Hi, I am interesting to buy your course about Japanese Phonetics but I have some question. Can I download all resources (Anki audio flashcard decks, video, PDF etc )? because I am busy man, I have time to study at sunday, it's about 2 hours. So basically just 8 hours study in a month, and your course $15/month, I am afraid, I can't study all material in that course in 1 month, and I can't access your course.
I'm Japanese, but this is the first time I heard of "頭高", "中高", "尾高" and "平板". The understanding of these concepts makes Dogen's Japanese really really natural.
（日本語で書きます。）日本の学校の国語の時間(Japanese class for native speakers)では、体系だったアクセントの話はまったく教えませんからね。それに、それらの用語、特に「尾高」などは、方言学の専門家でも好き嫌いがはっきり分かれる用語で、好む人は論文中でもやたら連発しますが、厳密さに欠けるとして一切使わない人もいます。（私自身も（東京式(type 2)アクセントで）「尾高」は概念的に蛇足・不要だと思います。）
Wait, he charges for lessons but when given the chance to make extra money at no cost he doesn't simply take it? I don't think it reflects badly on him or anything, I really don't mean to attack him, but it's just kind of of a waste. Maybe he just doesn't like to even worry or think about that stuff, sure that's understandable.
@@hakushin_ch In terms of what? That's a very general question. Could be a lot of things, part of his hobby of youtubeing, part of his profession of youtubeing, part of the routine of making videos, making videos about a topic he enjoys and feels strong about, making money, educating people, help people, interacting with people on youtube, I'm not sure what you're asking.
PedroTricking I think it just means he’s a stand-up dude. And he knows how to tease a bunch of recent subs on what he can offer besides good jokes about starbucks in japanese
初めまして！ OMG! here is a native Japanese guy who got so astonished by ur video. You really know and completely understand how the Japanese pitch accent works. Not only that, you also teach in very precise and simple way. u gotta teach me too! im native though!haha! Seriously, ur way of teaching help me a lot in teaching Japanese Kanji. ありがとうございます！
Always found it strange that when learning Japanese, I would be told Japanese is flat from natives, then they would continue to correct me when I spoke with the wrong intonation haha
I've noticed this too. If you don't put the pitch in the right place its like you aren't saying a word they recognize, but if you ask them where the accent goes they say there isnt one. Its so strange lol! Im like yes there is!!! Thanks to Dogen it makes so much more sense.
The same with English speakers, they cant explain it either, that is why when natives teach english as a second language they just consider the pronunciation of foreigners as accents.
The book “Japanese: The Spoken Language” includes the pitch-accent. I was self-taught and only found out about the proper pitch-accent when I was assigned this book in college.
Me: missed school yesterday to work on two English essays, it's now 1:37 a.m. and still is procrastinating when the essays are due at 2:05 today Also me: o_O
Honestly, I've NEVER learned "Atamadaka", "Nakadaka", "Odaka" and "heiban" at school in Japan even though I'm Japanese brought up there!! It might be because we're used to it without learning. But his pronunciation is really good and natural. This video is how to describe my language in English for me :D
I think it's been interesting, too, that every native Japanese speaker I talk to says that pitch accent or intonation don't matter. I understand that there are so many more important things, but it's still something that I think every Japanese learner should keep in mind😆
My understanding is that the pitch can be a bit different depending on the region/dialect, so as a Japanese you would only need to "learn" it if you intend to work on TV in some official capacity (learn the "official" pitch so to say as opposed to your regional one)
As someone from the English-speaking side of things, I think it's a lot like the stress accents mentioned in the video. We never learn about it in school, and almost nobody talks about it, but we learned it by growing up with it and it is very obvious when somebody is stressing the wrong syllable of a word.
I'm a native English speaker but I speak japanese as a third language. My japanese girlfriend would often laugh and point out that some of my accents and stresses were off and she'd try to correct them. Strangely, I could never really hear what was off with mine even though she'd keep having me repeat after her. Now I get it! She tried to explain it to me the same way stresses are explained in English, so I separated the words just like that, visualizing an apostrophe on the stressed syllables, completely ignoring the particle and pitch. My school in japan did cover accents and stresses but it was never really clear to me since it was taught in japanese... Now I understand-- it's really the pitch!! Thanks for the clarification! I am a fan!
here’s the timestamps for anyone going over this: 00:00 - Intro/explanation 2:32 - atamadaka (first syllable high, rest of word and particle low) example word: Sekai 3:14 - nakadaka (starts low, goes high, goes low again, particle low) example word: Nihon 3:56 - odaka (starts low, stays high, particle low) example word: Ototo 6:03 - heiban (starts low, stay high, particle high) example word: Amerika Feel free to use this to refresh your memory! Your doing great, all of your hard work will pay off once you reach your goal! 😊
I'm gonna be picky here for a moment - not to be that guy, I just think it might help people who are just becoming aware of this stuff to tackle it more naturally. I'd say stress in English *is* mostly about pitch changes (and pronouncing vowels properly instead of doing 'uh' schwas for unstressed syllables) and not really about force, which is more typically used for emphasis. Like when you talk normally, you're not going "HELLo TH-cam i'm POSTing in the COMMents SECtion it's aMAzing" right? That doesn't make English a pitch accent language - we use pitch for stress, but other things too, and the pitch doesn't change the meaning of the word, it's just there's a "right" way to stress it and it sounds unnatural if you do it differently. The closest to mattering I can think of is words like EXport (noun) vs exPORT (verb), but those aren't different words just different ways of using the same word, and even if you do it "wrong" there's no possible confusion. We don't always even agree where the stress goes, like some people say aDULT and others say Adult, or both! Anyhow point is you're already using pitch to accent words if you speak English (try it with your mouth closed) so this isn't a new thing you need to force yourself to do, and you probably don't need to push yourself into doing it more than you already naturally are. The tricky part is what Dogen says about the patterns where the pitch stays raised, we don't really do that in English so that's what you've gotta focus on even though it feels weird! sorry about the big comment, I hope it helps someone though
Pinned this because it's accurate. The stressed bit of an English word does indeed have a higher pitch than the unstressed elements. The primary purpose of this video is to explain that the general 'feel' of accenting a word in English and accenting a word in Japanese is quite different, for several reasons, such as at the fact that the surrounding vowels in English are usually reduced to 'schwa' as you mentioned, the fact that in English the accented bit often, but no always, has more force as well as length than the surrounding bits, and the fact that there are several Japanese accent patterns (odaka and heiban) which are very different than anything in English, which you also mentioned. This is why, in my opinion, it's best for Japanese learners to think about only changing pitch in Japanese words, and to say all of the vowels clearly (outside of devoicing). When English native speakers try to accent Japanese words the same way as English words, they often change the pitch of the accented element, but then also add too much force and length to said element, which sounds unnatural (and of course many Japanese words (heiban words) do not have accents, as you said!). Seems we are on the same page-I could have done a better job addressing this in the video. Thanks for the comment Cactustactics!
@@Dogen oh nah it's cool, I think you explained what you actually need to do just fine! And it's like you said, you don't just act like you're speaking English, or you'll probably end up with a heavy foreign accent, so it's definitely better to throw yourself into it like a new, slightly weird thing you're learning to do. I just feel like we're not always aware of the stuff we actually do in our native languages (learning another language teaches you a lot about your own!), so it can be handy to point it out so people can contrast and work out what to change cheers for the reply and being cool and everything!
I absolutely love your channel! From the hilarious jokes that none of my friends understand, to the extremely well taught pitch accents, you are a diamond in the rough on TH-cam. I would love to see your channel grow more, keep up the great work Dogen!
