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Episode 1: Course introduction (Patreon)

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2016-09-19 14:37:02
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2026-06
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Japanese Phonetics Index Page

The first episode of Japanese Phonetics is live! 

In this episode I introduce the Japanese Phonetics and Pitch Accent course, laying out my plan for the general approach I will take.

Hope you guys enjoy!

Dōgen

Files

Previews only

Comments

Michael King

Excuse me Dogen, quick question, im just starting to study Japanese, started last week in fact and have Hiragana down. Given that my Japanese vocabulary is almost nonexistent, can i start your Phonetics lessons now or should i wait until my Japanese is a little more built up.

Michael King
>>10073121

P.S. Keep up the good work, loving everything you continue to create over on YouTube. Dont you have a book featuring alot of the short stories on your channel, if so where can i find it?

George Degyaw

so is this suitable for absolute beginners ?

Dogen
>>10286713

Hi George. Thanks for the question! I typically recommend that people study for at least six months before diving into phonetics. If, for example, you're still learning hiragana or katakana, then it's probably best to come back later. Let me know if you have any other questions!

Joshep Garcia

hey, I was a patron (patreon?) but I also have bills, so currently I can't continue to donate. hopefully that changes soon though. anyway, this is very short notice, but I recall you asking something about whether or not people would be interested in 1 on 1 lessons and possibly for a higher price or something. anyway, i'm currently in Tokyo and wanted to know if, one, the offer still stands, and two, there was a way to take one or two classes from you before I return home.

Dogen
>>14107983

Hey Joshep! Sorry for the late reply. I'm not currently offering 1 on 1 lessons, and am not in Tokyo, but I will be sure to make a major announcement here, and probably on YouTube as well, if I do begin to offer private lessons. Again apologies for the late reply, and good luck with your studies! Let me know if you ever have any additional questions!

Jin

Hi! I’m a beginner in Japanese and am trying to learn pitch accent sooner than later. I’ve been studying Japanese for 3 months using the FromZero! course. Should I stop learning grammar and things like that and soley focus on pitch accent? Do you think that’s a good idea?

Dogen
>>143937624

Hi, Jin. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. As a beginner I think you want to aim for a balance, incorporating phonetics and pitch accent in your early studies. As you learn the hiragana and katakana, don't just learn how to read and write them, but use the pronunciation sub-series (lessons 33-57) to learn how to voice them properly. As you learn vocabulary, be sure you are also drilling yourself to listen for and be able to identify the pitch accent, so you can learn the pitch accent for the vocabulary you are learning. By developing the ability to hear and reproduce the pitch accent of what you are hearing, you will be able to make pitch accent a part of your studies. I hope this helps. Best of luck in your studies!

Allyson S.

Greetings. I just signed up for the Pateron and started watching the Japanese phonetics course. You mention it will be useful for everyone 'except the truly bilingual.' Could you unpack that? Is there something else you would recommend for someone who wants to work on improving their pitch accent after acquiring the language? I have 25 years of study, an N1, and work as a simultaneous interpreter. But I was inspired by your videos that I could further improve my accent.

Dogen
>>170885559

Hi, Allyson. JP here, Dōgen’s business partner. I’m helping manage the messages here on Patreon. Thanks for the questions! In this case, when Dōgen says “I believe that these lessons will be beneficial for all but the completely bilingual”, he said he’s basically thinking of someone raised in both languages who sounds like a native when speaking either language. Unfortunately, the number of people who fit this description is exceedingly small. Most people who have studied Japanese don’t study pitch accent and Japanese phonetics/pronunciation, and this was a large part of why Dōgen created the course. When he started this, most people had never even heard of pitch accent. Without studying this, even people with N1 and lots of experience might not have developed an awareness of pitch accent and the rules behind it, so in short: Yes, the course can be a good supplement even for someone with an extensive background who wants to improve their pitch accent. If you schedule works out, you might want to try an upcoming group lesson with Natsumi Sensei, or maybe a one-one-one lesson with her. I hope this helps!

