I felt so personally attacked when you demonstrated the incorrect way to say gakkou, ginko, and kouban because that's EXACTLY how I've been saying them.
haha I've been there! ^^ If you'd like to learn more please consider signing up for the series! There is cool trick that covers most words such as 学校、銀行、交番, etc. They all fall into the same pattern so to speak. Let me know if you have any questions! ^^
You, sir, are genius! 15 years after I've started studying Japanese I finally have an explanation to why Japanese people sometimes don't understand what I am saying. Nobody was ever able to explain it to me, I kept thinking I was not talking loud enough or had some sort of speech impediment that can't be helped. None of the 6+ Japanese teachers I've had in my life have ever mentioned the phrase "pitch accent". I didn't know such thing existed. All of a sudden everything makes sense! Thank you so so much :)
Yes, this is THE reason Japanese people don't always understand you. I can guarantee that once you get the basics of pitch-accent down your communication abilities will immediately improve, and that the number of fake compliments you receive will also drop off dramatically. Progress! :D Thanks for the support!
@@Arkanthrall That's a good point. In Kinmoza, Karen speaks with a "Japanese voice actor pretending to be an American" accent, tagging along desu at the end of too many sentences, but in the JP subtitles it's written with デス instead.
This is what’s strange because changes in English pitch is usually understandable. Accented words like read vs read to depict tense are a bit different I think. But it indeed sounds strange if done wrong.
@@Mrbluefire95 This is a bad example actually. Read and read use different sounds rather than pitch to communicate that difference (R-ee-d and R-eh-d). A better example is the word 'present'. If you it is a noun as in "I am getting you a present' the emphasis is on 'pres'. In the verb usage, as in 'You are going to present your work tomorrow at 9 a.m.' the emphasis is on 'sen'. It's the same pronunciation but the distinction comes from what syllable gets emphasized.
Japanese is the second language I'm learning. I got fluent in English without paying much attention to phonetics and that caused a lot of headaches in the long run. I started to notice all of these shortcomings on my pronunciation when I was already very fluent. With Japanese I wont make the same mistake. It took me 10 minutes in the 大辞林 website to figure out what the 0 1 2 and 3 meant and there's no harm in checking how words are pronounced from very early on. When I have conversations in English with native speakers they tell me that my English is good and that they have no problems understanding me, but had I became aware of right way to say the vowels sooner my English would sound a lot nicer nowadays. I did what Dogen talks about on this video, mapping some of the sounds of my native language to English. It actually takes one evening to learn how to make the English vowels. I just was unaware that all of that existed. Anyway, live and learn.
The same reason a Japanese person's English would sound strange if they paid no attention to English's STRESS accent, your Japanese will sound strange if you pay no attention to pitch accent. And just the same, native English speakers often don't realize just how stress based their language is. Stressed syllables and even entire words actually do a lot of heavy lifting with regards to conveying meaning. Read the following sentence 7 times, stressing each word once. "I never said she stole my money." I will definitely be hitting pitch accent lessons hard when it's time to start outputting in Japanese.
This is fantastic. Never mind the pure facts about the language (although I sure wish someone had explained this so clearly when I first tried to learn the language many years ago), your insight into what's going on between students and teachers about intonation questions is great. You make my old tired former-linguistics-professor heart sing. Although the facts make my Japanese-studying heart cry, because to me this is the big secret last straw that I am sure I'll never acquire no matter how long I study in my not-living-in Japan situation (and one reason why I am sticking to trying to learn to read).
So glad to hear that you are getting a lot out of the series! If nothing else I'm sure you'll improve your listening abilities a lot with the knowledge from these lessons. Even just knowing about the different types of patterns can completely change the way that you hear Japanese. Thanks again--truly appreciate it!
I don't usually do the patreon thing, but you seem to have the same idea as I do. Spoken language is more important than written. And lessons for just $10 a month? count me totally in :D
I’m so so happy I found this channel as I just started studying Japanese. I remember my teacher had me say “学生”, and said it with out elongating the “e” sound. She then politely corrected me and said to say it in the correct way, and told me that Japanese is a flat language. I was so so confused
My native-speaker Japanese professor in college only grilled us on pitch for what I guess you would call homonyms? (3 kinds of kami, hana, etc.) Otherwise, she cared far more about getting repeated consonants/vowels right than if we said them at the right pitch. Then again, I think a few people in the class were utterly tone-deaf, so the lesson may have been lost on them anyway...
When I imagine Japanese in my head, it sounds really native but when I go to speak, it doesn't come out like that at all. I think my problem is that I am always nervous speaking Japanese to other people (I am always relaxed when I speak with my Japanese wife) and the situation overwhelms me. Also, when I am speaking Japanese, I am aware of all the mistakes I am making, but I just don't seem to put the effort into fixing my Japanese. It's very depressing.. I started Japanese over 10 years ago but it is trash, I almost wish I never started. I remember taking N2 like 6 years ago but failed by 1 point. I haven't studied since and feel the same level, argh.
Getting nervous can definitely affect speech! Do you ever record yourself? I feel that this is one of the best ways to get rid of the gap between mental fluency and conversational fluency :) good luck with your studies!
I couldn't agree more. When I think of the words, it sounds like a native speaker in my head, the main reason I found out to be is that we have been exposed to these words and heard it before but haven't practiced speaking very much. Not only this but when you are aware of the mistakes you are doing you feel like it's too much effort to talk perfectly hence it becomes overwhelming to think all of these "Did I tell the word correctly?" or "I made a mistake but it's too late." and bonus point you are aware that the person in front of you judges your language abilities without thinking/expressing it to you. Then you think to yourself and want to improve, but still there are many gaps you have to fill in and simply watching mixed videos put you under stress since you are now more aware of your capabilities so looking at the big picture becomes overwhelming and depressing when you start to think that you haven't improved and will (almost) never talk like a native speaker; even if you manage, you will never be seen Japanese (goes same for every country really) but the gaijin. The more you look into it, the more it feels like impossible to learn the language. Sometimes you will feel unmotivated and depressed, sometimes the opposite: you will feel like it's the perfect time to start again however it will be complicated for that since you know a bit already and the loop begins. Being native-like is a very hard task and not many people achieve it, mostly we see the motivated people who have achieved it. To be honest I am thinking the same of never starting to learn Japanese because now everything is too complicated, depressing and confusing whereas 10-15 years ago we didn't have many sources and had a book or a two to study from. Overall I hope you are doing better.
After 15 years of exposing myself to Japanese media and being really taken in by the language, I've decided to really put my foot down and learn some stuff thanks to you Dogen. Thank you for doing these and I'm excited to learn more about the Japanese language.
This is mind blowing. I've studied Japanese for around 8 years at both high school, university and have spent 2 years in Japan. None of my teachers have ever mentioned this.
I love this! I also believe it's important to get intonation right because even in a non-tonal language like English a mispronunciation can screw comprehension. Take record (verb) and record (noun), for example. It goes beyond just sounding weird.
You make me want to realize my dream of going into linguistics ahhh I love this kind of stuff. I feel that the "little" things in a language which are relatively unnoticed even by natives are the most interesting :)
You say from the perspective of an English native that some patterns can be difficult, but for many other natives from another language those patters are easier, which I'm grateful about :)
I’ve lived in the Kansai region since graduating from college, so my pitch accent is hopelessly mangled between the standard I learned in school and the local pronunciation I’ve picked up in everyday communication.
Not only are you a great teacher, but you're so well spoken that it's a delight listening to you speak alone. You have a gift for putting into words complex concepts- a clear sign of intelligence! Thanks for the lessons, man.
Dogen Not to be rude or tasteless, but I think your insights in to Japanese language far exceed both most foreign students and some native Japanese as well. Your numbered Japanese lessons are great. I can't tell you how many times I've watched them. It's like you acting out thoughts I've had about Japan. Hillarious!!!
You sir have done a very great job with these videos. It makes me very happy that a non Japanese person can recognize these intonations, and do a very good job describing it. Hats off to you!
Thanks to you for giving us all these advices, especially HiNative and the phonetics series in two years i have changed my accent from ignorant gaijin into almost perfect native speaker,thank you dōgen.
@@pawel198812 Of course it was a tonal language… You can even see it in the diacritics that were used in literary Greek up to the XXth century. You were one google search away from confirming if you’re publicly misinforming people. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia proving that not only did Ancient Greek have tones on their own but they were also used to differentiate meanings of minimal pairs. λύσαι lúsai 'he might free' - λῦσαι lûsai 'to free' οἴκοι oíkoi 'at home' - οἶκοι oîkoi 'houses' φώς phṓs 'man' (poetic) - φῶς phôs 'light'. If that’s not enough, then there’s also a tonne of Roman records that describe Greeks’ speech of their time as very different in melody than that of Romans - being much more ‘melodic’.
@@Miriarim A language being described as melodic by speakers of another language is no evidence that the language in question has lexical tone as a distinctive feature. Americans often describe European varieties of English as more melodic than American English varieties. Lithuanian (and to a lesser extent Latvian) is described as more melodic than the geographically close Polish and Belorussian. Kansai Japanese is thought of is more melodic than standard Japanese. Italian is more melodic than Spanish, French, or Catalan. Milanese Italian and Lombardian are considered less melodic than Neapolitan or Sicilian... The reason for these impressionistic judgements is that the languages or dialects in question employ a wider or more complex pitch contour in their intonation patterns on the level of words, phrases and/or sentences than the languages or dialects they are compared to. Virtually all experts who study Ancient Greek (classical philologist, language typologists, historical linguists focusing on PIE) analyze it as having pitch accent, not lexical tone. Within the PIE language family, pitch accent is also reconstructed for Balto-Slavic (Baltic languages and Serbo-Croatian have pitch accent to this day) and proto Indo-Aryan (Panini's grammar describes Vedic Sanskrit as having pitch accent). What is less certain, is whether pitch accent is a conservative feature of PIE (later lost by Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Anatolian, etc), an innovation. shared by Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, and Hellenic (and probably others), or a case of parallel development. No reconstruction of PIE that I know of features lexical tone (like in many of the languages of SE Asia or West Africa), and most reconstructions feature pitch accent. If I understand correctly, the difference between a pitch accent language and a tonal language is as follows: In the phonology of a tonal language, every syllable (or mora) of a word or phrase carries a distinct pitch pattern that can be either level (e.g high, low, mid) or a contour (ie starting at one pitch and ending at another). These pitch patterns contrast with each other in a way that is analogous to different phonemes in a syllable/mora (ie using different vowel or consonant sounds). Unlike consonant or vowel sounds, tones are not assigned to only one position within a syllable (onset, nucleus, coda), but to the syllable or mora as a whole (suprasegmentally) as its toneme. By contrast, in a pitch accent language, one (or rarely two) syllables or morae in a word or phrase are marked by a certain, noticeable change in pitch, while the remaining syllables or morae of that word or phrase are left unmarked or neutral. This pitch accent is realized most of the time through an audible drop or rise in pitch of the following syllable, while the pitch of preceding syllables is seemingly less important. Good examples of these would be Welsh, Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, and standard Japanese. A pitch accent may be accompanied by stress (ie an increase in loudness), just like a stress accent may be accompanied by a change in pitch in stress accent languages (like Italian), and it can even be difficult topinpoint exactly whether one language primarily uses pitch or loudness to mark the accent or it can vary from dialect to dialect. Sorry for the wall of text. Have you watched videos of Luke Ranieri (Polymathy, ScorpioMartianus) or Found In Antiquity on the reconstruction of Ancient Greek pronunciation? They cover vowel quantity, and consonant quantity and quality, but they also speak about how to interpret the acute, circumflex and grave tonoi and how to implement them in pronunciation.