Stumbled in here totally based on TH-cam recommendations. Awesome Dogen. Just, wonderful. I passed JLPT N1 a year ago, have a double major in Japanese and lived there for three years. Also have a linguistics degree. SO little of this is covered in traditional Japanese instruction for foreigners. You're providing a great service here.
I've learned so many things from you! A year ago, you made me realize about the pitch accent in Japanese. I knew something was not right with my pronunciation but I didn't know what it was. I love all your videos! Thank you so much!!
I've been loitering around your online presence for a while but in the last days have dug into much more of your content. You seem such a kind and intelligent soul, so I just wanted to say thanks for the continued great content you supply.
this is life changing. i took japanese at uni for 3 years and no single japanese teacher told us about the existence of pitch accent. i think they just want us to sound like gaijin forever. some teacher say it's too hard for beginners or it would be too demanding of students but this is so important that every beginner deserves to be introduced to this concept. then they can decide for themselves if they want to actually apply it or not
Wait what? I took japanese literature too. We were taught the pitch accents starting from semester 2, although not with the terms in the video. It's usually just arrows (→,↑,↓)
I was a math major in college and in the math department we frequently complained that if you teach the basics in a way that gets the right answer but has imporper or incomplete logic then the student will be way worse off. What you just said sounded like the japanese equivalent. Basically don't spare the student from the challenging stuff early or else they'll only know the wrong things later. It makes everything easier to just explain everything as it comes.
00:00 - Intro/explanation 2:32 - atamadaka (first syllable high, rest of word and particle low) example word: Sekai 3:14 - nakadaka (starts low, goes high, goes low again, particle low) example word: Nihon 3:56 - odaka (starts low, stays high, particle low) example word: Ototo 6:03 - heiban (starts low, stay high, particle high) example word: Amerika Feel free to use this to refresh your memory! Your doing great, all of your hard work will pay off once you reach your goal! 😊
I was sent to this specific video by a Japanese speaker who is super picky about pronunciation. Good video! It clicks some confusion about pitch accent to me from the materials I have read describing it at almost optional.
Yomiwa, an app, gives a visual representation of what pitch accent is used for that particular word you look upon. I set the app to give as fewest English translations as possible「イントネーション」 doesn't have the same meaning in Japanese, it's basically just means the pitch of a pitch accent. Swedish is also a pitch accent language which I will try to learn Swedish some day, all this pitch accent knowledge will be extremely useful when I set off learning a 3rd language when counting my native language.
Short Review / Timestamps 2:32 頭高[あたま だか] 1st mora high 3:12 中高[なか だか] 1st mora low goes high returns low within word 3:56 尾高[お だか] 1st mora slightly lower Accent falls after last mora 6:02 平板[へい ばん] 1st mora slightly lower Accent does not fall
I'm not trying to learn Japanese, I stumbled into this video and watched until the end because your teaching style is very engaging and the subject is pretty interesting. Also, as a bilingual myself, I think it's amazing how you switch every other word between languages effortlessly, with what sounds like perfect accent to me.
I'm studying linguistics in uni at the moment and I'm loving my prosody class. We never talked about japanese so this is super interesting! The difference between accent being marked by pitch rather than stress is a whole new concept I've never heard of before!
Thank you so much for this introduction on Japanese pitch-accent. I always notice how English speakers speak Japanese with an accent but cannot specifically tell why that came to be. Able to have the names of those pitch-accent is really helpful for me to continue to learn Japanese
Thank you so much! I've lived in Japan for 12 years and never had it explained properly! Even the basics. I keep getting told that japanese has no stress patterns but everyone around me is obviously using stresses on certain syllables!
Dōgen: I’ve been studying Japanese for about half a year now, and I was wondering if it would be worth it to put my vocabulary building aside so I can nail pronunciation before I continue.
I think there's a video of him explaining his background and I remember correctly he focused on getting good in pitch accent first. Try to find the video if you're interested!
Gotta agree with Chris here. Even native speakers will admit that they can understand foreigners just fine if their pitch is off due to the context. And in Japan pitch for certain words can be different region to region, it's basically their version of an accent. I wouldn't worry too much about pitch until you are fairly advanced in your vocabulary. You'll pick up a lot of correct pronunciation along the way anyways.
Your channel is what some time ago got me acquainted with a Japanese pitch accent. I was really surprised that this topic is barely covered in majority of Japanese teaching sources. Before I learned about it, when listening to Japanese speech I thought that there’s something special yet unclear about how their pronunciation and intonation are different. And now everything just makes more sense! Thanks a lot for teaching us the real Japanese!
As someone wishing to learn Japanese myself, I'm shocked by how good you speak it - I'm sure others have said this but your enunciation of the Japanese syllabary is nearly identical to natives; for me, that is my end goal along with L1-level mastery (which will probably take years of practice and exposure). Though I also feel that this video could do even better with captions :3
This whole time I’ve been repeating/mimicking Japanese words without realizing I was repeating it using a pitch. This is fascinating! I need to look into this more!
I'm finally understanding this as I'm currently taking Structure of Japanese at uni. My explanation would be that the base accent is high-flat across the whole word (plus particle) before accounting for what syllable is accented. Whatever syllable is accented, any syllables after will be low. Additionally, the first syllable is always lowered unless it is the accented syllable. This also explains the distinction between final-accented and unaccented, which appear the same without a particle (both have L then rest is H), but unaccented allows the particle to also be H as there is no accented syllable to cause a pitch decrease. Final accent on the other hand, will cause the following particle to decrease.
This is a super great intro and a wonderful video to get people started into pitch accent! Should definitely consider making this your featured channel video. Well done!
I think the head scratcher for me is figuring out which pitch accent pattern to go with just based on appearances since I don't see it come up in studying or online resources at all. It's kind of a shame, since you'd think it would be a bigger thing to be incorporated so you're nailing your pronunciation.
@@XGD5layer I'll make a note to look into some if I can get my hands on some. I'm hoping it won't be too tough to wrap my head around since I've been a bit fried when it comes to studying and retaining material.
Dogen does a really good job covering this in his Patreon series. If you're just looking for the pitch accent pattern for some specific word, try Wiktionary. They surprisingly do generally include it.
@@mikebmcl I saw the early pitch accent videos a few months ago, and I'd jump on the Patreon bandwagon if I had extra cash in my pocket. I'll make a note to check out the Wikitionary again for it since it probably slipped past me there when I was taking minor notes not too long ago. Thanks!
Also, super great unscripted video! It's so good it's hard to tell it's not scripted.. you've come a huge way since your first unscripted videos! Big respect.
Good video! Even lots of Japanese dont understand this pitch system and they tend to teach japanese-learners wrong things (like they tend to miss pitches on particles), but i found your video correct and thorough enough to be shared!
These are the kind of tips that I teach on my series. For example, any 'syllable' verb that end with つ, as in 待つ or 持つ, among others, will always be atamadaka. Hope this helps!
English kinda has the same dilemma for language learners. How do you know how to pronounce read, receipt, though, cough, friend, and fiend by just looking at it? Basic answer is you can't. Natives don't have much trouble pronouncing because they learned how to _speak the language first._ And, having spent years speaking and reading the language, we can more immediately tell how to read new words just from intuition alone. This is why it's recommended to make (active) listening input your number one priority. Hearing the same words and patterns over and over helps build intuition. ^^
I think one of the main issues with this is that it's, for some reason, often considered to be 'advanced', so many teacher don't really cover it at first or at all. They want you to grasp the basics, to just learn the words first, before you really learn to pronounce them properly. And then by the time you get to the advanced level, you're already pronouncing many things incorrectly, and now have to relearn everything. I studied Japanese for about 2 years with 4 different online sources, and pitch came up maybe once, and not on any kind of profound level. I mean, in English, you're generally given transcriptions that tell you where the accent is, but in Japanese, there's just furigana, and no one's really telling you anything about how to actually pronounce the words correctly. Of course, the even bigger issue is that when you're learning a language by yourself, whether online or with a book, there's no one to correct you. But that's relevant for any language learning experience, not just Japanese.
