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Episode 5: Pitch-accent Terminology (Patreon)

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2016-10-31 09:50:07
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Bibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page

皆さんこんばんは！

In this episode we take our first steps into Japanese pitch-accent study by introducing and explaining all relevant terminology. By the end of this video you should have a complete understanding of the following terms, and how they relate to each other:

  • Pitch

  • Stress

  • Accent

  • Downstep

  • Mora

  • Intonation

Feel free to leave any questions or comments below. I'm more than happy to clear up anything that is still vague.

Update: I have replaced the original video with a link to the public release version, because I have added some commentary to add on or hopefully improve a few points.

Thank you for the continued support!

Dōgen

Files

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Comments

Terumi W

Hello Dogen! I've recently began my Japanese learning journey and when I found your Youtube channel I felt like I had struck gold. Thank you so much for this guide to pitch-accent. I tend to cast a wide net when attempting to learn something new and this definitely fits, as the topic is essential yet it is hardly covered in traditional English to Japanese courses. Regards, Keizan (oops... I mean Terumi)

Dogen
>>10517366

Hi Terumi! No worries—the pleasure is all mine! ^^ Glad to hear you're enjoying the series and please let me know if you ever have any questions! Good luck with your studies. お互いに頑張りましょう！

Veronika Dubnova

Hello! Thank you so much for the lessons. You have given me hope ! I was just wondering whether there is a way of finding out what kind of Japanese is spoken in a movie/ or a show? Many, many thanks...

Dogen
>>11093653

Hi Veronika! No worries! ^^ The fastest way to figure out would most likely be to simply ask a native speaker directly. If you can't do that, I would try to play it safe and go with one of my recommended titles, such as １２人の優しい日本人。Thanks!

tensaimon

"the more confident a speaker is in their japanese, the more stress they use when speaking, and the worse it actually sounds" oh dear.....

koiyakiya

So do I have this right? Pitch-accent includes all the rules with regards to Japanese pitch and prominence, but not intonation, because technically stress isn't a part of the pitch-accent system.

Dogen
>>127281701

Hi, Jacob. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. Good question; I think you've got the right idea. Intonation/emotion/intention comes up some in episode 6.3 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/japanese-episode-35173952). The way I've thought of it is the pitch accent pattern is part of the shape of the word, while intonation/emotion/intention is the color draped on that shape.

Sarah Aß

Loved this episode. I’ve been brought up in western culture, as a classical musician, the stress approach is so ingrained ;) Happened to listen to this piece by JS Bach today - it pretty much sums up everything you mentioned. https://youtu.be/EFnEvP-LGys?si=xZOD8ojqvIJzSZK4 Good to become more aware of the distinguishing factors (and my automatisms) that shape and drive (or interfere with) Japanese language!

Dogen
>>147727590

Glad this helped! Hearing pitch accent can be difficult for learners coming from a stress accent language like English, but as you can see from comments here and on a few other lessons, it appears that musical training can really help. Best of luck with your continued studies!

Ran Fuchs

While I understand the concept, for the life of me, I can't tell a high vs. low sound. That is, apparently I can parrot the pitch of a word when I hear it, but I have no idea when I move to high and low. Which makes the high low charts, demonstration and hand movement quite useless. Any suggestion how I can train myself to identify high and low tones? TKS

Dogen
>>16256239

Hi Ran. I had a similar experience at first—if you're just beginning your pitch-accent studies, just keep at it and keep recording yourself; you should learn to differentiate over time. If you've been studying pitch-accent for some time now but still can't tell, I would encourage you to download software that displays pitch, and to then record yourself while using said software. Hope that this helps! Thank you for the support!

Michael

I have decided to do 5 of your videos a day to study. Very appreciative to have found someone who can really get into the proper phonetics, as it has always been puzzling to me over the years of enjoying Japanese media. One question I have so far, am I mistaken on how to pronounce 学生 ? I thought the "u" sound of the くmora was devoiced? Can't remember which video it is, but I though you were pronouncing the "u". Possible it was a different word, or maybe my brain is a little fried right now.