I'm glad you clarified this was aimed at English speakers. I am planning on paying for the lessons on patreon, but I know there are some things I need to be careful about because they don't apply (or are no relatable) to me as a Spanish speaker. I think it would be nice if you let it be clear on patreon that you're taking an English speaker approach (it's not that evident for everyone). Thank you!
Thanks for the feedback Diana ^^ I'm currently restructuring my Patreon page; I'll be sure to make it clearer on version 2.0! Thanks for signing up and I hope that you find the lessons useful!
@diana rz: yo estudio japonés desde hace más de un año y me profesora japonesa me dice que las vocales del español suenan muy parecidas a las del japonés. Sin embargo, como no tengo con quien hablar japonés, se me han olvidado muchas cosas. Pero yo quiero seguir aprendiendo japonés por que de verdad adoro la cultura e idioma de Japón. がんばって。👍😊
I REALLY liked this video and I shared it with quite a few people. I'm not going to lie though I absolutely hate phonetics and linguistics because I find it so difficult and complex. I did my dissertation on Caribbean languages such as Jamaican Patwa and I had to do research on the structure of creole spoken languages and it was a pain. I've been studying Japanese for almost 2 years but I have pretty decent hearing/ears so, unlike a lot of people I can usually tell when my pronunciation is different from a native's- I think this helps tremendously because no matter how many times my Japanese teacher tell my classmates “that's not correct” and she pronounces it for them over and over they still can’t hear the difference and correct the way they are saying the word. The problem with me however, is that I tend to copy Japanese people because I'm dyslexic and Japanese grammar is just bleh to me. Japanese grammar makes absolutely no sense to me so copying and mimicking is easier for me. Copying different people could lead to me picking up various intonation patterns but I don't think that is a bad thing necessarily (depending on the frequency). I moved to England from the Caribbean and I was able to copy the accent almost perfectly but every now and then I say things with a slight American/ Caribbean intonation but no one in my circle really cares. I definitely see your point and definitely agree to an extent. If you're constantly changing intonation patterns it would be really weird. I guess in my case I very rarely mess up so it's not that big of a problem. I think even the way things are said at a sentence level can change the stress/intonation/pitch due to speed as well Elision etc. When you said がくせい you pronounced the く very clearly but to my ears the sounds of the く is usually shorter and only slightly audible. Great video
Hi Afroman, thanks so much for the reply, really appreciate it! :D I know a lot of people that have become completely bilingual with any formal grammar training; if you have troubles with it I encourage you to continue down the path that you are on :) With regards to く, yes the う tends to disappear between unvoiced consonants, just as in the う from です。Having a pair of good ears is definitely a huge help as well; a lot of people (myself included) are unable to hear the distinction without first going through phonetic training, so being able to make that distinction from the beginning is incredible. Good luck with your studies, and I hope that you enjoy the upcoming content. Thanks again for the support! :)
This stuff makes me want to quit Japanese. I've been studying for years mostly solo with textbooks. It's NEVER mentioned. Maybe a quick mention of the 3 hashis. You can pass N1 without it.
Most textbooks do not try to teach native-level pronunciation; in fact many believe this is not achievable after 12 years old but that's not true but one needs the methodology that Dōgen teaches to achieve it. Japanese: The Spoken Language is well known for it's focus on achieving such a native-level quality and starts pitch accent from the start.
Text books also try to teach japanese as if it's a European language (it's so very much far from it) or as English in disguise so that adds extra to the confusion, they also misrepresent the particles, a particle doesn't exist in the english language so it can't be explained with english grammar. Only one source that I've found on youtube that can tell things that textbooks don't talk about and misrepresent. They also leave out important pieces of information, I wouldn't have known that a zero pronoun exists in japanese nor wouldn't have known that が is the core of every japanese sentence even when you don't see or hear it; the zero pronoun works like the word "it", say in this example sentence of "it" in english. "Mary had a ball, it fell down the hall, it hit the wall then it bounced off and in to the other room." Just take that "it" out and the context will still be the same. The zero pronoun is an invisible "it" in a sense. It's things like this that helps out.
@@user-hf6jm4tv2v "Text books also try to teach japanese as if it's a European language (it's so very much far from it) or as English in disguise so that adds extra to the confusion" => Not sure what you mean by that. All European languages I speak are accentuated, whether stressed (as English is) or pitch-accentuated (like French). "they also misrepresent the particles, a particle doesn't exist in the english language so it can't be explained with english grammar" => Well, it can be explained, pretty easily by grammatical function. The real issue is most English-speakers do not have a solid grammar foundation nowadays. I also think the sudy of a case language (Latin, German, Russian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrite, etc) helps a great deal in that regard: Particles for the most part then simply become declinaison suffixes "broken off" the end of the word they're modulating. "_(w)o" simply becomes a universal accusative case suffix. "Only one source that I've found on youtube that can tell things that textbooks don't talk about and misrepresent." => Very much interested. "They also leave out important pieces of information, I wouldn't have known that a zero pronoun exists in japanese nor wouldn't have known that が is the core of every japanese sentence even when you don't see or hear it; the zero pronoun works like the word "it", say in this example sentence of "it" in english. "Mary had a ball, it fell down the hall, it hit the wall then it bounced off and in to the other room." Just take that "it" out and the context will still be the same. The zero pronoun is an invisible "it" in a sense. It's things like this that helps out." => I think of your explanation as a very convoluted and strange way to say that verbs, explicit or not, are at the core of any sentence. And that any verb, has a subject, explicit or not. "What a lovely day!" => "What a lovely day (IS) (TODAY/THAT/THIS DAY)" But this idea being true of pretty much any natural language, I guess it is to a large degree subconsciously ingrained in almost every mind. Sentences allow you to say anything, but they only allow you to say anything about SOMETHING. Which is always the subject, if in a grammatically hidden way.
omg i should share this video to my friends whove been staying japanese howe'er they never got EXACTLY CORRECT accents . plzzz make in english version for japanese ppl 😭 動画の説明が凄くシンプルで分かりやすい！！英語のアクセント何とかしたいです😭ジャパニーズアクセントはあまりないと言われるのに、100%合ってるとも言われない… なんでー😭イントネーションが違うのかアクセントが違うのか…
もう解決済みでしょうか？ 例えば単語の発音時間を意識されてはどうでしょうか。例「私(watashi)」のそれぞれのaの発音時間はほぼ同じです。アクセントだと英語(母語)の影響を受けて語頭を強く発音しがちです。watashi→WAtashi or WAT ashi。 日本の単語には英語の連続子音発音がないのでここも確認されてはどうでしょうか？springやstrikeは日本語でスプリング(supuringu)、ストライク(sutoraiku)になります。発音時間はどうでしょうか？
since I've taken into account the phonetic system some weeks ago, I started learning vocab with trying to pronounce the words correctly in my head in account, and I can say that by just doing this it already feels natural when I hear someone say that vocab word wrong.
I'll watch out of interest in linguistics, but I don't know how useful it'll be since I'm living in the Kansai region right now. Thankfully that dialect is fairly well-documented so self-study is easily doable. Side note: I'm teaching English here and I wonder if it would be helpful to dispel that myth for the sake of my students who have trouble with pitch accent/intonation in English; sometimes it helps to have a familiar analogue in your native language.
Hey, while listening to this video I was thinking about the root of the problem from my point of view and this is what I found out: I'm Spanish and I started studying Japanese on my own, since there were no lessons I could attend. I used the genki books, thought they were great; I tried other books and I consider the genki series to be the best for beginner's level. Once I finished them, I saw that many students continued with An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, and this is when I realized... THAT I WAS PRONOUNCING MANY WORDS INCORRECTLY. This book indicates the intonation of each word that appears in the vocabulary section and it was the only book (I did not check that many) where I found that. Previously when learning new words I had to guess the pronunciation unless that term appeared in an audio. The problem with audios is that they are great for getting used to the rhythm of the language, but they are not good for learning the pronunciation of individual words. On top of that, I need to see a new word written to be able to learn it, I don't seem to be able to trust my hearing. So my conclusion is that the root of the problem is the lack of intonation indications in beginners books. Maybe later on is easier to get it by listening to audio, but at the beginning we need some extra guidance. That would benefit even students who attend lessons, because I don't think teachers focus on that (specially after watching your video) and anyway when you arrive home and study what you learned that day in class, you won't remember all the nuances of all the words, you're likely to learn incorrectly some of them. Btw, if anybody has finished reading this, do you know of any other books with these types of indications? Now I don't trust my knowledge at all, last year I went to Japan and I couldn't explain myself in a restaurant because it seems I wasn't pronouncing "niku" correctly. I was just trying to say "Is there meat in this", I was very frustrated.
Hi Cantacarallada! Thanks for the comment. I had a similar realization around the same point during my studies, which is actually why I began to study Japanese phonetics in detail. If you haven't already, I highly suggest signing up for my series on Patreon-you might not be able to tell if you're only looking at my TH-cam, but I've actually made 56 video pronunciation lessons already, and they all include useful tips and tricks for improving your spoken Japanese. Check it out if you can! ^^ www.patreon.com/dogen
this is also why I don't want to learn Japanese from English. I am a native French speaker. My French accent, my Japanese friends say sounds more "natural" whenever I attempt to speak Japanese...? Thank you very much for this video. The pitch in English languages is intricate and I reckon is not a good help with other languages. For us French, the pitch is on the last syllable and won't change the meaning of a word if you change it, but it might change the meaning of what one means. In Japanese dialects I 've so far heard of tokyoben vs osakaben, with the word "ame". I'm only a beginner in Japanese, but I am pretty sure these differences are all over the place in Japan, so I try not to think about that too much, enough on my plate with the kanjis and all, for now anyway.