I'm just becoming familiarized with the general aspects of Japanese, so I haven't even started checking out its grammar and how to form sentences, but I presume that, after knowing how to do it, being aware of using the appropriate pitch must really REALLY make you second-guess every sentence you say since we're connecting chains of words combined with their respective particles. I imagine it being a mix of frustrating and fascinating. It's really interesting how there's a neglected pitch aspect to the Japanese language, and as a phonetics fan, I hope I get to explore that first-hand later into my ultra steady process of learning Japanese. Amazing stuff, Dogen-sensei!
TH-cam recommended this. I don't really have any desire to learn Japanese (at the moment) but I am an interpreter and a linguist and all things language fascinate me, so randomly watching something like this is right up my alley and it was done SO well! I think this was recommended because I watch NativeLang videos a lot of the time.I'll be checking this channel again. (Subscribed)
Thank you for this video! It's exactly the video my father needs. He learnt Japanese at university but his intonation is just horrible to listen to for me and my mother as Japanese native speakers. My (German) father thought that these intonation details were all just a complete myth and never even bothered trying to differentiate the pitch sounds. That is also why he was once confused about: 車で待つ and 来るまで待つ and guessed the wrong one whereas the difference is so clear for me.
It is really impressive to see how much you love Japanese and how much you are seeking knowledge to improve your Japanese skill. Thanks for sharing that passion
That video solved a lot of difficulty that I had to explain how Japanese accent works for non-Japaneses. I'm Japanese but never knew that my language is a pitch accent language and it's different from English that is a stress accent. Next time I'll try to explain in that way. (or just send this video's link lol) Thank you. great content. 頑張ってください P.S. Apologies for my terrible English.
@@AlexandraGulkoHyman I'm right there with them. I can't hear it at all. The words all sound flat. I hear no difference for the words that are the same with different pitches. I'm completely def to it too. 😢
Dogen, I don't speak Japanese at all -- but ever since I was a child, I've always had a strong desire to learn it ONE DAY. I am very happy to have found your channel, because you spark inspiration to achieve this goal someday. I know the tips and educational knowledge you've shared throughout your videos will have laid a solid foundation for me to build upon whenever I am finally able to hunker down and take that journey to learn the language.
Thank you for covering this! I can't tell you how frustrating it is to memorize hundreds of words and phrases you see in writing only to find out you're pronouncing them wrong. The same Japanese words often change meaning with the incorrect pitch. Great video.
Super interesting video. While I'm not actively learning Japanese or making plans to visit Japan anytime soon, I love learning about these little things about the language.
I had to explain to an american friend about interpretation of pitch as part of an accent. They kep greating me 'gDay mATE" cause Im aussie and I had to explain that australian english reads pitch as emotion. Raising the pitch at the ends of sentences implied agression or stress making it sound like she was poised off at me. When we first started talking we got into a lot of heated arguments where we werent actually arguing and eventually I realised she was hearing my words as dismissive and i was hearing hers as up tight or agressive just by how stress And pitch were being used.
underrated comment. Must be hard for Chinese people, interpreting tone vs intonation. At least I've seen a lot of puzzled looks in informal settings when everyone talks fast and animated and vice versa their intonation seems weird even when they have no problems with vocab.
Great stuff man! I think even if someone is a beginner at language, getting the pronunciation and accent correct from the get-go is a must. Your accent is near-perfect btw.
Great video. Something that has caused a lot of confusion for me in the past, however: I know that heiban is traditionally presented as LHH as if there is no drop in pitch, but... one very important thing that I’ve realized is that, to my ears and way of thinking, heiban *does* involve a slight drop in pitch on the final mora (of the word itself in isolation or on the following particle); it is less drastic than the high-to-low drop in the other pitch accent patterns, but it is still there. I hear this in the heiban examples Dogen has given in this video, which is consistent with what I hear in native Japanese speech. Realizing this has helped me differentiate between nakadaka and heiban when listening to a word in Japanese and trying to make out its pitch accent. I used to hear the subtle drop in a heiban word and assume it was nakadaka (LHL). Now that I know what to actually listen for - heiban is more LHL (with both the high point and the final lower point being less drastic and more atonal than the nakadaka LHL) than LHH to my ears - I am more able to hear (and hopefully reproduce) the difference. If I used a scale of 0 to 4 (0 being the lowest pitch and 4 being the highest), nakadaka would sound something like 1-4-0 while heiban sounds more like 1-3-2 to me. Put another way, musically, nakadaka sounds a bit like C-F#-lower octave G while heiban is more C-Eb-C#.
That was powerful insight for Japanese pitch accents Dogenさん。Thank you so much for releasing this video. I am gonna show this to my students if you don’t mind 😁
I have been confused about Japanese accent for a quite long time, because in my mother tongue there is no this kind of pitch changes. Thank you very much for your excellent explanations!!!! Finally I think I can tell the difference!!
it's so cool to see all these things dissected; a lot of this - as a Japanese person - I don't think I ever learned systematically, but makes a lot of sense when laid out in front of me.
This was very interesting. I'm a Japanese but I didn't realize I speak Japanese the way explained in this video until I saw this. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
Now that you say this, I started watching anime when I was a child and I think I learned the pronunciation naturally. I know it sounds weird, but many times it happened that my friends tried to speak in Japanese and I needed to correct them. For me, there was so noticeable when something was wrong even if I wasn't able to explain why.
I studied Japanese at uni and I don't think this type of thing was ever really focused on but luckily I was able to take a phonetics/音声学 class at a Japanese university which taught this type of stuff to Japanese students. Was a great class and definitely helped a lot in understanding how to speak in Japanese. Have had friends teach me the difference between 橋 and 箸 too, wish I put more effort into studying now.
I thought I would mention a few points that might be of interest. Firstly, you have greatly helped my intonation, pitch & inflection, which is something you can only learn by speaking with natives or by instructors such as yourself. Thanks for that. Secondly, I wanted to point out something that happens when you speak in Japanese. I lived there for 11 years and can say that listening to you is like listening to an office or government worker where their speech patterns are largely constrained. However, outside on the street & among friends, while all that you say is true about pitch-accents, it is done so fast that it is overshadowed by their age, status, gender, emotional, emphatic, comedic, personality traits & conditions, and by local dialects. It is this phenomena that most non-native speakers base their speech pattern on. This is what they've seen in movies, animation & videos. While I can well understand that you make adjustments to your throat & larynx muscle use in order to stay true to what you are teaching, I don't see that it requires the "nasal" quality that you have given to it. Putting all the male Japanese speakers together that I have heard in those 11 years, roughly speaking, I would say that you very ably imitate 15% of them. I suppose this is necessary to stay as objective & uncontaminated as possible. But the nasal part does not sound natural for you, being that your normal speaking voice is an open rich baritone instead of the more tight-throated nasal voice that you use when pronouncing Japanese (at least when done for example purposes. I have not heard you in normal Japanese conversation with acquaintances). I suppose the only point I have is that I'd like to see you speak Japanese in a voice more natural to you. All that for such a silly point. Oh, well...
