Pitch accent in Japanese
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How can you teach / learn these pitch differences?
Selected readings
- "Should non-native students of Japanese pay close attention to pitch accent?" (12/4/21)
- "The Japanese are Japanese because they speak Japanese" (4/6/2005)
- "Japanese pitch accent" (Wikipedia)
- "Pitch in Korean dialects" (12/17/17)
- "The Ramsey hypothesis" (6/27/22)
[h.t. Hiroshi Kumamoto}
jhh said,
October 26, 2025 @ 11:08 pm
While studying Japanese at the famed FALCON program at Cornell, my teachers worked hard to inculcate the pitch accents. I had problems, but they all said everything would work out once I was living in Japan.
I got into the Mombushō English Fellows program (predecessor of the JET program) and was assigned to Fukushima Prefecture– where the pitch accent is not a distinctive feature. When my teachers heard my news, they rolled their eyes and said I could give up on trying to learn the pitch accents ;)
Honestly, there's a good bit of variety throughout Japan, and it's rare that context doesn't make everything perfectly clear.
~flow said,
October 26, 2025 @ 11:54 pm
@jhh I have similar experiences. Beyond having never found an introduction that made it 'click' for me, I've come across some explanations with accompanying audio where the audio seems to directly contradict what is being explained. I've also seen videos by knowledgeable and confident individuals whose Japanese I can at least judge from vantage point as being "probably very good, and certainly sounding 100% native to me" who apparently can hear something in their speech that I cannot.
So my strategy has then been to say well, if pitch accent is so inaccessible to me, I better make sure I don't rely on it but be able to understand things without it. As you point out, the real shocker for the learner of Japanese is of course that there are different regions with different dialects that have conflicting pitch accent systems; this, for one thing, tells me that I should follow my strategy of improving listening comprehensions sans pitch accent, and for the other, that Japanese will probably be able to understand me talking even if my pitch accents are skewed, so at least that takes some of the pressure out of it.
~flow said,
October 26, 2025 @ 11:57 pm
OK now that I've seen and listened to the video I feel so vindicated.
Peter Grubtal said,
October 27, 2025 @ 3:03 am
One of my early primers in Japanese dealt amusingly with this by comparing 箸 / 橋 chopsticks/bridge, both vocalised : hashi, but apparently distinguished by L1 Japanese speakers by pitch accent.
It concluded that it was inconceivable that there could be a situation where confusion could lead to dire consequences, so don't bother.
anon said,
October 27, 2025 @ 3:36 am
Japanese by far has the simplest and straightforward phonology, morphophonology, morphology, and syntax among world's major languages.
Peter Cyrus said,
October 27, 2025 @ 4:28 am
The only reason we're talking about ignoring pitch accent is because it's not written. The solution is to write it!
To use an English analogy, the word project has two meanings (noun and verb) with different pronunciations. The pitch accent (stress) is different, and the consequent reduction of unstressed vowels means the vowels are also different. Even the stressed vowels differ between dialects. Being prescriptivist, as I believe we should be when teaching, I would say that all these varieties are correct, but distinct.
If, say, a Japanese substituted one for the other, I would probably understand them, taking into account that English isn't their native language, and that stress isn't written in our current orthography (it should be!), but I would still flag it as an error. And if I were their teacher, I would correct them.
Philip Taylor said,
October 27, 2025 @ 4:43 am
I don't normally watch any videos linked from posts in Language Log, but I made an exception in this case as the presenter was not pulling a stupid face in the poster frame, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am minded to record the audio and send it to a Chinese friend who holds the highest qualification available to non-native speakers for his fluency in Japanese and see if he understands it.
David Marjanović said,
October 27, 2025 @ 5:48 am
You need to know that title pictures of YouTube videos are quite unrelated to the actual content. Without fail, they are much more sensationalistic than the video itself turns out to be once you actually click on "play".
Think of it as "…And now that I have your attention…"
Chris Button said,
October 27, 2025 @ 6:04 am
I think there should be three lexical pitch/tone variations (ignoring any other intonational effects):
1. kaéru: frog, change, capable of buying
2. kàeru: go home
3. kaèru: capable of owning
Jonathan Smith said,
October 27, 2025 @ 11:45 am
For another most excellent (but serious) video, go to the Online Japanese Accent Dictionary frontpage and check out "1-min PV" at left…
To be fair the above is an amazing resource — e.g. All Verbs > Word Search かえる for normative representations + female/male recordings of many of the items involved here (incidentally, theoretically possible normative patterns = # of mora (cuz any of them could be 'peak') + 1 for "flat/unaccented", so not much more annoying at least in descriptive terms than English-like "strength stress".)
Philip Taylor said,
October 27, 2025 @ 12:08 pm
« Think of it as "…And now that I have your attention…" » — unfortunately the intentionally stupid faces have exactly the opposite effect on me, David — they cause me to immediately lose any interest I might otherwise have had in watching the video …
David Marjanović said,
October 27, 2025 @ 1:59 pm
Ignore that (along with any extraneous all-caps or exclamation marks), watch anyway, and you will often be rewarded.
Chris Button said,
October 27, 2025 @ 2:30 pm
@ Peter Grubtal
You're lucky they didn't add 端 to 箸 and 橋! Then it gets really challenging!
Dave J. said,
October 28, 2025 @ 2:52 am
I walked along the edge of the bridge carrying my chopsticks, which I used to eat persimmons and oysters. Next I covered my hair with paper and went to the shrine to worship the god. Then I watched the frog jump into the old pond and returned home.
Peter Cyrus said,
October 28, 2025 @ 4:25 am
By the way, the Takoboto dictionary displays pitch accents: takoboto.jp
Chris Button said,
October 28, 2025 @ 5:26 am
Kindaichi Haruhiko's accent dictionary is perhaps the classic reference. It's also full of rules at the back for figuring out everything.
For Tokyo dialect at at least, one really just needs two accent marks when romanizing:
Acute: high-pitch mora with subsequent high-pitch moras
Grave: high-pitch mora without subsequent high-pitch moras
@ Dave J
Don't forget the candy falling like rain.
David Marjanović said,
October 28, 2025 @ 6:39 am
AFAIK, it's even simpler: each word + clitics carries at most one inherent "high tone" or "accent" or whatever. That syllable gets high pitch. Any syllables after that get low pitch. Any syllables before that – this differs among Tokyo-type dialects; in some, they all get low pitch; i others, the immediately preceding syllable gets high pitch, the others get low; in Tokyo, they all get high pitch except for the first syllable of the word.
Kyoto-type systems are different (there's a phonemic high and a phonemic low tone), and there are yet others (but they're rare).
Chris Button said,
October 28, 2025 @ 7:38 am
Were you reading the Illustration of the IPA? I recall that showing how you can note it with one accent marker, but it requires far too much thought on the part of the reader who has to decipher what it means for each word.
Two accents make it instantly clear.
I recall the old Yale textbook that notes pitch includes a circumflex as a combination of acute plus grave (so acute marks start and grave marks end), but it's unnecessary if acute and grave can both signify high pitch and only differ on what happens after. It also better parallels the logic used when assigning pitch markings to kana in Japanese.
Dave J. said,
October 28, 2025 @ 8:55 am
@Chris Button
I didn’t think about the candy falling like rain. Good catch!
Also, I should change the beginning — I *ran* along the edge of the bridge: 走りました （はしりました ）.
Jonathan Smith said,
October 28, 2025 @ 9:30 am
Typical (?) descriptions e.g. OJAD just consider words "Accentless" 平板式 or to have an "Accent Kernel" アクセント核 peak on some mora — so just one mark (or its absence) necessary.