I have been learning Japanese for more than one year, but I am not able to speak yet. My mother tongue is Spanish and my Japanese sensei told me that this is an advantage since Spanish and Japanese vowels sound "similar". The problem is that I don't have the opportunity to practice, although I spend hours and hours practicing hiragana, katakana, kanjis and Japanese grammar. Help me @Dogen sensei!!
I realize how much I've been missing in my study of Japanese. I think i'll take your advice and throttle the vocab learning part, I'll just listen to a media and refine my pitch.
In Swedish and Norwegian, words spelled the same may have different meanings based upon the pitch accent. E.g. th-cam.com/video/lXp7_Sjgm34/w-d-xo.html Even English has this depending on your dialect. Either it’s done with a stress accent or it’s done with a pitch accent: E.g. “produce” PRO-duce ... noun, usually means “fruits and/or vegetables” collectively. pro-DUCE ... verb, action to create an end product (goods or services).
Yes. accents are depends on dialects but all dialects have the rule of intonation. It doesn’t mean speak random accents. Idk some people teach it is okay to speak Japanese with random accents.
Funny enough, my native language, French, is considered one of the flatest languages, as it technically has neither stress nor pitch accent. Truth be told, we don't sound like robots in our day to day life as pitch and stress is used for express a particular emotion, etc. So yeah, I don't think any language should be called "flat".
Well they say it's more flat than other languages like english for example. I find that french does have stress accent, especially at the final sylable.
This has way too less views.... it's such a shame that you don't spend any time in Japanese classes on learning and comprehending pitch accent or intonation patterns at all. Or the simplest phonetics about voiceless /s/ and voiced /z/ sounds. You're making a very important point here that should be understood by all Japanese learners and at best by beginners. Not the details maybe, just that it is a very important part of the language. Thank you for your video.
English is in fact a tonal language. Take for example the following words: perfect, convert, import, contest. These words are only a few of many that change from a noun to a verb depending on emphasis.
Great video Dogen, this nicely answered something I had been wondering about variations in pitch accent amongst dialects. I've grown attached to my little inaka dialect but finding study materials for it outside of Japan seems unlikely, my intonation will probably start drifting towards 標準語 anyways so might as well embrace it I suppose!
Yes, that is what I recommend. People tend to grow close to the dialect of the places they live, but people move, and dialects are not usually 100% understandable to everyone, so I think making a push toward 標準語 would be a good idea. Good luck with your studies!
I thought I had a pretty OK grasp on intonation since I've been watching japanese drama etc. for many years, but I thought wrong regarding every word you mentioned 🧐 So apparently I've just gotten pronunciation fairly right, not intonation. Dogen's patreon - here wo go 🛫
Ahh awesome video, but is anyone else slightly bothered at how Dogen always raises his hand (lower to higher position) but the pitch actually decreases? Around 7:57 where the pitch/note lowers from in between B-C to B? It sounds like it rises, but I think that's due to harmonics. I might be wrong though, so please do correct me and save me from this mess.
my thoughts while listening : 1. Japanese is hard when you get into details (of course true with any language but ...) 2. 11:00 exactly what I've wondered about when trying to say a sentence in Japanese in my head: not only in pitch/accent/intonation but you have to be CONSISTENT in how you say things/what you say (you can't mix informal way of talking & mix formality or vice versa just becsuse you don't know exactly how to say something correctly) too -- you need to be educated/immersed in the Japanese language & culture to get the hang of it.
2 videos on the same day, you're spoiling us. Now I finally understand why you are making the series and why it is such a big issue. My teacher never mentioned that at all. Also I believe my native language German is one of the least intonated languages. It often has just one or two stressed syllables per sentence. That's what makes it difficult for met to get English right, but then again I might have an advantage with Japanese because I'm used to having to work on this.
Yes, this is a very large part of Japanese and no being aware of it can completely change you hear and speak the language! If you have never studied pitch accent I'm sure you will be able to learn a lot! Hope that you are able to sign up on Patreon! If not feel free to wait a few months to save money. Will also have samples from all videos on TH-cam as well :) thanks again and good luck with your studies!
I tried to join Patreon, but my Paypal account has technical difficulties at the moment, so I'll have to sort that out first. However I forwarded this video to my Japanese teacher and she said she was delighted and will try to teach this more!
Wow, this is great news! It would be so cool if your teacher became a Patreon lol. I hope that the service works out such that you are able to get access as well. Thanks again!
I cannot agree more with the "pick a study abroad location where they speak standard Japanese outside of the classroom." There's nothing worse than spending all your time studying a language (Mandarin for me) only to go out in the world and not understand a damn thing 😂😂😂 Maybe it's less dramatic with Japanese but was a big hurdle in China for me
My problem with standard japanese and that it would be nice but my mom is helping me learn a lot and she has a Kansai accent (and now the stuff I remember is just with the accent)
Yes! Though it's typically best to study about six months or so using a resource such as Genki to develop a fundamental understanding of the language. Cheers!
Even English has some examples which are useful to get native English speakers thinking about pitch. Person 1: "Really?" Person 2: "Really." Here pitch clearly marks the difference between a question and a statement. Or "Christmas present" vs "I present a TH-cam series". There are so many different ways to intonate the word "Oh", expressing happy surprise, unhappy surprise, disgust, epiphany, boredom...
Perhaps you've done this in another video, but I think it would be helpful to explain exactly what pitch is. Part of my difficulty in imitating pitch is that I don't exactly understand what "pitch" is supposed to signify, beyond its similarities to English "stress". Further clouding the matter is that in your "Pitch Accent in 10 Minutes" video, you asserted that pitch is distinct from stress, but (in my view) didn't clearly explain how; and you also seemed to agree with a top comment that said pitch and stress are far more similar than you had implied. So now I feel like I just have no idea what pitch even means in this context.
Pitch in language means the same as pitch in music. Pitch is measured in Hertz. A higher tone means higher in pitch. Stress and the other hand is the same as volume (loudness) and is often measured in dB. A syllable or a musical tone can be high in pitch but low in volume or vice versa so pitch an stress are indeed different concepts.
I grew up around the Boston area, but I don't really have much of an accent. New Englanders don't notice it, but people from the West Coast will usually notice a tiny thing that gives away I'm from the greater Boston area. Like shortening "have to" into "halfta" when speaking quickly. I've been told that is due to my visual learning bias. I'm hoping that means i'll just pick up a standard Japanese accent and not some mismash of dialect haha.
Would an almost absolute beginner (kana, basic kanji, basic vocab, some grammar knowledge) benefit from this series? It seems like I'm in the perfect position to focus on pronunciation/intonation since I don't have many habits really, but I'm unsure if I'd be even able to follow along... For what it's worth I do have some linguistics experience and speak 3 other languages
Absolutely, if anything you're in a better position than most! That being said, because you are an absolute beginner I would recommend going 50% phonetics 50% grammar / vocab for the next 6 months. Please let me know if you have any other questions, and be on the lookout for another video in the next hour or so :) Cheers!
Thank you Dogen. Subscribed and sharing your videos on my Facebook page. I do understand ones interest in achieving a native pitch accent. Question. What about expressing ones style of speaking? I am actually more interested in my Japanese speaking " feeling" like the way I talk. My unique way of speaking. For example I tend to speak more formally, and I often use terms long out of use for example " nix to that!" or " horse of a different color", I also like word play and puns, and bite down on my consonants and speak clearly and with more energy ( the not more volume) I have picked up a way of talking from my parents Spanish speaking ( they spoke a higher Spanish very well. Spanish people tend to be very critical about the quality of Spanish spoken) So...I simple wish to have my style of speaking, my " character" come through in my Japanese and of course speaking Japanese in a way that isn't off-putting to Japanese people. I welcome your thoughts on this subject.
I've learned all my Japanese in Kyoto, and everyone around me is telling me how strong my Kansai-ben is... As I learned it all from friends and family, I honestly have no idea which one is dialect, and which one is standard. Do you think it's possible to improve entonation from your patreon series, or would it be too late if my japanese is already full-on Kansai-ben? Thank you Dogen. You're doing a great job!
Hello Nuria Trillo! Sorry for the late reply. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me? 1. How long have you been studying Japanese? 2. Did you study any Japanese before coming to Kyoto? 3. How long have you been living in Kyoto? 4. Do you have any kind of JLPT certification? 5. Do people typically understand 100% of what you are saying?
Thank you for this information. This is going to be somewhat tricky. Can you answer a couple more questions? 1. Did you use a lot of Japanese based listening resources when you were studying Japanese, or was it primarily textbook grammar / vocabulary? Anything like Japanesepod101? 2. Did you learn a lot from Japanese movies? 3. Do you intent to live in Kyoto for a long time?
Awesome, thank you! Based on this I would imagine that your spoken Japanese is actually quite unified and not as fragmented as the typical speaker. I think that my series would definitely make your Japanese sound more like standard Japanese, and help your overall knowledge in terms of Phonetic knowledge. In other words, I think this series would give you a bit of playroom with Japanese, rather than making you sound more understandable. Does this answer your question? :)
I'm a bit confused when it comes to the 'pitch' part. Heiban sounds like it is high to low and not the other way around. The intensity is a bit stronger though I think. I am probably getting it wrong but that's how I see it :(
Hello! Heiban is definitely low to high (between the first and second mora), although the gap isn't dramatic, as I think you were noting. It may help to listen to some natives say words like 学生、最高、or 銀行、as these are all heiban. Incidentally 挨拶 and 経済 are both examples of high to low words. Hope that this helps! ^^
This is a great video, and I really like the explanation! I'm going to link over here from our Tumblr. ^_^ I like the discussion around the consistency a lot - I think this is what I get thrown on most these days when talking with people. Particularly because when I was most consistent, it was in speaking like a Yamagata-dialect speaker. So it throws people off, and now that I'm not in that environment anymore, it's gotten more standard, and I sound weirder when the Yamagata stuff contrasts against it. Gotta work on that one way or the other.
awesome! I really appreciate the exposure! Yes, the consistency is something that a lot of people tend to overlook. I suggest putting your efforts completely into 標準語, as this is what I'll be covering in detail :) thanks again for the support!