I learned Japanese from a Japanese teacher who teaches Japanese in a Chinese university. This is the very first lesson she taught us about. In addition to pronouncing these 平板, 尾高, 中高... etc., there are actually PATTERNS for these アクセント. There's no need to brainlessly memorize the accent for every single word. For instance, 漢語名詞 with more than 4 moras tend to be 平板 or 尾高, and words composed of 2 other words tend to be 中高 or 平板 depending on how many moras they have. I'd recommend anyone who's interested in this to buy NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典 or 【三省堂】新明解日本語アクセント辞典. These will be good for you if you're interested in learning Japanese from more of a linguistic perspective. Of course these are not suitable for beginners as the appendices are fully in Japanese and you have to know at least the examples they use.
Thanks Dogen for such a good, if brief explanation. Though it has been many years ago, I lived in Japan for five years. When I first took Japanese lessons I was one of the unfortunate souls who was taught that Japanese was completely flat... and my teacher was a Japanese native speaker. In thinking back, I think I just picked up the correct pitch accent through exposure or immersion, whatever you want to call it. By listening to native speakers and trying to sound like they sound it just comes sort if naturally. It is always good, however, to consciously know the pitch accent differences of (otherwise) homonyms such as 花 and 鼻 or 髪、and 神.
I pronounce all of these right without knowing anything about pitch accents.. the teacher is important guys! Shadowing the right teacher makes ur pronunciation natural and native-like..
Lol I studied Japanese for 2 years and could always pick up that this was going on but never got it explained to me at all, much less so well. Thanks for the lesson.
I really like the stress and pitch comparison. I'm not learning Japanese but I tried going along with you. The odaka and heiban patterns feel really unnatural for the same reason stressing so many syllables in English or (my native language) Dutch feels unnatural. My brain just wants to de-stress all the syllables after the initial stressed one... especially the last syllablə.
As a university student that studies Japanese I am so glad that you made that Japan quiz thing with Joey because I needed this. We don't talk about Pitch-Accent at all, and I always found it weird because it is important if we really want to learn a language, so thank you so much, this is the first time I ever thought that I needed somebodies patreon
Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation lessons: www.patreon.com/dogen
Can you make a list of the books in the video? Thank you.
Hi, I'm using an Indian debit card but unable to pay at Patreon....I think I need to go to my bank to activate international payment facility...
@@gauravchopra3677 That could be the case-hope you're able to work everything out!
Hi, I am interesting to buy your course about Japanese Phonetics but I have some question. Can I download all resources (Anki audio flashcard decks, video, PDF etc )? because I am busy man, I have time to study at sunday, it's about 2 hours. So basically just 8 hours study in a month, and your course $15/month, I am afraid, I can't study all material in that course in 1 month, and I can't access your course.
as someone who has an ear for pitch for instruments, does that help? or is the pitch much more slight
Dogen: "here's a 5 min introduction to japanese pitch-accent"
Also Dogen: Japanese Pitch-Accent in 10 Minutes
Yeah, 60 minutes would be better of course.
no denying that he loves his work!
It still felt like 5 minutes tbh
thats what I thought lmao
Despite that, he kept the video under the 10 minute mark, he did more for less ad revenue.
I'm Japanese, but this is the first time I heard of "頭高", "中高", "尾高" and "平板". The understanding of these concepts makes Dogen's Japanese really really natural.
well just as equally English doesn't even teach stress accents, we're just constantly exposed to stressed words.
Rintaro Hasegawa Are You A 日本方
ADee SHuPA 日本人 is fine. 方 the keigo is a bit too much to me.
（日本語で書きます。）日本の学校の国語の時間(Japanese class for native speakers)では、体系だったアクセントの話はまったく教えませんからね。それに、それらの用語、特に「尾高」などは、方言学の専門家でも好き嫌いがはっきり分かれる用語で、好む人は論文中でもやたら連発しますが、厳密さに欠けるとして一切使わない人もいます。（私自身も（東京式(type 2)アクセントで）「尾高」は概念的に蛇足・不要だと思います。）
@@cylepsycc1050 Yes, you're right. "日本の方（かた）" is correct if you would like to use "方".
This guy is legitimate and his Patreon videos are worth the money.
Totally agree!
I was gonna pay it anyways (when I had more money lol) but your comment convinced me to buy it rn lol
Yeah, but just be careful if you're a guy learning Japanese because his pronunciation is often a bit feminine.
@@CaptMarvelous there's feminine and masculine *pronunciations* ? Oh my!
Hey that's great! ^_^
Hmmm this is very educational and I actually learned a lot of things. Great video!
U here :0
Surprised that your comment doesn't have much likes
今日パンツは何色ですか
Sora😖
そら先生！！！！
30 more seconds and could've made more revenue Dōgen-San
I watched the ad at the end to help out ;)
Wait, he charges for lessons but when given the chance to make extra money at no cost he doesn't simply take it? I don't think it reflects badly on him or anything, I really don't mean to attack him, but it's just kind of of a waste.
Maybe he just doesn't like to even worry or think about that stuff, sure that's understandable.
@@PedroTricking What do you think is the video's focus?
@@hakushin_ch In terms of what? That's a very general question.
Could be a lot of things, part of his hobby of youtubeing, part of his profession of youtubeing, part of the routine of making videos, making videos about a topic he enjoys and feels strong about, making money, educating people, help people, interacting with people on youtube, I'm not sure what you're asking.
PedroTricking I think it just means he’s a stand-up dude. And he knows how to tease a bunch of recent subs on what he can offer besides good jokes about starbucks in japanese
初めまして！
OMG! here is a native Japanese guy who got so astonished by ur video.
You really know and completely understand how the Japanese pitch accent works.
Not only that, you also teach in very precise and simple way.
u gotta teach me too! im native though!haha!
Seriously, ur way of teaching help me a lot in teaching Japanese Kanji.
ありがとうございます！
Always found it strange that when learning Japanese, I would be told Japanese is flat from natives, then they would continue to correct me when I spoke with the wrong intonation haha
@Bohan Wang Haha exactly my predicament
They might have meant that Japanese isn't a tonal language (like say Cantonese) maybe? It's all relative ;)
I've noticed this too. If you don't put the pitch in the right place its like you aren't saying a word they recognize, but if you ask them where the accent goes they say there isnt one. Its so strange lol! Im like yes there is!!! Thanks to Dogen it makes so much more sense.
The same with English speakers, they cant explain it either, that is why when natives teach english as a second language they just consider the pronunciation of foreigners as accents.
Japanese is the only language that I’ve studied where its native speakers are its worst teachers.
The book “Japanese: The Spoken Language” includes the pitch-accent. I was self-taught and only found out about the proper pitch-accent when I was assigned this book in college.
Ooo! Nice rec!
Thanks. I’ll check it out.
may the force be with u
may the force be with u
Me: has a math test to study for, has homework to do, and school in the morning
Also me: Japanese pitch accents?
yes!! im supposed to be doing physics homework but i am here
@@kayakh.8231 why am i in the same situation 💀
Yep, I've got an article to write and a big project to start but yeah, Japanese pitch for me, too! And looking for next video. 😁
Me: missed school yesterday to work on two English essays, it's now 1:37 a.m. and still is procrastinating when the essays are due at 2:05 today
Also me: o_O
When did you learn english? I'm impressed
@@RobotixChannel it's a joke... at least I'm pretty sure it is.
@@RobotixChannel r/woooooooooooooosh
英語上手ですね！
eIgO wA JouZU
I know, not many native japanese are this good at english
I'm studying Korean why am I here
Hi
Fun fact: the Japanese word アニョハセヨ Anyohaseyo is a heiban-pattern word
あんにょんはせよー(･ω･)ﾉｼ
Uh, I think it's written안녕하세요 am I correct？
Hello ー^(ㄱㅈㄱ)^ﾉｼ.
HAHA, yes Hello is 안녕하세요 in Korean :).
@@juanmiguelorap1654 カムサンハムニダ
Loved it.
