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Episode 6.4: Using Spectrographs to analyze pitch accent, part 2 (Patreon)

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2020-04-10 07:01:00
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2026-06
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Note: This video features a slightly different production style as it was recorded during the early days of the pandemic when I was adjusting to sudden changes in work and life circumstances. Thank you for your understanding.

Bibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page

Good afternoon Patrons!

In this lesson, we continue to use spectrographs to analyze pitch accent. Specifically, we compare odaka and heiban words, and also see whether or not devoicing affects pitch accent in slower, more deliberate speech.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns with regard to this lesson, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below. Thank you very much for your continued support, and good luck with your Japanese studies!

Best from Beppu,
Dōgen

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Comments

Dogen
>>91088417

Hi, Ronald. If there is a particle attached, the pitch of the final mora will be higher before dropping for the particle, and this might appear to sound longer to a non-native speaker. However, do NOT try to lengthen the し if you think you hear it.

Dogen
>>93026976

Hi Nonameron. Most of the resources seem to note that pitch gradually rises until a downstep occurs (when a downstep is occurring, anyway). So in a case like like 弟を（おとうとを）pitch often starts low on お, then gradually rise until it's high point on と, with を attaching low. Cheers.

dearestalexander

Really cool lesson thanks Dogen, I feel like these are the key subtleties that will help make my japanese speech easier to understand by natives!

Dogen
>>111039431

Thank you for the nice comment, dearestalexander! Best of luck with your studies!

Clara Me

Thank you for another wonderful video and I hope you are doing well in this coronavirus situation. On a happier note, do you use the NHK アクセント辞書？they now have an app and it’s on sale until May. It’s a accent dictionary that many voice actors use. (Here’s the link if you are interested: http://news.nhk-book.co.jp/archives/10093)

Joe Fox
>>35003370

That looks really good. What a shame it's only for Apple.

Liam Cronin

Interesting! Musically speaking nose and flower with no partical rise a perfect 4th. But with a partical flower rises a perfct 5th and drops back down a fifth but on octave lower. Can u confirm the hertz value for particle on this mora? Because that would be a perfect cadence. I'm not sure if my ears are tricking me here with the fundemental freq as i'm hearing other freqs in there. The word for nose with a particale leans towards major 3rd in the rise and drops gradually to one tone below (but is quite flat for the most part). The word for bridge has the exact same pitch movements, edge is leaning to the major 3rd like when its spoken with the particle . A perfect cadence is the most satisfying and powerful movement in music. The perfect fifth and fourth are also the most prominently used tones in music. Thats extremly significant at least in these one word phrases.

Dogen
>>35018123

Hi Liam! For 花が the audio starts at around 220-230 hertz, goes up to 330 or so hertz, then drops down to 165 hertz (at the end of the particle, the particle starts at around 207 hertz and drops to 165 hertz). I don't know too much about music theory, but hope that this helps! Cheers!

Joe Griffiths

Very interesting lesson! Really enjoying some of these technical analysis videos lately! Got a bit of a random and kinda specific question that confused myself and my Japanese teacher recently, that maybe you could hopefully clear up (depending on if what I'm going to say actually makes any sense haha). Why is it that when おいしい is attached to a noun (おいしいレストラン for example), it doesn't seem to have a downstep on し? But in any other i-adjective noun combination the downstep occurs in the normal place for the i-adjective? Is it just an exception for this one specific adjective or is there a pattern there that actually happens sometimes? Or does this happen at all (maybe we may be wrong and I'm wasting your time, hopefully I'm not!)? Just thought it was interesting to ask! Hope you're doing well 😊

Dogen
>>35230547

Hi Joe! This is a great question. I don't know if this is the correct answer, but I'm guess that because the combination of sentence level pitch-accent rules, the fact that this combination is often used together, and the fact that おいしい is a native Japanese word while レストラン is a loan word. As I talk about in the sentence level pitch-accent sub-series, it's usually best not to accent every word in a phrase, as speakers don't always put equal emphasis on every word—this is point one. Points two and three basically assume that this combination is being treated as a compound, with typical compound pitch-accent, rather than as a two words back to back. Just my two cents, hope this helps!

Joe Griffiths

Hi Dogen, one more question if you don't mind, I'm not sure if you have talked about this before. Is it true that for 3 mora nakadaka i-adjective conjunctions, you can also say them with the downstep in the normal place. So for example, たかくて (from たかい) can be said with the downstep on た or か? My teacher said he hears both, but was just wondering if one was more common than the other if both are used. If true, then would it be more practical to use this option, or is there a specific reason to using the first option?

Delvin Sauw

Hey Dogen! Would you ever consider selling Japanese Pitch-Accent lessons? I think it could be really useful for those who can't hear/understand their own mistakes and might want for you to hear them, correct them, and set them towards the right direction.