Great series! My teachers never talked about pitch accent, they rarely corrected pronounciation even. I hope to be able to pledge one day when I stop being a NEET wwww
does a spanish speaker get the english stress accent right? just a question i mean spanish and english are both stress base languages and i dont know if i am saying the words right lol
So, I've been on the Japanese grind for about a whole day now (lol) and I've got all the hiragana and combination hiragana memorized (albeit shakily). I intend to memorize katakana for the next two days or so, while continuing to practice my hiragana skills. I'm just not really sure what fluency level these videos are aimed at. I know nothing about forming words or sentences whatsoever, I've just been focusing on the characters and their sounds. So is there some thing(s) I need to do before diving in and becoming a supporter or is it completely fine, despite being a complete beginner and knowing basically nothing?
Hi Willionaire ^^ it's best to know a bit of grammar and vocab before starting phonetics, though I won't stop you from becoming a supporter! haha I usually tell people that have just started to wait until the their third month if they want to get the most bang for their buck :D
Alright, thanks my man. I wouldn't mind becoming a supporter immediately under other circumstances because I love your content, but I just recently graduated highschool, so I'm using only graduation money and I'm trying to make every dollar count.
I'm now wondering if this is the reason I often get told I (kind of sometimes but not really and not always) sound like I'm from Kansai when I speak Japanese. I've never lived in Japan but I do have a lot of Japanese friends whom I speak with regularly from both kansai and Kanto, but the ones that I'm closer with are generally all from Kansai, and so I just assumed it was because of that. Now I'm wondering if it's actually just because I'm mismapping pitch accents...
Yes, this is precisely the reason people tell you this! The accent for words in Kansai dialect typically more closely matches the type of phonetic mistakes many native English speakers make. I imagine there is a little bit of influence from your friends as well. That being said studying phonetics will, if nothing more, make your Japanese much more "impressive" as I touched on in the video. Not sure if you will be any more comprehensible, but your Japanese will sound more native! Thanks for the support!
Thanks! I think for now in order to achieve more native-like fluency, I'd rather focus on grammar/more natural sentence construction. Your previous comedy video on 例の会話 is (unfortunately) 6000% relatable since I've been told 日本語上手！！so many times based on my accent alone. (Once I literally only said こんにちは and was met with surprised/impressed praise over my Japanese???) What tends to give me away is more so a stilted, unnatural sentence construction. So if you ever wanna do any videos on that... *hint**hint**wink**wink* haha Either way this series is still really helpful, so I look forward to the rest of it! :)
Hi Dogen! I love studying japanese pronunciation, so I'll be signing up for patreon. I have a question that I hope you can answer, though. I've been studying japanese seriously for over a year, and am around N4 level, but stopped recently because I realised that I could understand the majority of drama cds/games/livestreams which was my goal from the beginning. To put it simply, I got sidetracked by games etc. and stopped studying for the last few months. Do you think it's alright to do this? I'm uneasy because there are frequently grammar patterns/vocab that I don't know in the content I'm consuming and I don't usually look them up. I do plan on returning to formal lessons eventually and mastering the language, but not straightaway. I'm so happy to learn that there are pitch accent patterns in japanese! I've been trying to memorise them with the vocab so far, but knowing that there's a pattern makes it so much easier to classify and remember. Pronunciation hasn't been a problem as I've been listening to drama cds for the last decade, and chinese is my second language so I'm pretty sensitive to tones, but I think I've picked up some kyoto pitch accents from my favourite voice actor. I need to get that ironed out, so I'll take your advice and concentrate on phonetics for now. Thanks for what looks to be a great video series!
Hi Straw! Yes, I actually think you're in a great position to study phonetics, as it sounds like you have a good base understanding of the language, as well as a good set of ears! Incidentally I didn't study very much grammar while doing my phonetics concentration period either, but I believe this was the correct decision, as many of the more advanced grammar patterns and vocab are relatively easy to pick up with just a bit of ANKI study. Hope this helps and thank you for the support!
Thanks for the quick reply! I'm relieved to hear that, I'll keep trucking on then. (I've binged watched the series up til the test and I have to say, it's really blown my mind... I have internalise it now, but whoa. Great work!!)
Hi Dogen, I quit my design job because I realized I'm actually really into studying foreign languages (I learned French before I studied design) and I decided to pick up Japanese so I've been beginning to study. Would you recommend studying phonetics as I study from basics so I can get used to it as I study or should I learn until advanced level first?
Hi Flambergian! Thanks for the comment. I usually tell people to study holistically for six months before beginning a three month phonetic concentration period. Hope this helps!
Dogen oh I didn’t expect such quick reply! Thank you very much, of course it is helpful, you’re the best. Thank you! I quit my job and I have no regrets, I’m enjoying this, I hope this would be a nice change of career. Please wish me the best, I think I need one. Thank you!
Great series! I just started learning Japanese and having the most natural/native accent is something I want. Would these lessons be of help to me right now or should I wait until I get a basic understanding of Japanese grammar? The only thing I have done so far is practice kana and flipped through Genki 1. Thanks for any advice.
start now, for sure! the faster you sign up for phonetics the more of an impact they will have! ^^ please let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns! 👍
Hi -- Do these principles apply to the japanization of foreign words with katakana? It seems like so much of Japanese these days is this appropriated gairaigo. I would think this couldn't help but impact the pronunciation of the language as a whole. Thanks.
Yes, the pitch-accent (or location for downstep) for gairaigo words in Japanese is often very different from that of the original English word. 'TAble' vs 'teEBURU' is a prime example :)
Thanks -- I guess I was referring more to how these words differed from other native JAPANESE words. Clearly, they'd be different from their English origins.
Is pitch accent similar to the toning Greek system? I ask, because from the おれ and がくせい sounds like the have a tone in れand せ parts. And we use tones in Greek.
Hi there. I'm not sure about Greek, but Japanese is a pitch-accent language, meaning that none of the syllables have dynamic tones, but static pitches which can be either high or low. I go into this in detail in the series!
@@Dogen well, for example, πηγαίνω has similar sound structure with はしる. In both cases, the middle sound has a higher pitch than the first and last syllable. So I was wondering if something like that apply in general with the Japanese toning/pitch.
@@aneedforrevolution2193 Yes, 走る does have that same pitch-pattern! That said, Japanese there are three additional pitch accent patterns in Japanese, (low to high with high particle, low to high with low particle, and high to low), so I'm not sure if all the patterns in Japanese also show up in Greek. Help this helps! ^^^
Hey Dogen, I was wondering if it'd be possible to get close to a native accent within 6 months or so (working on pitch accent 2-3 hours a day)? I've been studying for about 6 years or so, but never really thought a lot about pitch accent. Looking at pitch accent dictionaries recently, I realize that I do accent things correctly sometimes but it's not always consistent and becomes very English like sometimes. I'm living in Japan now again, but I'm in the Tohoku region, so I'm sure they accent things a bit different up here. Thanks for any advice.
Hi Phil, sorry for the terribly late reply. Pitch accent is really case by case, so I can't guarantee that you will get a native accent in any set amount of time, but I can guarantee that you will improve dramatically. In other words, studying pitch accent is a good way to fulfill your specific phonetic potential :) I know that my series will help tremendously, but it's important to remember everything I present is simple information; what's more important is how you apply what is presented! I never studied pitch accent alone for more than 2 hours a day, so my short answer would be, yes, you are likely to make incredible strides in phonetics with that kind of determination and study plan! Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!
It's all good :). You're a busy guy so it's understandable haha! Yes, it certainly is hard to guess the amount of time you need to put into something even for the person themselves, I feel. I'm definitely going to set the 6 month goal for myself and at the very least I'll know I've improved from where I started. Thanks for being honest with me :). I plan to apply it as much as possible to get the results I want haha. I have two questions. Should I speak slower than I normally do to obtain perfect practice for perfect pitch? My second question is, should I go back and double check the pitch for my current vocabulary? If these are points you're going to cover in your following videos, I'll patiently wait ^^. Thanks for your time and as always awesome videos :D
Yes, I do recommend speaking slowly during the learning phrase, and yes, definitely definitely definitely record yourself and juxtapose it with native speech of the same word!
Hats on: 100% Japanese
Hats off: wait who is dis American guy
dude i thought the same thing!
I felt so personally attacked when you demonstrated the incorrect way to say gakkou, ginko, and kouban because that's EXACTLY how I've been saying them.
haha I've been there! ^^ If you'd like to learn more please consider signing up for the series! There is cool trick that covers most words such as 学校、銀行、交番, etc. They all fall into the same pattern so to speak. Let me know if you have any questions! ^^
You, sir, are genius! 15 years after I've started studying Japanese I finally have an explanation to why Japanese people sometimes don't understand what I am saying. Nobody was ever able to explain it to me, I kept thinking I was not talking loud enough or had some sort of speech impediment that can't be helped. None of the 6+ Japanese teachers I've had in my life have ever mentioned the phrase "pitch accent". I didn't know such thing existed. All of a sudden everything makes sense! Thank you so so much :)
Yes, this is THE reason Japanese people don't always understand you. I can guarantee that once you get the basics of pitch-accent down your communication abilities will immediately improve, and that the number of fake compliments you receive will also drop off dramatically. Progress! :D Thanks for the support!
That explains why foreigners are depicted as speaking in katakana (the hiragana parts being replaced by katakana) in manga.
@@Arkanthrall That's a good point. In Kinmoza, Karen speaks with a "Japanese voice actor pretending to be an American" accent, tagging along desu at the end of too many sentences, but in the JP subtitles it's written with デス instead.
This is what’s strange because changes in English pitch is usually understandable. Accented words like read vs read to depict tense are a bit different I think.
But it indeed sounds strange if done wrong.
@@Mrbluefire95 This is a bad example actually. Read and read use different sounds rather than pitch to communicate that difference (R-ee-d and R-eh-d). A better example is the word 'present'. If you it is a noun as in "I am getting you a present' the emphasis is on 'pres'. In the verb usage, as in 'You are going to present your work tomorrow at 9 a.m.' the emphasis is on 'sen'. It's the same pronunciation but the distinction comes from what syllable gets emphasized.
me, at 2 am, mostly drunk: oh yea time to study japenese
A few hours earlier but in the same boat 🚣♀️
3am, in bed, drunk af,
1:45am
I only study Japanese or Russian while drunk and/or high for some baffling reason.
3:16 It's saturday. The ceiling is rotating together with the vape smoke
Japanese is the second language I'm learning. I got fluent in English without paying much attention to phonetics and that caused a lot of headaches in the long run. I started to notice all of these shortcomings on my pronunciation when I was already very fluent. With Japanese I wont make the same mistake. It took me 10 minutes in the 大辞林 website to figure out what the 0 1 2 and 3 meant and there's no harm in checking how words are pronounced from very early on. When I have conversations in English with native speakers they tell me that my English is good and that they have no problems understanding me, but had I became aware of right way to say the vowels sooner my English would sound a lot nicer nowadays. I did what Dogen talks about on this video, mapping some of the sounds of my native language to English. It actually takes one evening to learn how to make the English vowels. I just was unaware that all of that existed. Anyway, live and learn.