I'd like to watch a video where you and Dogen talk about languages profoundly
本物だ！
本人だ！
なんで日本人なのに日本語の解説を英語で聞いてるんだろ。
さあ😂
それなw
なんか むずそうやな
俺もそう思った！😂
英語を聴きたいからなのでは？
Honestly, I've NEVER learned "Atamadaka", "Nakadaka", "Odaka" and "heiban" at school in Japan even though I'm Japanese brought up there!! It might be because we're used to it without learning. But his pronunciation is really good and natural. This video is how to describe my language in English for me :D
I think it's been interesting, too, that every native Japanese speaker I talk to says that pitch accent or intonation don't matter. I understand that there are so many more important things, but it's still something that I think every Japanese learner should keep in mind😆
My understanding is that the pitch can be a bit different depending on the region/dialect, so as a Japanese you would only need to "learn" it if you intend to work on TV in some official capacity (learn the "official" pitch so to say as opposed to your regional one)
As someone from the English-speaking side of things, I think it's a lot like the stress accents mentioned in the video. We never learn about it in school, and almost nobody talks about it, but we learned it by growing up with it and it is very obvious when somebody is stressing the wrong syllable of a word.
1:41 Don't you mean *_ZA WARUDO_* ?
ジョジョレファレンスと言わないでください
世界 should be replaced with ザワルド
saikou ni haitte yatzu da
プリーズストップください
only in action anime lol
I'm a native English speaker but I speak japanese as a third language. My japanese girlfriend would often laugh and point out that some of my accents and stresses were off and she'd try to correct them. Strangely, I could never really hear what was off with mine even though she'd keep having me repeat after her. Now I get it! She tried to explain it to me the same way stresses are explained in English, so I separated the words just like that, visualizing an apostrophe on the stressed syllables, completely ignoring the particle and pitch. My school in japan did cover accents and stresses but it was never really clear to me since it was taught in japanese... Now I understand-- it's really the pitch!! Thanks for the clarification! I am a fan!
This is the first time I've heard him speak English it feels weird lol
いつも日本語話してるから笑
tasha b hh
@@1991riho そうけどさ、俺の耳にはちょっと変だなw
It’s weird like a Japanese show being dubbed in English 😂 so used to him speaking Japanese
here’s the timestamps for anyone going over this:
00:00 - Intro/explanation
2:32 - atamadaka (first syllable high, rest of word and particle low) example word: Sekai
3:14 - nakadaka (starts low, goes high, goes low again, particle low) example word: Nihon
3:56 - odaka (starts low, stays high, particle low) example word: Ototo
6:03 - heiban (starts low, stay high, particle high) example word: Amerika
Feel free to use this to refresh your memory! Your doing great, all of your hard work will pay off once you reach your goal! 😊
thanks
ありがとうごさいます❤
ありがとう❤
言われてみると、まさにその通り。
Mr. Dogen's explanation was 100% correct.
@som Slovaak 日本語は「Pitch-Accentの型が決まってるTone言語」だと思うよ。Pitch-Accentを間違えると意味が変わる単語が多いから。方言の場合でも、Pitch-Accentを間違えると「酔っているの？」と即ツッコミされる。
@som Slovaak なんでイキッてんの急に。Omae no kaa-chan nani-jinda?
@som Slovaak I'm wondering if we are on the same page. 日本人への蔑称で weebを使ってないよな
@som Slovaak 変なスペース使ってるのに日本人なのかお前。迷惑だから絡むなボケ
@som Slovaak あばよ。日本語がんばれ
I'm gonna be picky here for a moment - not to be that guy, I just think it might help people who are just becoming aware of this stuff to tackle it more naturally. I'd say stress in English *is* mostly about pitch changes (and pronouncing vowels properly instead of doing 'uh' schwas for unstressed syllables) and not really about force, which is more typically used for emphasis. Like when you talk normally, you're not going "HELLo TH-cam i'm POSTing in the COMMents SECtion it's aMAzing" right?
That doesn't make English a pitch accent language - we use pitch for stress, but other things too, and the pitch doesn't change the meaning of the word, it's just there's a "right" way to stress it and it sounds unnatural if you do it differently. The closest to mattering I can think of is words like EXport (noun) vs exPORT (verb), but those aren't different words just different ways of using the same word, and even if you do it "wrong" there's no possible confusion. We don't always even agree where the stress goes, like some people say aDULT and others say Adult, or both!
Anyhow point is you're already using pitch to accent words if you speak English (try it with your mouth closed) so this isn't a new thing you need to force yourself to do, and you probably don't need to push yourself into doing it more than you already naturally are. The tricky part is what Dogen says about the patterns where the pitch stays raised, we don't really do that in English so that's what you've gotta focus on even though it feels weird!
sorry about the big comment, I hope it helps someone though
Pinned this because it's accurate. The stressed bit of an English word does indeed have a higher pitch than the unstressed elements. The primary purpose of this video is to explain that the general 'feel' of accenting a word in English and accenting a word in Japanese is quite different, for several reasons, such as at the fact that the surrounding vowels in English are usually reduced to 'schwa' as you mentioned, the fact that in English the accented bit often, but no always, has more force as well as length than the surrounding bits, and the fact that there are several Japanese accent patterns (odaka and heiban) which are very different than anything in English, which you also mentioned. This is why, in my opinion, it's best for Japanese learners to think about only changing pitch in Japanese words, and to say all of the vowels clearly (outside of devoicing). When English native speakers try to accent Japanese words the same way as English words, they often change the pitch of the accented element, but then also add too much force and length to said element, which sounds unnatural (and of course many Japanese words (heiban words) do not have accents, as you said!). Seems we are on the same page-I could have done a better job addressing this in the video. Thanks for the comment Cactustactics!
@@Dogen oh nah it's cool, I think you explained what you actually need to do just fine! And it's like you said, you don't just act like you're speaking English, or you'll probably end up with a heavy foreign accent, so it's definitely better to throw yourself into it like a new, slightly weird thing you're learning to do. I just feel like we're not always aware of the stuff we actually do in our native languages (learning another language teaches you a lot about your own!), so it can be handy to point it out so people can contrast and work out what to change
cheers for the reply and being cool and everything!
Unless u are General kenobi
Hello There
Oh my gosh it was so fun to read the sample sentence like that in my head 😂😂😂
@@aslanburnley this ni
I absolutely love your channel! From the hilarious jokes that none of my friends understand, to the extremely well taught pitch accents, you are a diamond in the rough on TH-cam. I would love to see your channel grow more, keep up the great work Dogen!
I think that more than "in the rough", he just hasn't received enough attention, his content is truly polished and well thought
Stumbled in here totally based on TH-cam recommendations. Awesome Dogen. Just, wonderful. I passed JLPT N1 a year ago, have a double major in Japanese and lived there for three years. Also have a linguistics degree. SO little of this is covered in traditional Japanese instruction for foreigners. You're providing a great service here.
日本語母語話者でも、海外の学習者に言われて初めて、そう言われればそうかってなることの一つですね…。我々にとっては無意識なので。
This is the first time I'm seriously considering joining a patreon
I've learned so many things from you! A year ago, you made me realize about the pitch accent in Japanese. I knew something was not right with my pronunciation but I didn't know what it was. I love all your videos! Thank you so much!!
yes, it's life changing !!! idk why the japanese teachers at school never tell us about PITCH ACCENTS!!!!!
When you wanna say "You're the best" but your pitch is wrong and you say "You're a Psycho" instead.
I've just finished the video from Joey and here you are with some pitch accent knowledge!
sem
me2. Happy that Joey mentioned Dogen
I love how english speaking people practically "change voice" when speaking another language because of sounds that doesn't exist in english
I’ve been learning Japanese on and off for years, and have never been taught this. Thank you Dogen, extremely useful!