Frettchen YT

Hello! I have been learning japanese for about 2.5 years and while my reading is probably at N3 level, I was told that my pronunciation is quite bad, which is why I bought the patreon now. What would be the best way to go through this series? Should I start with the Pronunciation subseries, or just go though from the beginning? Kind regards Johann

Rene Vazquez

Hey Dogen! Super excited to start up this course. However, there's something I wanna clarify before getting started. I live in Shiga prefecture, which has a very specific kind of kansai-ben. Would this course still be useful for someone like me, who wants to better be aware of, and aquire the pitch accent for this region? My understanding is that there's a very different system to pitch accents in Kansai when compared to standard Japanese. While I understand you will be giving examples mostly in standard Japanese, how would you suggest that I use this course to best acquire my region's pronunciation? Thanks!

Dogen
>>172198438

Hi, Johann! JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. My apologies for not replying sooner; I missed the notification for this. Welcome to the course! There's certainly nothing wrong with going through the course from the beginning, but if the foundational sounds are an issue for you it could be good to go through the start of the course up to about lesson 5 or 6 to familiarize yourself with pitch accent fundamentals and terminology used in the course, then jump ahead to the pronunciation sub-series to focus on that before continuing through the rest of the course. Best of luck with your studies!

Dogen
>>173668611

Hi, Rene! Welcome to the course, and thanks for your support. Yes, the course here on Patreon does focus on Japanese as used in the Tokyo region and on NHK. I’ve had people ask about regional dialects before, but I haven’t covered them because I’ve always wanted to try to cover the smallest number of rules that cover the widest range of use cases, which meant focusing on “standard” Japanese. Unfortunately most of the material I have found on regional pitch accents is usually in the form of academic papers written in Japanese. There’s just not as much information available (especially in English) as for standard Japanese. That said, going through the course here will train your ear and voice to pick up and reproduce pitch accent patterns naturally. Focus on developing this intuitive ability rather than memorizing the specific rules from the videos—those rules apply to Tokyo/NHK Japanese, so they'll be different for Shiga anyway. Once you've developed this fundamental skill of hearing and reproducing pitch accent, you can apply it to studying your regional dialect through local videos, shows, or podcasts. It may also help to find someone familiar with both the local dialect and standard Japanese to work with as a tutor or language partner. I hope this helps, and best of luck on your studies! Dōgen

Marko of the Woods

Have studied some basic Japanese by myself, including kana, some basic vocabulary (kanji) and really basic grammar. Thought to now dive into your pitch-accent course, since the reason I developed a deep interest in the language is due to its other-worldly sounding (I'm a phonetics geek by hobby, though my knowledge is mainly comprised of phonetics and phonotactics of European language groups (except Basque and Caucasian languages, I guess)). Is it ok to start with your course or should I get some formal textbook education in the language before I start?

Marko of the Woods

Btw, cheers from Estonia!! (forgot to add to the previous comment) I love your work!!

Dogen
>>18305401

Hi Marko, I think you're probably in a good position to start the series. That said, if you really want to get the most bang for your buck it might be good to study holistically for another month or two before going into a phonetics concentration period. Hope that this helps, Thanks for the love from Estonia! Would love to visit someday! ^^

Ian

Looks like a fantastic series, Dogen. Looking forward to learning from you!

Dogen
>>2576880

Thank you very much for the support Ian-san! If this initial episode was useful then I'm sure the you will learn a lot from the series, especially lesson five onward. Thanks again, I really appreciate it!

frooshante

I came across your videos on youtube through my recommendations and was a fan from the first taste of Bossfight. I'm happy to be a part of this thing, o' jelly bean king!

Dogen
>>2669284

Really appreciate that support! Bossfight is half of my power—definitely send them some love as well! Hope to keep you entertained for years to come Chimobi-san! :)

Big Daddy Afro

Welp better late than never 😁 I’m 4 years behind but I’m ready to start learning!

Angela Craven

I'm excited to begin my Japanese studies the right way the first time. Instead of having to re-learn wrong pronunciation I'm going to be able to start fresh with the correct speech. Thank you!