The same reason a Japanese person's English would sound strange if they paid no attention to English's STRESS accent, your Japanese will sound strange if you pay no attention to pitch accent. And just the same, native English speakers often don't realize just how stress based their language is. Stressed syllables and even entire words actually do a lot of heavy lifting with regards to conveying meaning.
Read the following sentence 7 times, stressing each word once.
"I never said she stole my money."
I will definitely be hitting pitch accent lessons hard when it's time to start outputting in Japanese.
I love "stress different words in the same sentence" exercises, because man is it fun to make completely different scenarios just from stress
This is fantastic. Never mind the pure facts about the language (although I sure wish someone had explained this so clearly when I first tried to learn the language many years ago), your insight into what's going on between students and teachers about intonation questions is great. You make my old tired former-linguistics-professor heart sing. Although the facts make my Japanese-studying heart cry, because to me this is the big secret last straw that I am sure I'll never acquire no matter how long I study in my not-living-in Japan situation (and one reason why I am sticking to trying to learn to read).
So glad to hear that you are getting a lot out of the series! If nothing else I'm sure you'll improve your listening abilities a lot with the knowledge from these lessons. Even just knowing about the different types of patterns can completely change the way that you hear Japanese. Thanks again--truly appreciate it!
I don't usually do the patreon thing, but you seem to have the same idea as I do. Spoken language is more important than written. And lessons for just $10 a month? count me totally in :D
Awesome, thank you so much Nerketur! ^^ See you over there!
So great to have people like you take the time and patience to produce content like this, thank you so much
I’m so so happy I found this channel as I just started studying Japanese. I remember my teacher had me say “学生”, and said it with out elongating the “e” sound. She then politely corrected me and said to say it in the correct way, and told me that Japanese is a flat language. I was so so confused
My native-speaker Japanese professor in college only grilled us on pitch for what I guess you would call homonyms? (3 kinds of kami, hana, etc.) Otherwise, she cared far more about getting repeated consonants/vowels right than if we said them at the right pitch. Then again, I think a few people in the class were utterly tone-deaf, so the lesson may have been lost on them anyway...
When I imagine Japanese in my head, it sounds really native but when I go to speak, it doesn't come out like that at all. I think my problem is that I am always nervous speaking Japanese to other people (I am always relaxed when I speak with my Japanese wife) and the situation overwhelms me. Also, when I am speaking Japanese, I am aware of all the mistakes I am making, but I just don't seem to put the effort into fixing my Japanese. It's very depressing.. I started Japanese over 10 years ago but it is trash, I almost wish I never started. I remember taking N2 like 6 years ago but failed by 1 point. I haven't studied since and feel the same level, argh.
Getting nervous can definitely affect speech! Do you ever record yourself? I feel that this is one of the best ways to get rid of the gap between mental fluency and conversational fluency :) good luck with your studies!
I couldn't agree more.
When I think of the words, it sounds like a native speaker in my head, the main reason I found out to be is that we have been exposed to these words and heard it before but haven't practiced speaking very much. Not only this but when you are aware of the mistakes you are doing you feel like it's too much effort to talk perfectly hence it becomes overwhelming to think all of these "Did I tell the word correctly?" or "I made a mistake but it's too late." and bonus point you are aware that the person in front of you judges your language abilities without thinking/expressing it to you. Then you think to yourself and want to improve, but still there are many gaps you have to fill in and simply watching mixed videos put you under stress since you are now more aware of your capabilities so looking at the big picture becomes overwhelming and depressing when you start to think that you haven't improved and will (almost) never talk like a native speaker; even if you manage, you will never be seen Japanese (goes same for every country really) but the gaijin.
The more you look into it, the more it feels like impossible to learn the language.
Sometimes you will feel unmotivated and depressed, sometimes the opposite: you will feel like it's the perfect time to start again however it will be complicated for that since you know a bit already and the loop begins.
Being native-like is a very hard task and not many people achieve it, mostly we see the motivated people who have achieved it.
To be honest I am thinking the same of never starting to learn Japanese because now everything is too complicated, depressing and confusing whereas 10-15 years ago we didn't have many sources and had a book or a two to study from.
Overall I hope you are doing better.
Have you ever tried language shadowing?
@@NoriMori1992 yup record urself as what dogen said and shadowing is the key for introspection
After 15 years of exposing myself to Japanese media and being really taken in by the language, I've decided to really put my foot down and learn some stuff thanks to you Dogen. Thank you for doing these and I'm excited to learn more about the Japanese language.
Now I know why my professor keeps marking me down for intonation without explaining why and Japanese always speak English back 😥😩
This is mind blowing. I've studied Japanese for around 8 years at both high school, university and have spent 2 years in Japan. None of my teachers have ever mentioned this.
I love this! I also believe it's important to get intonation right because even in a non-tonal language like English a mispronunciation can screw comprehension. Take record (verb) and record (noun), for example. It goes beyond just sounding weird.
record
You make me want to realize my dream of going into linguistics ahhh I love this kind of stuff. I feel that the "little" things in a language which are relatively unnoticed even by natives are the most interesting :)
You say from the perspective of an English native that some patterns can be difficult, but for many other natives from another language those patters are easier, which I'm grateful about :)
I’ve lived in the Kansai region since graduating from college, so my pitch accent is hopelessly mangled between the standard I learned in school and the local pronunciation I’ve picked up in everyday communication.
Not only are you a great teacher, but you're so well spoken that it's a delight listening to you speak alone. You have a gift for putting into words complex concepts- a clear sign of intelligence! Thanks for the lessons, man.
Dogen, you're my role model.
I'm like your biggest fan. I can't explain the joy your videos bring me. It resonates so deeply with me.
Thanks Charlo! That really means a lot! ^^
Dogen
Not to be rude or tasteless, but I think your insights in to Japanese language far exceed both most foreign students and some native Japanese as well.
Your numbered Japanese lessons are great. I can't tell you how many times I've watched them. It's like you acting out thoughts I've had about Japan. Hillarious!!!
Charlo J
Into*
Appreciate that as well Charlo!
You sir have done a very great job with these videos. It makes me very happy that a non Japanese person can recognize these intonations, and do a very good job describing it. Hats off to you!
Thanks to you for giving us all these advices, especially HiNative and the phonetics series in two years i have changed my accent from ignorant gaijin into almost perfect native speaker,thank you dōgen.
さすが、日本語上手〜😏
上手？
dogen the way you speak is so relaxing
Fun fact: Old Japanese is thought to have been a tonal language
Not that surprising. Ancient Greek was tonal, but Modern Greek pronounces all the old pitch accents as stress accents.
@@SpectatorAlius Ancient Greek was not a tonal language. Greek used pitch accent, not tone.
Japanese people mostly originated from other Asiatic areas, like Korea, China, etc. Along with the jomon/ainu people that originally inhabited japan
@@pawel198812 Of course it was a tonal language… You can even see it in the diacritics that were used in literary Greek up to the XXth century.
You were one google search away from confirming if you’re publicly misinforming people. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia proving that not only did Ancient Greek have tones on their own but they were also used to differentiate meanings of minimal pairs.
λύσαι lúsai 'he might free' - λῦσαι lûsai 'to free'
οἴκοι oíkoi 'at home' - οἶκοι oîkoi 'houses'
φώς phṓs 'man' (poetic) - φῶς phôs 'light'.
If that’s not enough, then there’s also a tonne of Roman records that describe Greeks’ speech of their time as very different in melody than that of Romans - being much more ‘melodic’.
@@Miriarim A language being described as melodic by speakers of another language is no evidence that the language in question has lexical tone as a distinctive feature. Americans often describe European varieties of English as more melodic than American English varieties. Lithuanian (and to a lesser extent Latvian) is described as more melodic than the geographically close Polish and Belorussian. Kansai Japanese is thought of is more melodic than standard Japanese. Italian is more melodic than Spanish, French, or Catalan. Milanese Italian and Lombardian are considered less melodic than Neapolitan or Sicilian... The reason for these impressionistic judgements is that the languages or dialects in question employ a wider or more complex pitch contour in their intonation patterns on the level of words, phrases and/or sentences than the languages or dialects they are compared to.
Virtually all experts who study Ancient Greek (classical philologist, language typologists, historical linguists focusing on PIE) analyze it as having pitch accent, not lexical tone. Within the PIE language family, pitch accent is also reconstructed for Balto-Slavic (Baltic languages and Serbo-Croatian have pitch accent to this day) and proto Indo-Aryan (Panini's grammar describes Vedic Sanskrit as having pitch accent). What is less certain, is whether pitch accent is a conservative feature of PIE (later lost by Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Anatolian, etc), an innovation. shared by Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, and Hellenic (and probably others), or a case of parallel development. No reconstruction of PIE that I know of features lexical tone (like in many of the languages of SE Asia or West Africa), and most reconstructions feature pitch accent.
If I understand correctly, the difference between a pitch accent language and a tonal language is as follows:
In the phonology of a tonal language, every syllable (or mora) of a word or phrase carries a distinct pitch pattern that can be either level (e.g high, low, mid) or a contour (ie starting at one pitch and ending at another). These pitch patterns contrast with each other in a way that is analogous to different phonemes in a syllable/mora (ie using different vowel or consonant sounds). Unlike consonant or vowel sounds, tones are not assigned to only one position within a syllable (onset, nucleus, coda), but to the syllable or mora as a whole (suprasegmentally) as its toneme.
By contrast, in a pitch accent language, one (or rarely two) syllables or morae in a word or phrase are marked by a certain, noticeable change in pitch, while the remaining syllables or morae of that word or phrase are left unmarked or neutral. This pitch accent is realized most of the time through an audible drop or rise in pitch of the following syllable, while the pitch of preceding syllables is seemingly less important. Good examples of these would be Welsh, Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, and standard Japanese. A pitch accent may be accompanied by stress (ie an increase in loudness), just like a stress accent may be accompanied by a change in pitch in stress accent languages (like Italian), and it can even be difficult topinpoint exactly whether one language primarily uses pitch or loudness to mark the accent or it can vary from dialect to dialect.
Sorry for the wall of text.
Have you watched videos of Luke Ranieri (Polymathy, ScorpioMartianus) or Found In Antiquity on the reconstruction of Ancient Greek pronunciation? They cover vowel quantity, and consonant quantity and quality, but they also speak about how to interpret the acute, circumflex and grave tonoi and how to implement them in pronunciation.