I've been loitering around your online presence for a while but in the last days have dug into much more of your content. You seem such a kind and intelligent soul, so I just wanted to say thanks for the continued great content you supply.
this is life changing. i took japanese at uni for 3 years and no single japanese teacher told us about the existence of pitch accent. i think they just want us to sound like gaijin forever. some teacher say it's too hard for beginners or it would be too demanding of students but this is so important that every beginner deserves to be introduced to this concept. then they can decide for themselves if they want to actually apply it or not
大学で日本語学ぶの？
日本に住んでるので外国人がどれくらい日本語に興味があるか分からない
Wait what? I took japanese literature too. We were taught the pitch accents starting from semester 2, although not with the terms in the video. It's usually just arrows (→,↑,↓)
Why do you think of everything in a discriminatory way? Japanese people don't wish for foreigners to speak in a "foreigner-like" manner.
@@戸塚亭ヨット I'm pretty sure "they" was referring to Japanese teachers, not Japanese people in general
I was a math major in college and in the math department we frequently complained that if you teach the basics in a way that gets the right answer but has imporper or incomplete logic then the student will be way worse off. What you just said sounded like the japanese equivalent. Basically don't spare the student from the challenging stuff early or else they'll only know the wrong things later. It makes everything easier to just explain everything as it comes.
00:00 - Intro/explanation
2:32 - atamadaka (first syllable high, rest of word and particle low) example word: Sekai
3:14 - nakadaka (starts low, goes high, goes low again, particle low) example word: Nihon
3:56 - odaka (starts low, stays high, particle low) example word: Ototo
6:03 - heiban (starts low, stay high, particle high) example word: Amerika
Feel free to use this to refresh your memory! Your doing great, all of your hard work will pay off once you reach your goal! 😊
I was sent to this specific video by a Japanese speaker who is super picky about pronunciation. Good video! It clicks some confusion about pitch accent to me from the materials I have read describing it at almost optional.
Yomiwa, an app, gives a visual representation of what pitch accent is used for that particular word you look upon.
I set the app to give as fewest English translations as possible「イントネーション」 doesn't have the same meaning in Japanese, it's basically just means the pitch of a pitch accent.
Swedish is also a pitch accent language which I will try to learn Swedish some day, all this pitch accent knowledge will be extremely useful when I set off learning a 3rd language when counting my native language.
Short Review / Timestamps
2:32 頭高[あたま だか]
1st mora high
3:12 中高[なか だか]
1st mora low
goes high
returns low within word
3:56 尾高[お だか]
1st mora slightly lower
Accent falls after last mora
6:02 平板[へい ばん]
1st mora slightly lower
Accent does not fall
I'm not trying to learn Japanese, I stumbled into this video and watched until the end because your teaching style is very engaging and the subject is pretty interesting. Also, as a bilingual myself, I think it's amazing how you switch every other word between languages effortlessly, with what sounds like perfect accent to me.
I'm studying linguistics in uni at the moment and I'm loving my prosody class. We never talked about japanese so this is super interesting! The difference between accent being marked by pitch rather than stress is a whole new concept I've never heard of before!
Thank you so much for this introduction on Japanese pitch-accent. I always notice how English speakers speak Japanese with an accent but cannot specifically tell why that came to be. Able to have the names of those pitch-accent is really helpful for me to continue to learn Japanese
Thank you so much! I've lived in Japan for 12 years and never had it explained properly! Even the basics. I keep getting told that japanese has no stress patterns but everyone around me is obviously using stresses on certain syllables!
Great lesson!! I've studied Japanese for quite a lot of years in the past and NONE of my teachers ever bothered to talk about this!
Dōgen: I’ve been studying Japanese for about half a year now, and I was wondering if it would be worth it to put my vocabulary building aside so I can nail pronunciation before I continue.
I think there's a video of him explaining his background and I remember correctly he focused on getting good in pitch accent first. Try to find the video if you're interested!
Yes! I would recommend switching to pronunciation for a few months of intensive study!
@@Dogen OK what's the best way to do just that? I'm doing Japanese for a while now, I followed some of your lessons from the beginning (more or less).
U'Mascariatu Erich sign up for my series and use it while recording yourself and listening to native speech non-stop
Gotta agree with Chris here. Even native speakers will admit that they can understand foreigners just fine if their pitch is off due to the context. And in Japan pitch for certain words can be different region to region, it's basically their version of an accent. I wouldn't worry too much about pitch until you are fairly advanced in your vocabulary. You'll pick up a lot of correct pronunciation along the way anyways.
Your channel is what some time ago got me acquainted with a Japanese pitch accent. I was really surprised that this topic is barely covered in majority of Japanese teaching sources. Before I learned about it, when listening to Japanese speech I thought that there’s something special yet unclear about how their pronunciation and intonation are different. And now everything just makes more sense! Thanks a lot for teaching us the real Japanese!
As someone wishing to learn Japanese myself, I'm shocked by how good you speak it - I'm sure others have said this but your enunciation of the Japanese syllabary is nearly identical to natives; for me, that is my end goal along with L1-level mastery (which will probably take years of practice and exposure).
Though I also feel that this video could do even better with captions :3
Tbf, there are many foreigners that can speak English at native level. Being able to speak a foreign language at native level is not that uncommon
Yeah true your japanese is native level, it's really impressive.
you would be surprised if I said that N1 is just the beginning of fluency.
Andrew I meant to say either that or L1 - I was using JLPT metrics.
@@serraramayfield9230 Yea i got what you meant, just wanted to leave that out there.
This whole time I’ve been repeating/mimicking Japanese words without realizing I was repeating it using a pitch. This is fascinating! I need to look into this more!
How do you make weird looking hair like on those anime
Dogen: Observe
How do you make Hitler mustache with household light sources
I'm finally understanding this as I'm currently taking Structure of Japanese at uni.
My explanation would be that the base accent is high-flat across the whole word (plus particle) before accounting for what syllable is accented. Whatever syllable is accented, any syllables after will be low. Additionally, the first syllable is always lowered unless it is the accented syllable.
This also explains the distinction between final-accented and unaccented, which appear the same without a particle (both have L then rest is H), but unaccented allows the particle to also be H as there is no accented syllable to cause a pitch decrease. Final accent on the other hand, will cause the following particle to decrease.
This is a super great intro and a wonderful video to get people started into pitch accent! Should definitely consider making this your featured channel video. Well done!
方言とかシチュエーションでも変わったりするからややこしいよね
言語学としてはめちゃくちゃ面白いけど、話す練習をしたかったらもう本能に刻み込んでくのがいいと思う
I think the head scratcher for me is figuring out which pitch accent pattern to go with just based on appearances since I don't see it come up in studying or online resources at all. It's kind of a shame, since you'd think it would be a bigger thing to be incorporated so you're nailing your pronunciation.
Some resources list which pattern a word belongs to and some books show pitch accents in word lists.
@@XGD5layer I'll make a note to look into some if I can get my hands on some. I'm hoping it won't be too tough to wrap my head around since I've been a bit fried when it comes to studying and retaining material.
Dogen does a really good job covering this in his Patreon series. If you're just looking for the pitch accent pattern for some specific word, try Wiktionary. They surprisingly do generally include it.
@@mikebmcl I saw the early pitch accent videos a few months ago, and I'd jump on the Patreon bandwagon if I had extra cash in my pocket. I'll make a note to check out the Wikitionary again for it since it probably slipped past me there when I was taking minor notes not too long ago. Thanks!