Dogen
>>165188667

JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. Most of the lessons feature slower pronunciations at some point to help learners hear the pronunciation and the pitch accent. Is it possible you might be thinking of one of these instances? As for five videos a day: 頑張って！ Some of the lessons are shorter and easier to digest, but there are some that might ask you to focus on drills that might take a while. There's no real hard rule as to how many lessons you should do in a day or a week, though. Aim for understanding. Best of luck!

Casper Kouwenberg

I seems like there only being 2 tones, low and high is an incorrect statement. If the accented tone drop is more dramatic, that implies at least 3 tones, low, high and very low. Also if the high notes is nakadaka are higher than the high notes in heiban, then there is is also high and very high. It's a frustration I have with standard pitch accent graphs, to my mind the stressed dropped mora should drop below the other low mora, and the heiban high should not visually rise as high as nakadaka high mora.

Dogen
>>181781085

Hi, Casper. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. You have some very good observations here that I think are covered pretty well in lesson 6.3, where Dōgen talks about binary pitch graphs. If you haven't watched it yet, I think it might address some of your frustration. I hope this helps!

Nicholas Koceja

I'm currently a beginner in learning Japanese, but I suppose I can hear the high-low sounds quite easily because of my exposure from a very young age to the language. My late paternal grandmother is 100% Japanese, and so all throughout high-school I was exposed to the language. It still surprises me though. I learned 4 as "shi" and 7 as "Shichi". I'm still convincing myself that "yon" and "nana" exist

Let's Learn Together

cheers from Vietnam! I'm so happy I can finally watch all of your videos on pronunciation!! Please keep up the good work!

Dogen
>>28604022

Glad to hear that you find the videos so helpful! I definitely will, thank you for the support!

Adam

Great video. I think bi-monthly makes more sense than bi-weekly.

Rodolphe Bertolini

Do verbs keep their pitch accent pattern when conjugated ? For example, たべる　and　たべないで ? Although the speaker's emotions comes into account, I feel like the pattern always changes with the conjugation (the up mora are な and い　in this case, aren't they ?) If they don't keep the pattern, is there some general rule ?

Colindo

Great video. Really interesting to see all the different aspect we need to consider before we can start learning the actual patterns.

Dogen
>>2911980

Hi Colindo! Thanks for the comment. Wanted to make sure that we hit all of the basics before diving in. Appreciate the support!

Dogen
>>2909163

Hi Rodolphe, thanks for the question. The short answer is yes and no (for adjectives as well). Yes, the pitch accent FAMILY is the same, but each family has its own unique pitch-accent patterns (rules) for the various conjugated forms. For example, many (but not all) low high low patterns will shift the accent to the first mora when in the past tense, on the other hand, heiban verbs stay the same. Example: low high low: taBEru TAbeta heiban toMERU toMETA We will go over the various patterns for verbs and adjectives in upcoming lessons :) Thanks for the support!

Dogen
>>2906181

Yes! This is a great resource (to be included in the upcoming 3rd party resources video), but it has its limitations, and I will go over this :) thanks for the comment!

Dogen
>>2903438

Thanks for the support and feedback Adam. It seems that both terms can be ambiguous, so I will try a new expression. Cheers!

Dogen
>>2902944

Hi Jean, thank you for watching! :) Yes, this is a great resource that I plan on addressing in the near future. Have you been recording yourself--I find that this helps the most!