I'm glad you clarified this was aimed at English speakers. I am planning on paying for the lessons on patreon, but I know there are some things I need to be careful about because they don't apply (or are no relatable) to me as a Spanish speaker. I think it would be nice if you let it be clear on patreon that you're taking an English speaker approach (it's not that evident for everyone). Thank you!
Thanks for the feedback Diana ^^ I'm currently restructuring my Patreon page; I'll be sure to make it clearer on version 2.0! Thanks for signing up and I hope that you find the lessons useful!
@diana rz: yo estudio japonés desde hace más de un año y me profesora japonesa me dice que las vocales del español suenan muy parecidas a las del japonés. Sin embargo, como no tengo con quien hablar japonés, se me han olvidado muchas cosas. Pero yo quiero seguir aprendiendo japonés por que de verdad adoro la cultura e idioma de Japón. がんばって。👍😊
@@Dogen uP
I REALLY liked this video and I shared it with quite a few
people. I'm not going to lie though I absolutely hate phonetics and linguistics
because I find it so difficult and complex. I did my dissertation on Caribbean
languages such as Jamaican Patwa and I had to do research on the structure of
creole spoken languages and it was a pain. I've been studying Japanese for
almost 2 years but I have pretty decent hearing/ears so, unlike a lot of people
I can usually tell when my pronunciation is different from a native's- I think
this helps tremendously because no matter how many times my Japanese teacher
tell my classmates “that's not correct” and she pronounces it for them over and
over they still can’t hear the difference and correct the way they are saying the
word.
The problem with me however, is that I tend to copy Japanese people because I'm
dyslexic and Japanese grammar is just bleh to me. Japanese grammar makes
absolutely no sense to me so copying and mimicking is easier for me. Copying
different people could lead to me picking up various intonation patterns but I
don't think that is a bad thing necessarily (depending on the frequency). I
moved to England from the Caribbean and I was able to copy the accent almost
perfectly but every now and then I say things with a slight American/ Caribbean
intonation but no one in my circle really cares. I definitely see your point
and definitely agree to an extent. If you're constantly changing intonation
patterns it would be really weird. I guess in my case I very rarely mess up so
it's not that big of a problem. I think even the way things are said at a
sentence level can change the stress/intonation/pitch due to speed as well Elision
etc. When you said がくせい you pronounced the く very
clearly but to my ears the sounds of the く is usually shorter and only slightly
audible.
Great video
Hi Afroman, thanks so much for the reply, really appreciate it! :D I know a lot of people that have become completely bilingual with any formal grammar training; if you have troubles with it I encourage you to continue down the path that you are on :) With regards to く, yes the う tends to disappear between unvoiced consonants, just as in the う from です。Having a pair of good ears is definitely a huge help as well; a lot of people (myself included) are unable to hear the distinction without first going through phonetic training, so being able to make that distinction from the beginning is incredible.
Good luck with your studies, and I hope that you enjoy the upcoming content. Thanks again for the support! :)
This stuff makes me want to quit Japanese. I've been studying for years mostly solo with textbooks. It's NEVER mentioned. Maybe a quick mention of the 3 hashis. You can pass N1 without it.
Most textbooks do not try to teach native-level pronunciation; in fact many believe this is not achievable after 12 years old but that's not true but one needs the methodology that Dōgen teaches to achieve it.
Japanese: The Spoken Language is well known for it's focus on achieving such a native-level quality and starts pitch accent from the start.
Text books also try to teach japanese as if it's a European language (it's so very much far from it) or as English in disguise so that adds extra to the confusion, they also misrepresent the particles, a particle doesn't exist in the english language so it can't be explained with english grammar. Only one source that I've found on youtube that can tell things that textbooks don't talk about and misrepresent.
They also leave out important pieces of information, I wouldn't have known that a zero pronoun exists in japanese nor wouldn't have known that が is the core of every japanese sentence even when you don't see or hear it; the zero pronoun works like the word "it", say in this example sentence of "it" in english.
"Mary had a ball, it fell down the hall, it hit the wall then it bounced off and in to the other room." Just take that "it" out and the context will still be the same. The zero pronoun is an invisible "it" in a sense.
It's things like this that helps out.
@@user-hf6jm4tv2v
"Text books also try to teach japanese as if it's a European language (it's so very much far from it) or as English in disguise so that adds extra to the confusion"
=> Not sure what you mean by that. All European languages I speak are accentuated, whether stressed (as English is) or pitch-accentuated (like French).
"they also misrepresent the particles, a particle doesn't exist in the english language so it can't be explained with english grammar"
=> Well, it can be explained, pretty easily by grammatical function. The real issue is most English-speakers do not have a solid grammar foundation nowadays. I also think the sudy of a case language (Latin, German, Russian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrite, etc) helps a great deal in that regard: Particles for the most part then simply become declinaison suffixes "broken off" the end of the word they're modulating. "_(w)o" simply becomes a universal accusative case suffix.
"Only one source that I've found on youtube that can tell things that textbooks don't talk about and misrepresent."
=> Very much interested.
"They also leave out important pieces of information, I wouldn't have known that a zero pronoun exists in japanese nor wouldn't have known that が is the core of every japanese sentence even when you don't see or hear it; the zero pronoun works like the word "it", say in this example sentence of "it" in english.
"Mary had a ball, it fell down the hall, it hit the wall then it bounced off and in to the other room." Just take that "it" out and the context will still be the same. The zero pronoun is an invisible "it" in a sense.
It's things like this that helps out."
=> I think of your explanation as a very convoluted and strange way to say that verbs, explicit or not, are at the core of any sentence. And that any verb, has a subject, explicit or not.
"What a lovely day!" => "What a lovely day (IS) (TODAY/THAT/THIS DAY)"
But this idea being true of pretty much any natural language, I guess it is to a large degree subconsciously ingrained in almost every mind. Sentences allow you to say anything, but they only allow you to say anything about SOMETHING. Which is always the subject, if in a grammatically hidden way.
Wah! What an old find.
Thanks for the lesson.
すげー。これめっちゃ難しいんだろうなあ
omg i should share this video to my friends whove been staying japanese howe'er they never got EXACTLY CORRECT accents . plzzz make in english version for japanese ppl 😭 動画の説明が凄くシンプルで分かりやすい！！英語のアクセント何とかしたいです😭ジャパニーズアクセントはあまりないと言われるのに、100%合ってるとも言われない… なんでー😭イントネーションが違うのかアクセントが違うのか…
もう解決済みでしょうか？
例えば単語の発音時間を意識されてはどうでしょうか。例「私(watashi)」のそれぞれのaの発音時間はほぼ同じです。アクセントだと英語(母語)の影響を受けて語頭を強く発音しがちです。watashi→WAtashi or WAT ashi。
日本の単語には英語の連続子音発音がないのでここも確認されてはどうでしょうか？springやstrikeは日本語でスプリング(supuringu)、ストライク(sutoraiku)になります。発音時間はどうでしょうか？
since I've taken into account the phonetic system some weeks ago, I started learning vocab with trying to pronounce the words correctly in my head in account, and I can say that by just doing this it already feels natural when I hear someone say that vocab word wrong.
橋を
箸を
端を
all different
Bridge Chopstick and . . . . . .
THANK YOU for dispelling the "Japanese has no intonation" myth. I hear this bullshit all the time, mostly from native speakers.
haha it's my pleasure. hope that the lessons are useful for you :D
I'll watch out of interest in linguistics, but I don't know how useful it'll be since I'm living in the Kansai region right now. Thankfully that dialect is fairly well-documented so self-study is easily doable. Side note: I'm teaching English here and I wonder if it would be helpful to dispel that myth for the sake of my students who have trouble with pitch accent/intonation in English; sometimes it helps to have a familiar analogue in your native language.
I don't think it would hurt to try! ^^ good luck with kansai-ben!
Hey, while listening to this video I was thinking about the root of the problem from my point of view and this is what I found out:
I'm Spanish and I started studying Japanese on my own, since there were no lessons I could attend. I used the genki books, thought they were great; I tried other books and I consider the genki series to be the best for beginner's level. Once I finished them, I saw that many students continued with An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, and this is when I realized... THAT I WAS PRONOUNCING MANY WORDS INCORRECTLY.
This book indicates the intonation of each word that appears in the vocabulary section and it was the only book (I did not check that many) where I found that. Previously when learning new words I had to guess the pronunciation unless that term appeared in an audio. The problem with audios is that they are great for getting used to the rhythm of the language, but they are not good for learning the pronunciation of individual words. On top of that, I need to see a new word written to be able to learn it, I don't seem to be able to trust my hearing.
So my conclusion is that the root of the problem is the lack of intonation indications in beginners books. Maybe later on is easier to get it by listening to audio, but at the beginning we need some extra guidance. That would benefit even students who attend lessons, because I don't think teachers focus on that (specially after watching your video) and anyway when you arrive home and study what you learned that day in class, you won't remember all the nuances of all the words, you're likely to learn incorrectly some of them.
Btw, if anybody has finished reading this, do you know of any other books with these types of indications? Now I don't trust my knowledge at all, last year I went to Japan and I couldn't explain myself in a restaurant because it seems I wasn't pronouncing "niku" correctly. I was just trying to say "Is there meat in this", I was very frustrated.
Well, just found this: www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/pages/home Wish I had it 9 years ago.
Hi Cantacarallada! Thanks for the comment. I had a similar realization around the same point during my studies, which is actually why I began to study Japanese phonetics in detail. If you haven't already, I highly suggest signing up for my series on Patreon-you might not be able to tell if you're only looking at my TH-cam, but I've actually made 56 video pronunciation lessons already, and they all include useful tips and tricks for improving your spoken Japanese. Check it out if you can! ^^ www.patreon.com/dogen
I speak English and Spanish I wanna go for my third language now and that's Japanese I now it's a challenge but it's worth it
this is also why I don't want to learn Japanese from English. I am a native French speaker. My French accent, my Japanese friends say sounds more "natural" whenever I attempt to speak Japanese...? Thank you very much for this video. The pitch in English languages is intricate and I reckon is not a good help with other languages. For us French, the pitch is on the last syllable and won't change the meaning of a word if you change it, but it might change the meaning of what one means. In Japanese dialects I 've so far heard of tokyoben vs osakaben, with the word "ame". I'm only a beginner in Japanese, but I am pretty sure these differences are all over the place in Japan, so I try not to think about that too much, enough on my plate with the kanjis and all, for now anyway.
I really enjoy these videos, super interesting! Thx Dogen
This ep alone helped me with listening skills. That's one meritto for your course.