Alex Spat

I keep studying japanese since I am 16 and now I am 30.. I could hear the right accent as I am used to watch tons of dramas, variety shows sometimes anime... as well I lived in Tokyo for 3 years... however when I do speak japanese it does sounds like native however in some cases people can not understand what I mean as my pitch is at those words all over the place... because it is most based on intuition rather rules based knowledge...the time where I became very conscious of it is when I was in a small talent agency (which has fallen apart) where I had acting, voice over , singing, modeling and also narration lessons... and especially at those I have realized that I have to polish up my pitch because it was a mess and I had to remember it word by word which was a pain in neck back than... because I had to mach my voice to the rhythm and atmosphere BGM simultaneously... of the I am glad that you take this in you hands to show the importance of the right pitch accent ... having a solid foundation and solid rules might help me and others a lot in order to master the communication skills at the native level... (I do apologize for my possible English grammar mistakes, I am Russia born German... )

Dogen
>>33612324

Indeed, pitch can often make the difference when it comes to being completely understandable, even if your pronunciation is perfect. Hope that you find this course useful! Cheers!

Rolinda Marcelino

I'm still learning so i might have gotten your course a bit too early, but thought it might be a good idea to learn pitch accent along with my general learning of Japanese to instill good habits.

Dogen
>>35579488

Hi Rolinda! Sooner is certainly better than later, but I usually recommend at least six months of comprehensive study before getting started with genetics. Cheers!

Wolfy

Hi Dogen! Thanks for making such series as this. Sorry for a sudden question.... Have you already published a video on compound nouns? For example... 医療 is a 頭高 and 崩壊 is a 平板; however, following that, together 医療崩壊 would make an up-down-up pattern. So I guess something happens with compound noun! Again sorry for the sudden question.

Dogen
>>36075104

Hi Wolfy, yes I do cover this in episode 9, which can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/16489306 If you have any questions in the future about whether or not something will be addressed in these series do you mind first accessing and looking through this page? Thank you!

A Fine Egg

Thank you for all your hard work as a teacher and as a comedian, Dogen. I was planning a trip to Japan to celebrate getting my Associate's Degree in Language Studies, but obviously that can't happen now. Ever since I lost the opportunity to go this year I've felt downtrodden and slowed my studies to a halt. I'm hoping watching your series will help me continue my studies and dive into the language again. Maybe then I'll be able to translate things for my friends that aren't weird hentai comics on Twitter. lmao

Dogen
>>36395167

My pleasure Egg! Very glad to hear that you've been motivated by the series, and that it may eventually help you translate less 'obscure' Japanese art haha. Cheers!

Toni

Hi Dogen, love the videos very informative. just a quick question I have been studying japanese for about 6 months now. However, Idk when i should start learning phonetics is now a good time or should I get better at japanese first.

Dogen
>>36792754

Hi Toni! I’ve traditionally recommended 6 months of intensive study, but recently I’ve come to believe that a bit more time for submersion (around a complete year or so) is probably best for getting the most out of this series. Hope this helps!

Samuel Colunga

How long should I study before getting into phonetics if at all?

Kargha

Hey Dogen, Thanks for making this series! I'm a Japanese linguistics major, and I can generally get by without any major issues in casual conversation, but native Japanese speakers I talk are usually able to pick up some pitch accent problems (my girlfriend loves to point them out to me). So hoping that these videos will help me pinpoint the flaws and help me improve it so that, perhaps one day, I'll finally get the 日本語うまいな instead of the dreaded 日本語上手.

Dogen
>>42037008

Hi Kargha! If you’re just starting to study pitch accent now then I’m sure this series will make a massive difference for you. Good luck with your future studies and thanks for signing up! Cheers!

Strange Guy

Ok, I've decided to learn Japanese. Is it necessary to get some level of grammar/vocabulary before starting to learn pronounciation/pitch accent? Or I may start from the beginning? Right now I'm at これは鉛筆です level )

GodFearsome .

Hello Dogen! I was finally able to join your patreon and learn from your pitch accent series, i'm very excited, thank you!