Daniel Wahl

Another great one. (Thank you, 先生!) Here are some show notes, for anyone who has to read something to remember it: pitch: the high and low tones of a word or phrase, independent of volume stress: the amount of force that is applied to a syllable, word, or phrase accent: a distinct emphasis (in the form of stress or pitch) that is put on to part of a word, or an entire word, in spoken language (English is a stress-accent language; it has strong and weak bits. Japanese is a pitch-accent language; it has high and low bits.) downstep: a pitch change from high to low, as in 見る mora: a beat as distinct from a syllable (とうきょう has four of 'em) intonation: a change in a pitch accent pattern based on a speaker's emotions I tried to make sure these are accurate, but watch the video a few times just to make sure.

Jeff Bernstein

Thanks for another great video :D I seriously can't wait for the rest of the series! It's crazy how hard all of this info is to find on the internet in an easy to digest format. I’ve been putting time into learning pitch accent based on the resources I’ve been able to find, and I just wanted to check something to make sure you’re not going to present a much easier way to learn this. I’m studying the pitch accent for 助詞 and 助動詞 based on the document I linked below. The table on the last two pages has been really helpful at explaining things so I’m working on memorizing the info through Anki. From what I’ve seen in my 新明解日本語アクセント辞典 there doesn’t really seem to be a more concise way of learning how all of this works. Is it crazy to memorize this whole thing, or is this really just what it comes down to in order to master pitch? Thanks! <a href="http://www.lang.osaka-u.ac.jp/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.lang.osaka-u.ac.jp/</a>~caris/articles/%E5%8A%A9%E8%A9%9E%E3%83%BB%E5%8A%A9%E5%8B%95%E8%A9%9E%E3%81%AE%E3%82%A2%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BB%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6%E3%81%AE%E8%A6%9A%E3%81%88%E6%9B%B8%E3%81%8D.pdf

Jeff Bernstein
>>2969398

P.S. sorry for the big chunk of text but it wouldn't let me create multiple paragraphs!

Dogen
>>2932983

Thanks for the initiative Daniel, this is great. I'm sure writing it out was good for memorization as well :) Cheers!

Jeff Bernstein

P.S. I'm realizing now that I'm going through it that I should have added a general card for each 助詞 and 助動詞. So I'm starting to add ones like this: が → 'が (逆接) 協力型

Dogen
>>2981716

No problem—this PDF is using slightly different terminology than I am used to, so I'll be playing catch up as I continue to push out the elementary / intermediate lessons. Thanks again for the PDF—it's definitely a great resource!

Tru

After hearing about the section on intonation I am a bit confused on how my voice would fit into natural Japanese pitch-accent. I've been told that I am very monotone and after I listen to my own recordings trying to imitate some patterns I find this to be true. I find it quite difficult to produce changes in pitch to the degree of other speakers and despite my recent consistent efforts (around 1 week of consistent practice in that area) I still struggle to produce large or normal pitch changes. So my question goes something like this; how important is the magnitude of change in pitch? Do you think speaking with consistently minimal but correct pitch changes would appear as natural in a Japanese context or should I continue practicing to improve my range?

Dogen
>>30921013

Hi Tru! If people regularly tell you that your Japanese sounds monotone then it’s probably best to continue practicing. One thing that might help a lot is signing, even simple songs like Happy Birthday. Notice how your voice goes from low to high tones while singing, or even humming, and try to map some of these differences into your speech. Another thing that might help a lot is using software that can track the pitch of your voice, as it will give you visual cues! That said, if you’re just starting then you may find that even without special practice that you’re able to reproduce pitch differences better after a few weeks of conscious practice. Be sure of course, to also immerse yourself in native speech. My later lessons on vocal placement (lessons 34 and 39 may be useful as well). Hope that this helps! Cheers!

Anthony

Thanks for the videos, Dogen! I'm finding them really helpful and learning lots! A quick question though: is there any way of downloading the videos to watch them offline later? I spend lots of time commuting and it would be good to be able to watch them out of the house. I guess there's no way of doing this though, right?

Dogen
>>31455528

Hi Anthony, unfortunately this isn't an option at the moment, but this feature may become available in the future. Thank you!