It’s contained for example in the Mac dictionary- he covered tools in another video
すごい面白い！Dogenさんってホント頭が良い！
Also, super great unscripted video! It's so good it's hard to tell it's not scripted.. you've come a huge way since your first unscripted videos! Big respect.
Good video!
Even lots of Japanese dont understand this pitch system and they tend to teach japanese-learners wrong things (like they tend to miss pitches on particles), but i found your video correct and thorough enough to be shared!
Is there anyway to tell what pitch accent the word will be by just reading it, or do you need to memorize the pitch accent of every word?
These are the kind of tips that I teach on my series. For example, any 'syllable' verb that end with つ, as in 待つ or 持つ, among others, will always be atamadaka. Hope this helps!
Was gonna say, eventually you see patterns for the most part
English kinda has the same dilemma for language learners. How do you know how to pronounce read, receipt, though, cough, friend, and fiend by just looking at it? Basic answer is you can't.
Natives don't have much trouble pronouncing because they learned how to _speak the language first._ And, having spent years speaking and reading the language, we can more immediately tell how to read new words just from intuition alone.
This is why it's recommended to make (active) listening input your number one priority. Hearing the same words and patterns over and over helps build intuition. ^^
@@ShoulderMonster so youre saying i should watch even more anime? okay, if you insist...
@@はいこれはロボ子の婚約者 Just make sure you don't pick some weird quirk when speaking but yeah, more anime is good for pitch accents, believe it!
As a Mandarin/English speaker, pitch-accent is the hardest part for me so far.
Thank you for this incredible series.
I think one of the main issues with this is that it's, for some reason, often considered to be 'advanced', so many teacher don't really cover it at first or at all. They want you to grasp the basics, to just learn the words first, before you really learn to pronounce them properly. And then by the time you get to the advanced level, you're already pronouncing many things incorrectly, and now have to relearn everything.
I studied Japanese for about 2 years with 4 different online sources, and pitch came up maybe once, and not on any kind of profound level. I mean, in English, you're generally given transcriptions that tell you where the accent is, but in Japanese, there's just furigana, and no one's really telling you anything about how to actually pronounce the words correctly.
Of course, the even bigger issue is that when you're learning a language by yourself, whether online or with a book, there's no one to correct you. But that's relevant for any language learning experience, not just Japanese.
I'm just becoming familiarized with the general aspects of Japanese, so I haven't even started checking out its grammar and how to form sentences, but I presume that, after knowing how to do it, being aware of using the appropriate pitch must really REALLY make you second-guess every sentence you say since we're connecting chains of words combined with their respective particles. I imagine it being a mix of frustrating and fascinating.
It's really interesting how there's a neglected pitch aspect to the Japanese language, and as a phonetics fan, I hope I get to explore that first-hand later into my ultra steady process of learning Japanese. Amazing stuff, Dogen-sensei!
2AM: I should probably be sleep, but HEY a new video about Pitch-Accent, why not :D
TH-cam recommended this. I don't really have any desire to learn Japanese (at the moment) but I am an interpreter and a linguist and all things language fascinate me, so randomly watching something like this is right up my alley and it was done SO well! I think this was recommended because I watch NativeLang videos a lot of the time.I'll be checking this channel again. (Subscribed)
Nobody:
Back of Dogen's head: ノ
_no_
I don't understand the joke; could you please explain?
"Back of Dogen's head: 'katakana no'"?
Ryroe look
okay, you're talking about his hair, I assume
@@Ryroe bed hair
Thank you for this video! It's exactly the video my father needs. He learnt Japanese at university but his intonation is just horrible to listen to for me and my mother as Japanese native speakers. My (German) father thought that these intonation details were all just a complete myth and never even bothered trying to differentiate the pitch sounds. That is also why he was once confused about: 車で待つ and 来るまで待つ and guessed the wrong one whereas the difference is so clear for me.
It is really impressive to see how much you love Japanese and how much you are seeking knowledge to improve your Japanese skill. Thanks for sharing that passion
That video solved a lot of difficulty that I had to explain how Japanese accent works for non-Japaneses. I'm Japanese but never knew that my language is a pitch accent language and it's different from English that is a stress accent. Next time I'll try to explain in that way. (or just send this video's link lol) Thank you. great content. 頑張ってください
P.S. Apologies for my terrible English.
20 years of listening japanese and my ears are still deaf to pitch accent.....
It's literally just like music with syllables
@@AlexandraGulkoHyman I'm right there with them. I can't hear it at all. The words all sound flat. I hear no difference for the words that are the same with different pitches. I'm completely def to it too. 😢
Dogen, I don't speak Japanese at all -- but ever since I was a child, I've always had a strong desire to learn it ONE DAY.
I am very happy to have found your channel, because you spark inspiration to achieve this goal someday.
I know the tips and educational knowledge you've shared throughout your videos will have laid a solid foundation for me to build upon whenever I am finally able to hunker down and take that journey to learn the language.
Thank you for covering this! I can't tell you how frustrating it is to memorize hundreds of words and phrases you see in writing only to find out you're pronouncing them wrong. The same Japanese words often change meaning with the incorrect pitch. Great video.
Super interesting video.
While I'm not actively learning Japanese or making plans to visit Japan anytime soon, I love learning about these little things about the language.
I had to explain to an american friend about interpretation of pitch as part of an accent. They kep greating me 'gDay mATE" cause Im aussie and I had to explain that australian english reads pitch as emotion. Raising the pitch at the ends of sentences implied agression or stress making it sound like she was poised off at me. When we first started talking we got into a lot of heated arguments where we werent actually arguing and eventually I realised she was hearing my words as dismissive and i was hearing hers as up tight or agressive just by how stress And pitch were being used.
underrated comment. Must be hard for Chinese people, interpreting tone vs intonation. At least I've seen a lot of puzzled looks in informal settings when everyone talks fast and animated and vice versa their intonation seems weird even when they have no problems with vocab.
"poised"
分かりやすい動画です。日本人も参考になります。
I haven't learned it in 7 years of university and here you are with 10 minutes. Dogenさん、本当にありがとうございます😊
若者のアクセントが平板化しているという記事を読んだばかりだったので、タイムリー！
英語話者に日本語を教える個人レッスンしている有資格者ですが、
日本語教育能力検定の勉強で最も嫌いだったのがこのアクセントでした^^;
IPAも含めて本当に苦手だった…かなり難しいものであるはずなのに、
英語話者でここまでこのピッチアクセントに精通しているなんて本当に尊敬します！！
こと英語話者は雨と飴や橋と箸など二文字しかなくて高低差があるものが特に苦手なのか、
橋、城、飴、髪/紙、酒など後ろに高音がくるものに統一されてしまう傾向がある印象です。
まぁ令和の発音が公式に「どちらでも良い」になるなど、日本語も割と柔軟な一面はありますが…ｗ
Great stuff man! I think even if someone is a beginner at language, getting the pronunciation and accent correct from the get-go is a must. Your accent is near-perfect btw.
Great video. Something that has caused a lot of confusion for me in the past, however: I know that heiban is traditionally presented as LHH as if there is no drop in pitch, but... one very important thing that I’ve realized is that, to my ears and way of thinking, heiban *does* involve a slight drop in pitch on the final mora (of the word itself in isolation or on the following particle); it is less drastic than the high-to-low drop in the other pitch accent patterns, but it is still there. I hear this in the heiban examples Dogen has given in this video, which is consistent with what I hear in native Japanese speech.
Realizing this has helped me differentiate between nakadaka and heiban when listening to a word in Japanese and trying to make out its pitch accent. I used to hear the subtle drop in a heiban word and assume it was nakadaka (LHL).