Dogen
>>43253892

My pleasure, GodFearsome! Thank you for your support and good luck with your future studies!

Lindi Nakao-Yamada

I'm so excited to be here you're my favorite content creator !! I love all your videos on youtube and I think you're tweets are so funny hahah thank you so much for making all these videos!!

Dogen
>>45053438

Thank you very much for the kind words Lindi! Very happy that you decided to sign up, and that you enjoy the content so much! Cheers!

Kedarui

I'm trying to pick up Japanese again (emphasis on 'again'). It's a hobby I always enjoy going back to, but fail to stay consistent in. Your videos have been an inspiration for me during my last study sessions when I was in the groove of things, and now I'm back to hopefully build a more consistent habit of studying. I'm very excited to watch the rest of your phonetic series to compliment my self-study, and am happy to finally support your content creation through Patreon.

Dogen
>>51151979

Thank you very much for the kind words, Kedarui! I'm very happy to hear that you are motivated to study because of my work, and hope that you will learn a lot of practical information from my series! Cheers!

Alexander S. Cirko

Hi Dogen, perhaps this question has been answered already, or it even pops up in a video and I am just not that far yet, but my question relates to the "stress" accents that I seem to hear nonetheless: If I listen to a news caster or so, I can indeed only pick up the pitch. But when I hear people talk with each other, especially casually, I think to hear a lot of "stress accent" on top of the pitch and sometimes it almost completely "takes over". And it is really "stress" exactly as you define it: parts of words (here mora) become louder and longer and I like to believe that I even hear patterns, for example, that particles sometimes get a lot of stress, or I head often that the "kedo" gets a major stress, so like in "blablabla ... da keDOOO". I would be interested in learning more about this "apparent stress accent" and how to deal with it. Is this addressed somewhere already? Thank you very much for your awesome work.

Dogen
>>52578026

Hi Dr. Placksi. I actually talk about this specific subject in lesson five, and also talk about how pitch-accent patterns only denote which family each word belongs to in lesson 6.3. Do you mind watching through lesson 8 to see if this answers your question? I feel like it will also probably answer some other things that you could be wondering about, as I'm pretty thorough with these earlier lessons. Here is a link to the index page: https://www.patreon.com/posts/japanese-index-16489306 Cheers!

Alexander S. Cirko

Thank you for your reply and the links Dogen, this definitely mostly answers my question! Just a small follow up: when the stress gets too strong, my stress-trained ears tends to only hear stress and nothing else anymore. I guess the only way to learn to hear it is just to listen more and more with the active awareness of pitch?

Alexander S. Cirko

And another small point that I recently came to realize, it's got nothing to do with stress (I think) but since you are so knowledgeable in the art of pronunciation, perhaps you know about this / have thought about it: to me it seems, that the ending character "u" is not always pronounced the same way, even by the same person. But it's "consistently" done differently. For example the two words 行く and 思う are often ended very different. In "iku" the "u" sounds like the German "ü", which is maybe closest in English to something like "fUrious" (but of course minus the "j" sound before the "u" sound) yet in "omou" the "u" at the end sounds much more like the "u" in for example "soUnd". Sorry this is a really messy description, but it is stressing me a bit and I am hoping you might have some comment on it. Thanks a lot!!

Dogen
>>53071291

Hello Dr. Placksi, I'll try to answer both of your questions here. 1. Yes, it can be difficult to discern stress vs. pitch at first. For what it's worth, when a sound is stressed, the pitch of that sound is often raised as well, so there is a fair amount of overlap. You just want to note how in Japanese it's mostly just a rise in pitch (and sometimes a bit of volume), rather than a rise in pitch, volume (significantly), and length. If you keep this in mind while you listen you should start to pick up on it over time. 2. In careful pronunciation the う in 行く and 思う should be the same, but in rapid speech the う in 思う is often cut a bit short, or sometimes dropped altogether. It's also worth noting that in rapid speech some vowel centralization occurs in Japanese, as I talk about in lesson 38, which can be found on the index page, here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/japanese-index-16489306 Incidentally, I cover essentially every major phonetic phenomenon in Japanese at one point or another during the series; do you mind watching through the series a bit further before submitting additional questions? I ask this as I think you'll be able to get more thorough answers, and also answers to questions you don't yet realize you have. Hope this isn't asking too much, cheers!