Daniel Pipkin

I just started watching your videos. I lived in Japan from 2009-2011 and I have an intermediate level of Japanese. When watching your video on vocal placement I easily recognized the difference but today I found out that I struggle to tell the difference between stress and pitch accent. When you were going over 聞くvs聞[く], I couldn't really tell the difference. I tried recording myself but I think I might accidentally be doing a pitch accent and stress. Do you have any suggestions for recognizing the difference?

Dogen
>>31524955

Hi Daniel. Thanks for the message. I probably should have used a better word in that example, as it can be a bit difficult to tell with 聞く. The main difference is the amount of force (volume) and length added to a word when it is stressed. Note that when stress is added pitch is usually raised as well, which can make this difference harder to discern. The main thing I would concentrate on is trying to only change the pitch of words when speaking Japanese, rather than trying to add force and length to words. I've actually been getting this question a lot recently so I made a short video addressing the topic. Hopefully you find this useful! https://youtu.be/bDUV8at1bJY

Donald Allen

New Patreon here. I'm starting to use your videos for learning pronunciation. My immediate goal is preparing for a trip in April to Japan but I would like to continue learning after that. I think this gives me the perfect opportunity to use a system like you suggest as I won't attempt to learn a lot of grammar or vocabulary and can focus 80%+ time on phonetics. My question is are there any exercises that can be done to isolate pitch change, that is, separating it from stress? Or will it just come naturally as I start to record myself?

Dogen
>>32227643

Hi Donald! Thanks for signing up, really appreciate it. I'll actually be talking about a few exercises in the next episode, here are a few I intend on covering: 1. Practice humming at a base note, then going up to a higher note, then back down to the initial note without changing volume too much (raising and lowering your hands as you do this can actually help a lot). 2. Another way to practice going up in down with pitch is to do a similar exercise while also using a musical instrument, such as a piano or guitar. Try to match your voice to the pitch of the note being played, and switch between two notes close to each other. 3. Definitely record yourself often, as you mentioned, but also do so while listening to a lot of native recordings everyday. These exercises should help you a lot in the beginning. Also make sure that when saying the 'accent' bit of accented words that you're not adding length or force (check your recordings to see if you're doing this or not). Hope that this is useful, and thanks again for signing up!

Jeff Dayrit

Hi Dogen, I've been watching your videos on YouTube for more than a year now and always wanted to access your phonetics lessons, finally I'm here watching and studying pitch accent. I am currently in intermediate level and Id like to fix my pitch accent as early as possible, though its undeniably hard to study both English and Japanese at the same time. Since I'm not a native English speaker, Im having trouble understanding the resources that I'm using since I started studying Japanese, because there is no available resources translated to my native language yet I'm still trying to understand as much as I can. I am looking forward to see myself improving in pitch accent dramatically through your lessons. Thank you.

Dogen
>>34610508

Hi Senpai! That certainly does sound difficult—though I hope that you're able to learn both a bit of Japanese and English from my videos! Thank you very much for your support, and good luck with your future phonetic journey! 頑張ってね！

Jordan Oxborough

Your presentation of the terminology was clear and really clicked for me. I think everyone serious about learning Japanese would benefit from watching this series and am looking forward to what's to come.

Dogen
>>3470009

Thanks Jordan. Really appreciate your support. Had a great time speaking with you today; hope we can get some ホルモン in 秋田 sometime! :D

EJ

Hi Dogen! In regards to Japanese music, do you know if most musicians incorporate the pitch accent of the lyrics into the melodic line, or if they bend the rules of pitch accent to fit the melody line? Thanks so much, and I'm really enjoying the lessons so far!

Dogen
>>35621145

Hi EJ. It really depends on the musician and the song, but it’s usually a combination of both, with no concrete rules that Must be followed per se. Cheers!

Andrew

Ey there Dogen. I just wanted to express my gratitude towards you. Sounds as native as possible has always been important to me in every language that I've learned. So, to me this phonetics series is better than gold. Thanks a million, man.