Now that I know what to actually listen for - heiban is more LHL (with both the high point and the final lower point being less drastic and more atonal than the nakadaka LHL) than LHH to my ears - I am more able to hear (and hopefully reproduce) the difference.
If I used a scale of 0 to 4 (0 being the lowest pitch and 4 being the highest), nakadaka would sound something like 1-4-0 while heiban sounds more like 1-3-2 to me.
Put another way, musically, nakadaka sounds a bit like C-F#-lower octave G while heiban is more C-Eb-C#.
That was powerful insight for Japanese pitch accents Dogenさん。Thank you so much for releasing this video. I am gonna show this to my students if you don’t mind 😁
I have been confused about Japanese accent for a quite long time, because in my mother tongue there is no this kind of pitch changes. Thank you very much for your excellent explanations!!!! Finally I think I can tell the difference!!
it's so cool to see all these things dissected; a lot of this - as a Japanese person - I don't think I ever learned systematically, but makes a lot of sense when laid out in front of me.
This was very interesting. I'm a Japanese but I didn't realize I speak Japanese the way explained in this video until I saw this. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
ありがとうございます勉強になました🙏🙏😊😊・インドへあまりstudy material かないからたいへんです・
私は母国語だったので意識していませんでしたが確かにその通りで、改めて認識して目から鱗が落ちる思いでした。素晴らしい動画だと思います。
今逆に私は英語を勉強中でよく発音が聞こえない問題と向き合っていますが違いを理解する事は大切だと考えさせられました。他にも我々は絶妙に主語を抜いて話していると思います。我々にとっては主語を省略している意識がないので逆に英語では主語を思っている以上に常につけないといけないという意識をしています。
Now that you say this, I started watching anime when I was a child and I think I learned the pronunciation naturally. I know it sounds weird, but many times it happened that my friends tried to speak in Japanese and I needed to correct them. For me, there was so noticeable when something was wrong even if I wasn't able to explain why.
I studied Japanese at uni and I don't think this type of thing was ever really focused on but luckily I was able to take a phonetics/音声学 class at a Japanese university which taught this type of stuff to Japanese students. Was a great class and definitely helped a lot in understanding how to speak in Japanese. Have had friends teach me the difference between 橋 and 箸 too, wish I put more effort into studying now.
Thank you very much, I was procrastinating on reading this cause it seemed too difficult but this helped me get a bit over that fear
こんにちは。
僕はアメリカで4年間の日本語を終えてから日本に来て日本人と仕事で関わっています。色んな場面で日本語の対応に慣れてきたからよく「日本語がうまいね！」って言われて、僕は「上手からアクシントぐらい勉強しなくていいかな」って思わされていた。でも、最近、色んな人にアクシントに注意されて勉強したくなった。僕は日本語で私と他の人を離すのがアクシントの使い方だと思う。僕はアクシントに慣れていないから、電話の対応で直ぐ「外国人だね」って言われがちだね。
僕は日本語のアクシントぐらいに慣れたら、私はネイティブに聞こえやすいと思うしかも、仕事にも自身が生まれるばすだ。
質問は一つです。日本語の高低アクシントについて、徹底的な教材の勧めがありますか？あれば教えてください！
we've been blessed boys
I thought I would mention a few points that might be of interest. Firstly, you have greatly helped my intonation, pitch & inflection, which is something you can only learn by speaking with natives or by instructors such as yourself. Thanks for that. Secondly, I wanted to point out something that happens when you speak in Japanese. I lived there for 11 years and can say that listening to you is like listening to an office or government worker where their speech patterns are largely constrained. However, outside on the street & among friends, while all that you say is true about pitch-accents, it is done so fast that it is overshadowed by their age, status, gender, emotional, emphatic, comedic, personality traits & conditions, and by local dialects. It is this phenomena that most non-native speakers base their speech pattern on. This is what they've seen in movies, animation & videos. While I can well understand that you make adjustments to your throat & larynx muscle use in order to stay true to what you are teaching, I don't see that it requires the "nasal" quality that you have given to it. Putting all the male Japanese speakers together that I have heard in those 11 years, roughly speaking, I would say that you very ably imitate 15% of them. I suppose this is necessary to stay as objective & uncontaminated as possible. But the nasal part does not sound natural for you, being that your normal speaking voice is an open rich baritone instead of the more tight-throated nasal voice that you use when pronouncing Japanese (at least when done for example purposes. I have not heard you in normal Japanese conversation with acquaintances). I suppose the only point I have is that I'd like to see you speak Japanese in a voice more natural to you. All that for such a silly point. Oh, well...
I learned Japanese from a Japanese teacher who teaches Japanese in a Chinese university. This is the very first lesson she taught us about.
In addition to pronouncing these 平板, 尾高, 中高... etc., there are actually PATTERNS for these アクセント. There's no need to brainlessly memorize the accent for every single word. For instance, 漢語名詞 with more than 4 moras tend to be 平板 or 尾高, and words composed of 2 other words tend to be 中高 or 平板 depending on how many moras they have.
I'd recommend anyone who's interested in this to buy NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典 or 【三省堂】新明解日本語アクセント辞典. These will be good for you if you're interested in learning Japanese from more of a linguistic perspective. Of course these are not suitable for beginners as the appendices are fully in Japanese and you have to know at least the examples they use.
Thanks Dogen for such a good, if brief explanation. Though it has been many years ago, I lived in Japan for five years. When I first took Japanese lessons I was one of the unfortunate souls who was taught that Japanese was completely flat... and my teacher was a Japanese native speaker. In thinking back, I think I just picked up the correct pitch accent through exposure or immersion, whatever you want to call it. By listening to native speakers and trying to sound like they sound it just comes sort if naturally. It is always good, however, to consciously know the pitch accent differences of (otherwise) homonyms such as 花 and 鼻 or 髪、and 神.
I am a native Japanese. So far I have never known that Japanese is a Pitch-Accent language. I can't teach one accent to Japanese words.
U are so cool Dogen, I could listen to your lectures forever
I learnt a lot from this, thank you!
I pronounce all of these right without knowing anything about pitch accents.. the teacher is important guys! Shadowing the right teacher makes ur pronunciation natural and native-like..
Lol I studied Japanese for 2 years and could always pick up that this was going on but never got it explained to me at all, much less so well.
Thanks for the lesson.
This is very helpful, I am a Japanese Studies student in at Leiden University and we have yet to cover this in the first year. どうもありがとうドーゲンさ！
I really like the stress and pitch comparison. I'm not learning Japanese but I tried going along with you. The odaka and heiban patterns feel really unnatural for the same reason stressing so many syllables in English or (my native language) Dutch feels unnatural.
My brain just wants to de-stress all the syllables after the initial stressed one... especially the last syllablə.
I am sooo glad you played that 3 times... I totally heard it!!!! Thank you so much! Love this video so much!
Heiban and Atamadaka!!! I really want to improve my pronunciation! I remember your video on らしい! lol
this was helpful, thank you so much! 😊
2:07 "stress accent languages and pitch accent languages"
And then there are languages like Swedish which have both.
Yeah, Beijing Mandarin is another one (has both stress and tone)
@@CosmicDoom47 How does the interplay between those work? Do the tones become more pronounced in stressed syllables?
As a university student that studies Japanese I am so glad that you made that Japan quiz thing with Joey because I needed this. We don't talk about Pitch-Accent at all, and I always found it weird because it is important if we really want to learn a language, so thank you so much, this is the first time I ever thought that I needed somebodies patreon
"But you said Japanese was fu-ra-to"
"No, it's fu-RA-to"
"Wait, so it's fu-RA-to?"
"Yes, fu-RA... Hey, want to see some new kanji?"
"Hey, wanna see the kanji for 'depression'?"
ドライ君 audiobooks That’s “concave”.