Shea

Gosh, this made so much sense that I signed up immediately. I look forward to learning from you, Dogen! よろしくお願いします 。

Dogen
>>5553040

Glad to hear that you found it useful! I hope that you're able to get a lot out of the series! ^^

Maria

Hi Dogen, I have been enjoying your youtube channel for a while now and I finally decided to invest my time energy and resources in my Japanese studies. I know you recommend studying 6 months to a year before starting your course but I would like to integrate learning pitch-accent from the get-go. (Please don't mint my English, I've been learning it for a while now, but it's still a work in progress :D ) Thank you for collecting such detailed information about pitch-accent and sharing it with us! Keep up the good work!

Dogen
>>65968996

Thank you for your comment, and welcome to Patreon. Your English is great! You might have seen it already, but I spoke with Matt (from MattvsJapan) about long-term study of Japanese (here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/long-term-road-38355581). Learning about little pronunciation and pitch accent can definitely help, even at an early stage. Good luck with your (Japanese and English) studies!

Alexander Osinov

Hi!. Maybe you should add Index Page link in the description of first episodes too.

Dogen
>>78110493

Hi, Alexander. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I help out with some of the messages on Patreon. This was a good suggestion; thank you! We started adding the link to posts much later, so I went back and updated posts for the first 25 or so lessons. I'll check the rest later. Again, thanks!

okaykei

I've been watching your videos for a little while now and I was wanting to sign up for these lessons but I had to wait for my financial situation to be stable - and now it is! And I am excited! I'm a joint Honours student of Japanese and Linguistics at university so this kind of stuff pulls me right in. Admittedly, phonetics is a bit of a weak point of mine, but I still find it interesting, haha. Thank you for making these videos - I am extremely looking forward to making my way through them!

Dogen
>>8032071

Not a problem Okaykei ^^ Thank you very much for the support and I hope that you find the series useful! Please let me know if you ever have any questions or concerns, and good luck with your phonetic studies!

Lucina Kerrigan

こんいちは、ドゲンさん！I have been watching you on YouTube for a while, and I recently got myself onto an exchange program in Japan (I'll leave next year), so I thought I'd subscribe to your Patreon to help get my pronunciation down pat. Thank you for your work and I hope you are doing well.

Michelle Thong

Hi there Dogen! I've been a huge fan of your YouTube content for years and years and now have finally started learning Japanese. First thing I signed up for was a 1:1 teacher, second thing I did was to sign up for your pitch accent series. Can't wait to get started so I can use what I learn on my trip in October (hoping all goes well with borders opening at least).

Jack Donaghy

thanks i am late to the party but very excited to dive in!! thanks dogen

Christoph Märkl

Hi Dogen, first of all thank you for your great course - I´m at part 5.1 at the moment but wanted to ask a general questions here: Do you know the pitch app from migaku? https://pitch.migaku.io/ Would you suggest to use such an app to supplement my studies? I´m not competent enough to judge the benefit of it. Thank you again and best regards, Christoph

Dogen
>>91418405

Hi, Christoph. JP here, Dōgen’s business partner. I’m helping manage the messages here on Patreon. We get questions from time to time about different language learning apps or websites. There are countless apps for studying Japanese, and a growing number of these are including pitch accent or pronunciation. Some will naturally be better. Some will fit your learning style better than others. Unfortunately there just isn’t enough time to evaluate every new tool that comes along. Any apps or other resources that Dōgen has used are mentioned in the series (see lesson 7) or other videos on YouTube. One thing you should beware of is computer generated audio. Computer generated audio done well might be able to serve as reference material, similar to looking something up in a dictionary, but it is not suitable for study and shadowing. Always use unexaggerated, native speech. I hope this helps! — JP