Dogen
>>40026084

My pleasure Andrew—just make sure you're immersing yourself in a lot of native speech; my series is good for learning rules, but my speech isn't native so it's always important to concentrate on native input. Cheers!

Jordan

Hi, Dogen! I minored in Japanese in college about 16 years ago, but my alma mater (Western, only a couple hours north of you!) totally ignored pitch accent. So your videos have already given me some big gains that I appreciate! I know this is very specific, but there's this one word that I'm having so much trouble with: 支配. But I thought mastering this one word might help me improve at decoupling pitch accent from stress accent in my head. According to OJAD, the first syllable is devoiced and stressed and it also has a downstep. Do you have any advice on pronouncing words like this, where the pitch works in a way that's extremely counterintuitive from an English perspective?

Dogen
>>41959350

Glad to hear that you're learning so much from the series Jordan! I've actually never had trouble with 支配—perhaps you're concentrating too much on devoicing, which is causing you to have trouble with the pitch? It might be beneficial to not worry about the devoicing and just try and say it as a slightly voiced し, or to try saying the word with a slight pause between the し and the はい, experimenting with voicing the し at first, and then using slightly less voicing over time while also making the gap between the words smaller. I noticed that you wrote 'according to OJAD the first syllable is devoiced and [stressed]...' and I think that you might be getting caught up on this 'stressed' part. Just try to think of the pitch of し as slightly hight, and the pitch of は and い slightly low, and say easy of the sounds one after another. Once this feels natural try speeding things up, as I mentioned earlier. Cheers!

Alan Wallat

Hello - quick question: Where does the pitch change? For example: I've just spotted a friendly dog. It comes up to me and I say: "HELlooo there" When I say this, the pitch is a gradual change from high to low within the 'HEL' ending with 'Looo'' I will represent this as \ _ When you say "Ma Ji De" Does the pitch accent drop on the beat of Mora like this: MA ji de Represented as this: * . . Or does it change inbetween the Mora like the HELlooo example with a gradual fall in pitch? Represented as this:*\._._ I hope my question makes sense. Thanks for the videos!

Dogen
>>42894470

Hi Alan. This is a great question! That said, and you may not be happy with this answer, but I would actually encourage you not to think about the exact spot that the pitch changes, as I believe this begins to get into the realm of overthinking, and many pitch-accent resources don't break down exactly where the pitch changes; instead they'll use binary pitch-accent graphics like this series uses and simply attach either a high or low pitch symbol to each mora. Rather thank thinking about the precise place that the pitch-changes, do you mind first just trying to mimic native speech now that you have a better understanding of pitch-accent? I've actually thought about making a lesson about this in the past, but again, during research I came to the conclusion that trying to teach this would most likely end up confusing people, rather than helping them. That said, I do use computer generated spectrographs in lessons 6.3-6.5 to show exactly how pitch changes, if you're interested. Sorry again for not going into more detail, and good luck with your future studies!

Danilo Janune

Hi, Dogen. I do not get what is high pitch and a low pitch. If it is not volume, what is it? Oral cavity pressure (high and low)? Higher frequency (as in a soprano singing)? Could, please, explain?

Dogen
>>44901051

Hi Danilo. Higher pitch means that the tone / frequency is higher. For example, on a piano, the keys on the right side of the piano have a higher pitch than the keys on the left side of the piano. Does this answer your question? Thank you!

Corvus

I am up to Lesson 8 in your series, since the fundamentals are being covered in these early stages, particularly in Episode 6 - Pitch accent rules and patterns, I am re-watching them many times over. It will be some time until I make my way through the content. Do you have any advice for the targeted shadow-recording? I don't use any textbooks with audio CDs.

