context. Also, we usually use Kanji 個々(ここ) for 'individual'. So ここ is normally read with the Heiban accent.
Learn Japanese with Yas ohhh Thanks a lot!! I kind of suspected kanji had such an important role like this! Thanks again
Pitch accent should be in the dictionary
So this as close to what the Japanese language has to homophones
Such a clear explanation! Thank you! I have one question. I've seen a pitch accent chart that lists the 一拍語 with the pitch for the particle going down as 頭高型 instead of 尾高型. Is that chart wrong?
Thank you, Alana Muller.
As far as I know, a word with a down-step toward the particle is defined as 尾高型.
A 頭高型 word has a down-step within the word.
@@good1168 Thank you! That's really helpful!
Is just me, or does the pitch lower a little in 〜した at 8:14
Could be a little lower. Thanks.
@@good1168 Hi Yas! I wasn't criticizing. Just trying to analyze how the pitch evolves. You are native after all.
The end high accent 9:27
one thing that really confuses me is that you said that in heiban words, the pitch stays the same for the second syllable and onwards. But when you (and other Japanese speakers ) say, for example , watashi, I can hear that the shi has a clearly lower pitch than the ta, even though it might not be a dramatic drop.
What you point out is interesting. Actually, I remember that some of my students have told me the same thing.
Sorry, the explanation about the pitch accent sometimes confuses non-native speakers.
Yes, I have to admit that Japanese native speakers tend to slightly go down in pitch toward the end in a Heiban word or in a sentence although they don't notice.
So, I usually tell my students that the down-step in Japanese needs more than the Major third interval: Mediant because a small gap in pitch, especially less than semitone can be just 'intonation' or nuance.
I hope this makes sense. Thank you very much!!
@@good1168 it does make sense ! what helps me is indeed to focus on downstep as it is always a big interval. I also noticed that (taking watashi as an example once again) although the si might be a semitone lower than the ta, it stays higher than the wa, which was like a third below the ta, so it works, it what you're saying!
Is it similar to 4 tones in chinese?
I mean the concept?
In chinese as far as I know if the same initial pronounced with the different tone, the will have different meaning.
Is it similar like that?
Shandy Verdyoさん、ありがとうございます。I guess, yes. With the different pitch accent, even a word with same Hiraganas can have different meanings.
English have stressed syllabels, Chinese have tones, and Japanese have pitch accent...hmmm
Not all Chinese languages has tones, don't generalize "Chinese" has only one language. Shanghainese which is a dialect of Wu chinese language is also a pitch accent language/dialect.
@@mikewallice2795 well,usually "Chinese" refers to 普通话, and even if it is not, many or even most of the dialects in China have tones.
@@kokolexx it mean "common language". Also called Zhong Wen. Chinese is not the correct translation. The same way Zhong Guo is not China, it mean Middle Nation or Middle Kingdom. So Zhong Wen mean Language of the Middle Nation.
@@mikewallice2795 ok
Since many Japanese people drops the particle, how are you supposed to know the difference between Heiban and Odaka then?
Thank you for a very good question. Generally, after an Odaka word, the pitch will drop even if the particle is omitted.
@@good1168 That makes sense! Thanks a lot for the answer and a great video! ありがとうございました。
こ↑こ↓
はぇ～すっごいおっきぃ
More pleaseeeee
Thank you. I'm thinking of making another video. I hope you'll be looking forward to it!
@@good1168 please do! Don't make me press the unsubscribe button 笑
よろしくお願い致します！
@@raymk th-cam.com/video/xsU1phUIls4/w-d-xo.html
omg your Japanese pronunciation sounds exactly the same in textbooks. Are you a seiyu or an announcer?
Wow! Thank you! I'm glad to hear that. I'm a voice coach.
@@good1168 , your pronunciation is super clear. If you had audio products (for beginners), I would buy one "in a heartbeat" (as we say in my country).
@@michaels3003 Thank you for your compliment on my sounds.
I don't exactly remember but probably used the SM58 microphone and an Apogee Audio interface at the time.
平板 (へいばん) vs. 尾高 (おだか) vs. 頭高 (あたまだか)
*individual
Anyone else hearing the pitch drop at the end of watashi? 5:27 I hear no difference between the word you mean and the word that doesn’t exist.
That can sound dropping.Now I'm thinking about making a video on about how to grasp the pitch drop.
おはようございます！
質問があります。
「accent」は日本語で何と言いますか。その意味を表すのために「抑揚」か「訛り」、どんな一番適当な単語ですか。
教えていただけませんか。
Vladさん、こんにちは。「Pitch Accent」は日本語で「アクセント」です。「抑揚」は「intonation」、「訛り」は「accent」ですね。
「You have an accent」=「訛ってるよ」
@@good1168 ありがとうございました
If "kimi" with a falling pitch doesn't exist, why do I keep hearing it that way in this song? th-cam.com/video/2oBFWmuQ6_8/w-d-xo.html . Thanks.
bennemann さん、コメントありがとうございます。
That's a very keen point of view！Different from English, lyrics don't necessarily need to be sung with the correct pitch accent. At least over a few decades, many writers have made many songs including the wrong pitch accent in its lyrics and they have been accepted by almost all Japanese. Some don't even notice that it is different from the pitch accent that they usually use.
What's the best way to see what pitch a word is?
Hearing conversation and News would help you. Or looking up a word in a pitch accent dictionary is a perfect way. Thank you.
Thanks
Bro what is a mora?
I'm so confused in this term
Also,is the nasal consonant 'n' in Japanese also given the same time as for other kana
Mahant さんありがとう。
Yes, it has the same length of time. Thanks!
th-cam.com/video/gkgpNadzYAY/w-d-xo.html
Should i, an absolute beginner (im talking not even Genki 1 complete Japanese), worry about this??
You don't have to.Thank you.
Learn Japanese with Yas ありがとう！
When English words have the wrong syllable stressed, at the very least it makes it more difficult to understand and it can sound quite irritating (depending on the listeners tolerance level). More importantly, some words are not understood at all. I disagree with an idea to learn English with incorrect pronunciation if the spoken form of the language will be used (especially in a "formal" setting like university or a workplace in the English speaking country). I don't see why this should be different for the Japanese language where the correct pronunciation is not expected.
fuRAtto desu
1:39 I think you mean Individual
first kanji, then homophones, now pitch accent. rip my brain.
I don't want to rip your brain. I think Kanji is far more important than the pitch accent.
高低が標準語とほぼ反対な大阪弁とかはどうでしょう？
コメントありがとうございます。この動画で話している内容は標準語についてです。方言はまた別の話です。
@@good1168
確かにそうですが、その話はいつか…？
@@OmarLivesUnderSpace 私は東京在住なので関西弁は分かりませんが、エリアによるピッチアクセントの違いについてはいつか動画を作ってみたいと思います。
@@good1168
それは宜しくお願いします