I have been learning Japanese for more than one year, but I am not able to speak yet. My mother tongue is Spanish and my Japanese sensei told me that this is an advantage since Spanish and Japanese vowels sound "similar". The problem is that I don't have the opportunity to practice, although I spend hours and hours practicing hiragana, katakana, kanjis and Japanese grammar. Help me @Dogen sensei!!
I realize how much I've been missing in my study of Japanese. I think i'll take your advice and throttle the vocab learning part, I'll just listen to a media and refine my pitch.
In Swedish and Norwegian, words spelled the same may have different meanings based upon the pitch accent. E.g. th-cam.com/video/lXp7_Sjgm34/w-d-xo.html
Even English has this depending on your dialect. Either it’s done with a stress accent or it’s done with a pitch accent:
E.g. “produce”
PRO-duce ... noun, usually means “fruits and/or vegetables” collectively.
pro-DUCE ... verb, action to create an end product (goods or services).
An in depth video about regional differences would be kinda cool
Yes. accents are depends on dialects but all dialects have the rule of intonation. It doesn’t mean speak random accents. Idk some people teach it is okay to speak Japanese with random accents.
Thanks excellent explanation, truly helpful
Funny enough, my native language, French, is considered one of the flatest languages, as it technically has neither stress nor pitch accent. Truth be told, we don't sound like robots in our day to day life as pitch and stress is used for express a particular emotion, etc. So yeah, I don't think any language should be called "flat".
Well they say it's more flat than other languages like english for example. I find that french does have stress accent, especially at the final sylable.
This has way too less views.... it's such a shame that you don't spend any time in Japanese classes on learning and comprehending pitch accent or intonation patterns at all. Or the simplest phonetics about voiceless /s/ and voiced /z/ sounds. You're making a very important point here that should be understood by all Japanese learners and at best by beginners. Not the details maybe, just that it is a very important part of the language. Thank you for your video.
Not a problem ^^ I plan on covering pronunciation (voiced and voiceless consonants) in the future as well ^^ thanks again for the support!
English is in fact a tonal language. Take for example the following words: perfect, convert, import, contest. These words are only a few of many that change from a noun to a verb depending on emphasis.
Who's here in 2020? Nothing else to do but binge Dogen's videos
Your video is rich with information
Nice
Oh, I thought he only did humor! Very well articulated.
Great video Dogen, this nicely answered something I had been wondering about variations in pitch accent amongst dialects. I've grown attached to my little inaka dialect but finding study materials for it outside of Japan seems unlikely, my intonation will probably start drifting towards 標準語 anyways so might as well embrace it I suppose!
Yes, that is what I recommend. People tend to grow close to the dialect of the places they live, but people move, and dialects are not usually 100% understandable to everyone, so I think making a push toward 標準語 would be a good idea. Good luck with your studies!
I thought I had a pretty OK grasp on intonation since I've been watching japanese drama etc. for many years, but I thought wrong regarding every word you mentioned 🧐 So apparently I've just gotten pronunciation fairly right, not intonation. Dogen's patreon - here wo go 🛫
Ahh awesome video, but is anyone else slightly bothered at how Dogen always raises his hand (lower to higher position) but the pitch actually decreases? Around 7:57 where the pitch/note lowers from in between B-C to B? It sounds like it rises, but I think that's due to harmonics.
I might be wrong though, so please do correct me and save me from this mess.
at 14:10 or so, Dogen says 「コンテント」 instead of "content"' and that makes me extremely faithful in this program
i feel so sad that bright dogen is gone
but dark dogen is funny as shit XD
12:48 is there something wrong with mushroom farmers tho
自分の英語の発音を改善することを考えてながらリサーチしてたら辿りつきました。自分が改善しようとしている発音の言語のネイティブが自分がネイティブの言語を説明していることを聞くとアナロジーで何を直さないといけないか本質の部分で理解できそうです。
my thoughts while listening :
1. Japanese is hard when you get into details (of course true with any language but ...)
2. 11:00 exactly what I've wondered about when trying to say a sentence in Japanese in my head: not only in pitch/accent/intonation but you have to be CONSISTENT in how you say things/what you say (you can't mix informal way of talking & mix formality or vice versa just becsuse you don't know exactly how to say something correctly) too -- you need to be educated/immersed in the Japanese language & culture to get the hang of it.
2 videos on the same day, you're spoiling us.
Now I finally understand why you are making the series and why it is such a big issue. My teacher never mentioned that at all.
Also I believe my native language German is one of the least intonated languages. It often has just one or two stressed syllables per sentence. That's what makes it difficult for met to get English right, but then again I might have an advantage with Japanese because I'm used to having to work on this.
Yes, this is a very large part of Japanese and no being aware of it can completely change you hear and speak the language! If you have never studied pitch accent I'm sure you will be able to learn a lot! Hope that you are able to sign up on Patreon! If not feel free to wait a few months to save money. Will also have samples from all videos on TH-cam as well :) thanks again and good luck with your studies!
I tried to join Patreon, but my Paypal account has technical difficulties at the moment, so I'll have to sort that out first. However I forwarded this video to my Japanese teacher and she said she was delighted and will try to teach this more!
Wow, this is great news! It would be so cool if your teacher became a Patreon lol. I hope that the service works out such that you are able to get access as well. Thanks again!
I cannot agree more with the "pick a study abroad location where they speak standard Japanese outside of the classroom." There's nothing worse than spending all your time studying a language (Mandarin for me) only to go out in the world and not understand a damn thing 😂😂😂 Maybe it's less dramatic with Japanese but was a big hurdle in China for me
Mind blowing. I've never thought of it that way
It's definitely an eye opener! Thanks for watching :)
Is there a Japanese Christopher Walken?
Hey! What's wrong with sounding like a mushroom farmer?! ;)
What do mushroom farmers sound like?
@@seneca983 12:37
道元さんの英語めちゃくちゃ聴きやすい
My problem with standard japanese and that it would be nice but my mom is helping me learn a lot and she has a Kansai accent (and now the stuff I remember is just with the accent)
Can I still try the phonetic lessons even though I'm a complete beginner in Japanese?
Yes! Though it's typically best to study about six months or so using a resource such as Genki to develop a fundamental understanding of the language. Cheers!
@@Dogen ok, I'll do that first. Thank you.
Even English has some examples which are useful to get native English speakers thinking about pitch.
Person 1: "Really?"
Person 2: "Really." Here pitch clearly marks the difference between a question and a statement.
Or "Christmas present" vs "I present a TH-cam series".
There are so many different ways to intonate the word "Oh", expressing happy surprise, unhappy surprise, disgust, epiphany, boredom...
Video: 4 years ago
Dogen: looks 10 years younger
Today I learn that Rock Lee descendents wear blue.
Perhaps you've done this in another video, but I think it would be helpful to explain exactly what pitch is. Part of my difficulty in imitating pitch is that I don't exactly understand what "pitch" is supposed to signify, beyond its similarities to English "stress". Further clouding the matter is that in your "Pitch Accent in 10 Minutes" video, you asserted that pitch is distinct from stress, but (in my view) didn't clearly explain how; and you also seemed to agree with a top comment that said pitch and stress are far more similar than you had implied. So now I feel like I just have no idea what pitch even means in this context.
Pitch in language means the same as pitch in music. Pitch is measured in Hertz. A higher tone means higher in pitch. Stress and the other hand is the same as volume (loudness) and is often measured in dB. A syllable or a musical tone can be high in pitch but low in volume or vice versa so pitch an stress are indeed different concepts.
I grew up around the Boston area, but I don't really have much of an accent. New Englanders don't notice it, but people from the West Coast will usually notice a tiny thing that gives away I'm from the greater Boston area. Like shortening "have to" into "halfta" when speaking quickly.
I've been told that is due to my visual learning bias. I'm hoping that means i'll just pick up a standard Japanese accent and not some mismash of dialect haha.
Dogen kun, you're a very good teacher, sonkei shimasu
Would an almost absolute beginner (kana, basic kanji, basic vocab, some grammar knowledge) benefit from this series? It seems like I'm in the perfect position to focus on pronunciation/intonation since I don't have many habits really, but I'm unsure if I'd be even able to follow along...
For what it's worth I do have some linguistics experience and speak 3 other languages
Absolutely, if anything you're in a better position than most! That being said, because you are an absolute beginner I would recommend going 50% phonetics 50% grammar / vocab for the next 6 months. Please let me know if you have any other questions, and be on the lookout for another video in the next hour or so :) Cheers!
Thank you Dogen. Subscribed and sharing your videos on my Facebook page. I do understand ones interest in achieving a native pitch accent. Question. What about expressing ones style of speaking? I am actually more interested in my Japanese speaking " feeling" like the way I talk. My unique way of speaking. For example I tend to speak more formally, and I often use terms long out of use for example " nix to that!" or " horse of a different color", I also like word play and puns, and bite down on my consonants and speak clearly and with more energy ( the not more volume) I have picked up a way of talking from my parents Spanish speaking ( they spoke a higher Spanish very well. Spanish people tend to be very critical about the quality of Spanish spoken) So...I simple wish to have my style of speaking, my " character" come through in my Japanese and of course speaking Japanese in a way that isn't off-putting to Japanese people. I welcome your thoughts on this subject.
I've learned all my Japanese in Kyoto, and everyone around me is telling me how strong my Kansai-ben is... As I learned it all from friends and family, I honestly have no idea which one is dialect, and which one is standard. Do you think it's possible to improve entonation from your patreon series, or would it be too late if my japanese is already full-on Kansai-ben? Thank you Dogen. You're doing a great job!
Hello Nuria Trillo! Sorry for the late reply. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me?
1. How long have you been studying Japanese?
2. Did you study any Japanese before coming to Kyoto?
3. How long have you been living in Kyoto?
4. Do you have any kind of JLPT certification?
5. Do people typically understand 100% of what you are saying?
Thank you!
1. About 4 years
2. No
3. A bit more than 4 years
4. I haven't taken any exam
5. Yes, they do
Thank you for this information. This is going to be somewhat tricky. Can you answer a couple more questions?
1. Did you use a lot of Japanese based listening resources when you were studying Japanese, or was it primarily textbook grammar / vocabulary? Anything like Japanesepod101?
2. Did you learn a lot from Japanese movies?
3. Do you intent to live in Kyoto for a long time?
1 no, I went for a year to a language school here in Kyoto, and then it's all from daily life
2 not at all
3 I think so ;)
Awesome, thank you! Based on this I would imagine that your spoken Japanese is actually quite unified and not as fragmented as the typical speaker. I think that my series would definitely make your Japanese sound more like standard Japanese, and help your overall knowledge in terms of Phonetic knowledge. In other words, I think this series would give you a bit of playroom with Japanese, rather than making you sound more understandable. Does this answer your question? :)
Can't wait to sign up!!
thank you very much for your support! ^^
What does the mushroom farmer analogy mean ?