Dogen
>>5243907

Hi Corvus ^^ Taking your time with the earlier lessons in a great strategy! In that case a resource such as Forvo.com, where you can look up individual words, works particularly well. I'd recommend looking up any words you might be studying with your textbooks. Be sure to record yourself as well!

アリャン

Sometimes the pitch accent is hard to tell. I was just learning the word 物価　(ぶっか、prices) in Wani Kani (level 22). The male voice says it with the pitch going down and the female says it with the pitch going up. Now, I believe the male voice has a Tokyo accent and the female has a Kansai accent. Could that be the difference? You may consider the small っas what in many languages is referred to as the ‘gluttoral stop’, for example in Danish or Cockney. What makes things complicated is that when people state ‘Japanese has no stress’ they oversee pitch but they also mean every mora has the same length, as in your example ‘がっこう’

Dogen
>>57174558

Hi アリャン, 物価 is a 平板 word in standard Japanese, and it is possible that your dictionary has multiple recordings. I actually cover the small っ in detail later in this series, so hopefully that helps! Native intuition can often complicate things for non-native speakers, as you mentioned. Cheers!

ケイトリン Kaytlin

Great video - watched some parts over and over and over. You explained things in a way that made more sense to me than any tutor has, b/c they say "no accent, say it flat" and I know that doesn't explain certain sounds...specifically あさくさ and すき.

Dogen
>>6707152

Really glad to hear that it was so useful to you Kaytlin! Keep up your studies! ^^

TheThumbPuppy

Thank you for yet another well thought-out video.

Sashin Exists

This is not relevant to the content of the course (which I am enjoying... but the room you are filming in looks so cool!

Doug Bayer

BTW, what is your opinion of the symbols ￣ and ＼ introduced in 『ＮＨＫ日本語発音アクセント新辞典 (2016)』 https://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken//accent/index.html Like the old dictionary accent mark (backwards「 ), the new Heibangata symbol (￣) for unaccented words cannot be typed. It is also redundant: you can infer “flat” if no downstep is marked. But the downstep mark (＼ or \) is easily typed inline while entering kana. And once you know the pitch accent patterns , ＼ is the only symbol needed to completely mark up any vocabulary list or sentence for pitch accent. IMHO it should be a crime to publish any Japanese textbook or Anki vocabulary list, without putting downstep marks ＼ in the pronunciation. NHK新辞典の平板型記号(￣)は入力￣しにく＼く、付けな＼くても容易￣に推測￣できます。 しか＼し、下り目記＼号は、起伏のある語＼彙の振り仮名に簡単に入力すること＼ができ＼るのです。も＼う、下り目記＼号（＼）を付け＼ずに日本語の教科＼書を発行して＼はいけない＼、じゃな＼いですか／ぁ。

Dogen
>>76153156

Hi, Doug! It's good to see more pitch-accent notation showing up and more awareness of pitch-accent among Japanese learners. All these different notation systems generally show the same thing in different ways, so I think it's going to be largely an individual preference as to which is easier to read or use. Like I mention in lesson 6.3, binary systems aren't perfect but they serve a purpose. I do agree that the single ＼ is probably the best way to simplify things while still maintaining the important information. Cheers!

Dylan

Hi Dogen, I'm glad to finally be supporting you on Patreon! I came across your comedy sketches on YouTube a few months ago, and man do I wish I found these years ago! They're really funny, so keep up the good work. My first big goal is to build solid, natural sounding speaking skills, so of course I was interested when I learned you taught pitch accent/pronunciation. I just finished Genki II, and was planning on primarily focusing on this for the near future. That said, what pace do you recommend for the lessons? Do you have a recommended amount of practice time between lessons or anything like that? Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it!

Dogen
>>93416468

Hi, Dylan. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. This came up in the video Dōgen did with Matt vs. Japan, but generally one lesson a week is a good pace, provided you're achieving a high level of comprehension. Naturally, shorter and easier lessons could take less time, more complicated lessons or concepts might take more than a week. Hope this helps! — JP