TS

Interesting! What about atamadaka and heiban 1 mora words? Are they pronounced with the same pitch without a following particle or is there a difference?

Dogen
>>35253199

Hi Delvin! I assume you're talking about one-on-one lessons? If so this is something I'd love to do but unfortunately don't have time at the moment; it is may something I do in the future after my girls start going to school, however. Cheers!

Dogen
>>35253019

Hi Joe! This is true, both are acceptable. I've always gone with the option I did in my lessons as it's the option I was explicitly taught in my Japanese pitch-accent courses at university, and didn't learn about the other pronunciation until more recently. I would encourage you to go with the option that works easier for you! Apologies for not covering this, and cheers!

Kelvin T Nguyen

Is your expertise exclusive to Standard Japanese or do you have general knowledge of all dialects of Japanese? For example, some dialects apparently actually do differentiate initial H mora from initial L mora in addition to a downstep. Also: Do Japanese actors put in as much effort as the English speaking word when it comes to mastering a local accent? It's not particularly unusual to learn that a UK actor underwent extensive training in American English in order to make it big in Hollywood.

Dogen
>>35804892

Hi Kelvin. I have only ever studied standard Japanese, and only speak about standard Japanese in this series; thus the information for the above lesson is limited to standard Japanese (which I encourage essentially all learners to study and stick with). I can't comment extensively on the second point as I don't know any Japanese actors personally, but I have seen clips of actors from Kansai screwing up lines in 'deleted scenes' specifically because of accent differences with standard Japanese. Hope this helps!

dylan currie

Hey Dogen! :) Awesome work on this series. Quick question you have mentioned for a word like "kisha" there are 2 acceptable pronounciations. Is there a reason for this? For example why would someone pronounce it atamdaka vs heiban or vice versa? Is it just preference? Thanks again! :)

Markas

Very Interesting! Love your videos, they are so helpful, even some of it aren't necessary as stated, its still pretty goooooooood!

Lauren Kawamura

Wonderful presentation! It has been very crazy since Corona started. I'm sorry to hear about the baby sitter! I can relate! Your presentations are always a joy and I learn so much! Please take care of yourself and don't push yourself. Thank you again for your time and energy.

Dogen
>>39969892

こちらこそ！Thank you, Lauren, for the understanding and please stay safe during these turbulent times!

Ophelion

Hey Dogen, So what these latest videos basically imply is that Japanese is borderline tonal? Since we have はな express different semantics depending on the pitch-accent pattern (also, some earlier examples like 昨日 and 機能), this brings it quite close to other East Asian languages - which might make sense given its history, but what would you say given your academic standpoint? Cheers!

Dogen
>>40337161

Hi Ophelion. I suppose that's one way of thinking about it, but I personally wouldn't classify it this way, and if my memory serves me correctly Japanese actually has more in common with Turkish than it does most other East Asian Languages (at least in some respects), so I would be careful trying to draw any new conclusions from this video—probably best just to concentrate on the contents of the video itself. Sorry for not being able to help more with this point. Cheers!

kusterdu

Thank you! I think knowing that the pitch goes up before a particle in an 尾高 word makes it easier to pronounce. I think I was picking up on that unconsciously and didn't realize it.

Strange Guy

I guess it's pretty individual to a specific person. But anyway, from a musician point of view: in those examples of 花 and 鼻 the only difference was an interval. First one was major 3rd, second was perfect 4th. In the case of 花が it was a perfect 4th up and an octave down. For 鼻が it was a major 3rd followed by major 2nd drop (wholetone). In the end I may end up writinng note staff for Japanese sentences ))

Jai

Hi Dogen! I'm really enjoying your phonetics series! I've been studying Japanese for 8 months and I've always been really interested in sounding as accurate as possible, so your style of mentioning even the tiny details really suits what I wanted in terms of pronunciation instruction. Since I've been aware of, and always learn words with, pitch accent for around half or maybe a bit more than that, I've found the tests really easy but I'm still watching all the way through each video because there are little bits of information I don't know here and there. In fact, to spice up the tests a bit I tried pausing just before the particles on the heiban/odaka words and I found I could pretty consistently predict which one it was, and I guess that comes down to the change in pronunciation of odaka words when they actually do have a particle on the end compared to without. Also just curious, is the native speaker who does most (or all?) of the recordings your wife?

Dogen
>>76032065

No. The native speaker who appears in most of the recordings is not my wife. Kimi-sensei is a native speaker who has trained with NHK.

Ronald van Oosten

Hello Dogen, really enjoying the course! In the bridge example, could I have noticed the shi becoming longer when the particle was added?

Nonameron

If an 尾高 word has more than two mora will all of the high mora rise when you attach a particle or only the last one?