Love this !!!
I'm a bit confused when it comes to the 'pitch' part. Heiban sounds like it is high to low and not the other way around. The intensity is a bit stronger though I think. I am probably getting it wrong but that's how I see it :(
Hello! Heiban is definitely low to high (between the first and second mora), although the gap isn't dramatic, as I think you were noting. It may help to listen to some natives say words like 学生、最高、or 銀行、as these are all heiban. Incidentally 挨拶 and 経済 are both examples of high to low words. Hope that this helps! ^^
Dogen as always coming in with the save. Thanks man I will check them out! :D
This is a great video, and I really like the explanation! I'm going to link over here from our Tumblr. ^_^
I like the discussion around the consistency a lot - I think this is what I get thrown on most these days when talking with people. Particularly because when I was most consistent, it was in speaking like a Yamagata-dialect speaker. So it throws people off, and now that I'm not in that environment anymore, it's gotten more standard, and I sound weirder when the Yamagata stuff contrasts against it. Gotta work on that one way or the other.
awesome! I really appreciate the exposure! Yes, the consistency is something that a lot of people tend to overlook. I suggest putting your efforts completely into 標準語, as this is what I'll be covering in detail :) thanks again for the support!
not me repeatedly saying gakkou and gakusei while the video is playing
Great series! My teachers never talked about pitch accent, they rarely corrected pronounciation even. I hope to be able to pledge one day when I stop being a NEET wwww
頑張れニート
does a spanish speaker get the english stress accent right? just a question i mean spanish and english are both stress base languages and i dont know if i am saying the words right lol
1:35 minecraft villager
So, I've been on the Japanese grind for about a whole day now (lol) and I've got all the hiragana and combination hiragana memorized (albeit shakily). I intend to memorize katakana for the next two days or so, while continuing to practice my hiragana skills. I'm just not really sure what fluency level these videos are aimed at. I know nothing about forming words or sentences whatsoever, I've just been focusing on the characters and their sounds. So is there some thing(s) I need to do before diving in and becoming a supporter or is it completely fine, despite being a complete beginner and knowing basically nothing?
Hi Willionaire ^^ it's best to know a bit of grammar and vocab before starting phonetics, though I won't stop you from becoming a supporter! haha I usually tell people that have just started to wait until the their third month if they want to get the most bang for their buck :D
Alright, thanks my man. I wouldn't mind becoming a supporter immediately under other circumstances because I love your content, but I just recently graduated highschool, so I'm using only graduation money and I'm trying to make every dollar count.
Sounds good. Hope you can become a supporter soon! :)
Does this have something to do with oxytone, paroxytone, proparoxytone? We learn this in Portugese in order to place the accents
True that, about pitches... Russian has a different pitch from English, too
didn't know that about Russian. Interesting!
I'm russian and I didn't know that:D Whaat?:D
I'm now wondering if this is the reason I often get told I (kind of sometimes but not really and not always) sound like I'm from Kansai when I speak Japanese. I've never lived in Japan but I do have a lot of Japanese friends whom I speak with regularly from both kansai and Kanto, but the ones that I'm closer with are generally all from Kansai, and so I just assumed it was because of that. Now I'm wondering if it's actually just because I'm mismapping pitch accents...
Yes, this is precisely the reason people tell you this! The accent for words in Kansai dialect typically more closely matches the type of phonetic mistakes many native English speakers make. I imagine there is a little bit of influence from your friends as well. That being said studying phonetics will, if nothing more, make your Japanese much more "impressive" as I touched on in the video. Not sure if you will be any more comprehensible, but your Japanese will sound more native! Thanks for the support!
Thanks! I think for now in order to achieve more native-like fluency, I'd rather focus on grammar/more natural sentence construction. Your previous comedy video on 例の会話 is (unfortunately) 6000% relatable since I've been told 日本語上手！！so many times based on my accent alone. (Once I literally only said こんにちは and was met with surprised/impressed praise over my Japanese???) What tends to give me away is more so a stilted, unnatural sentence construction. So if you ever wanna do any videos on that... *hint**hint**wink**wink* haha
Either way this series is still really helpful, so I look forward to the rest of it! :)
Will definitely put it in the works! Great idea to be sure. Thanks for the feedback :)
Hi Dogen! I love studying japanese pronunciation, so I'll be signing up for patreon. I have a question that I hope you can answer, though. I've been studying japanese seriously for over a year, and am around N4 level, but stopped recently because I realised that I could understand the majority of drama cds/games/livestreams which was my goal from the beginning. To put it simply, I got sidetracked by games etc. and stopped studying for the last few months. Do you think it's alright to do this? I'm uneasy because there are frequently grammar patterns/vocab that I don't know in the content I'm consuming and I don't usually look them up. I do plan on returning to formal lessons eventually and mastering the language, but not straightaway.
I'm so happy to learn that there are pitch accent patterns in japanese! I've been trying to memorise them with the vocab so far, but knowing that there's a pattern makes it so much easier to classify and remember. Pronunciation hasn't been a problem as I've been listening to drama cds for the last decade, and chinese is my second language so I'm pretty sensitive to tones, but I think I've picked up some kyoto pitch accents from my favourite voice actor. I need to get that ironed out, so I'll take your advice and concentrate on phonetics for now. Thanks for what looks to be a great video series!
Hi Straw! Yes, I actually think you're in a great position to study phonetics, as it sounds like you have a good base understanding of the language, as well as a good set of ears! Incidentally I didn't study very much grammar while doing my phonetics concentration period either, but I believe this was the correct decision, as many of the more advanced grammar patterns and vocab are relatively easy to pick up with just a bit of ANKI study. Hope this helps and thank you for the support!
Thanks for the quick reply! I'm relieved to hear that, I'll keep trucking on then. (I've binged watched the series up til the test and I have to say, it's really blown my mind... I have internalise it now, but whoa. Great work!!)
Hi Dogen, I quit my design job because I realized I'm actually really into studying foreign languages (I learned French before I studied design) and I decided to pick up Japanese so I've been beginning to study. Would you recommend studying phonetics as I study from basics so I can get used to it as I study or should I learn until advanced level first?
Hi Flambergian! Thanks for the comment. I usually tell people to study holistically for six months before beginning a three month phonetic concentration period. Hope this helps!
Dogen oh I didn’t expect such quick reply! Thank you very much, of course it is helpful, you’re the best. Thank you! I quit my job and I have no regrets, I’m enjoying this, I hope this would be a nice change of career. Please wish me the best, I think I need one. Thank you!
No worries! Good luck with your future endeavors!
Great series! I just started learning Japanese and having the most natural/native accent is something I want. Would these lessons be of help to me right now or should I wait until I get a basic understanding of Japanese grammar? The only thing I have done so far is practice kana and flipped through Genki 1. Thanks for any advice.
start now, for sure! the faster you sign up for phonetics the more of an impact they will have! ^^ please let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns! 👍
Are there any decent resources for Kansaiben pitch accent?
Does anyone know if the lessons would help even if I'm tone deaf? Or should I try to fix that part first?
Hi -- Do these principles apply to the japanization of foreign words with katakana? It seems like so much of Japanese these days is this appropriated gairaigo. I would think this couldn't help but impact the pronunciation of the language as a whole. Thanks.
Yes, the pitch-accent (or location for downstep) for gairaigo words in Japanese is often very different from that of the original English word. 'TAble' vs 'teEBURU' is a prime example :)
Thanks -- I guess I was referring more to how these words differed from other native JAPANESE words. Clearly, they'd be different from their English origins.
Np! In that case, yes, they usually follow different patterns from other native Japanese words.
That actually makes sense.
Cheers!
Is pitch accent similar to the toning Greek system? I ask, because from the おれ and がくせい sounds like the have a tone in れand せ parts. And we use tones in Greek.
Hi there. I'm not sure about Greek, but Japanese is a pitch-accent language, meaning that none of the syllables have dynamic tones, but static pitches which can be either high or low. I go into this in detail in the series!
@@Dogen well, for example, πηγαίνω has similar sound structure with はしる.
In both cases, the middle sound has a higher pitch than the first and last syllable. So I was wondering if something like that apply in general with the Japanese toning/pitch.
@@aneedforrevolution2193 Yes, 走る does have that same pitch-pattern! That said, Japanese there are three additional pitch accent patterns in Japanese, (low to high with high particle, low to high with low particle, and high to low), so I'm not sure if all the patterns in Japanese also show up in Greek. Help this helps! ^^^
@@Dogen Thank you for searching! （^_^）
Hey Dogen, I was wondering if it'd be possible to get close to a native accent within 6 months or so (working on pitch accent 2-3 hours a day)? I've been studying for about 6 years or so, but never really thought a lot about pitch accent. Looking at pitch accent dictionaries recently, I realize that I do accent things correctly sometimes but it's not always consistent and becomes very English like sometimes. I'm living in Japan now again, but I'm in the Tohoku region, so I'm sure they accent things a bit different up here. Thanks for any advice.
Hi Phil, sorry for the terribly late reply. Pitch accent is really case by case, so I can't guarantee that you will get a native accent in any set amount of time, but I can guarantee that you will improve dramatically. In other words, studying pitch accent is a good way to fulfill your specific phonetic potential :) I know that my series will help tremendously, but it's important to remember everything I present is simple information; what's more important is how you apply what is presented! I never studied pitch accent alone for more than 2 hours a day, so my short answer would be, yes, you are likely to make incredible strides in phonetics with that kind of determination and study plan! Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!
It's all good :). You're a busy guy so it's understandable haha! Yes, it certainly is hard to guess the amount of time you need to put into something even for the person themselves, I feel. I'm definitely going to set the 6 month goal for myself and at the very least I'll know I've improved from where I started. Thanks for being honest with me :). I plan to apply it as much as possible to get the results I want haha. I have two questions. Should I speak slower than I normally do to obtain perfect practice for perfect pitch? My second question is, should I go back and double check the pitch for my current vocabulary? If these are points you're going to cover in your following videos, I'll patiently wait ^^. Thanks for your time and as always awesome videos :D
Yes, I do recommend speaking slowly during the learning phrase, and yes, definitely definitely definitely record yourself and juxtapose it with native speech of the same word!
more on this in the upcoming video :D
more on this in the upcoming video :D
勉強になりました！soooooo professional! 先生は一体何人ですか？日本語めちゃくちゃうまい！！！
勉強になったようで何よりです。アメリカ人です！