The Pitch Accent Wars

General discussion about learning languages
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby księżycowy » Fri Jun 04, 2021 4:50 pm

I suppose I should dust off my pitch accent dictionary. Seems like a pain, but if it's what ya gotta do, so be it. I knew I bought it for a reason. And thanks Querneus for reminding me that I had one already! :D
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby Sumisu » Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:00 pm

Querneus wrote:And some of you probably remember my rant that Japanese textbook makers for a Chinese audience generally do include pitch accent from lesson 1, so there also seems to be a subtext of textbook makers thinking English-speaking learners are too incompetent for Japanese pitch accent... E.g. Samuel Martin's textbook mentions pitch accent in the introduction to his textbook, but then doesn't teach it.


The treatment of pitch accent in Genki is limited to this single paragraph:

Japanese has pitch accent: all syllables are pronounced basically either in high or low pitch. Unlike English stress accent in which stressed syllables tend to be pronounced longer and louder, in Japanese each syllable is pronounced approximately in equal length and stress. The pitch patters in Japanese vary greatly, depending on the region of the country."


They then provide three examples. Maybe now that this can of worms has been opened, textbook makers can give a more thorough treatment than this. I remember reading this in the beginning and thinking well, it doesn't seem like it really matters, which was reinforced by people like Steve Kaufman. I think you're much better off learning proper pronunciation from day one, to avoid fossilization of bad habits, and as a result I think the textbook makers have done us a disservice.
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby księżycowy » Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:12 pm

The only textbook I can think of that consistently shows pitch accent throughout in Japanese: the Spoken Language. I have thought of going through that text after MnN, but that seems like it might be less than ideal.
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby Sizen » Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:01 pm

Querneus wrote:No dictionary will tell you the pitch accent of Pokemon names...

There are, however, websites like Forvo where you can search the names of Pokemon (as well as character names from some books, movies or other media and even some neologisms/slang that don't appear in dictionaries) and find speakers of Japanese pronouncing those words in a relatively clear manner. The catch is that you already have to have developed your ear to a certain extent to benefit from those recordings. Also, you still won't find everything.

Querneus wrote:My girlfriend (who is a long-time student of Japanese; I'm not) likes to rely on a physical pitch accent dictionary for nouns, of which there's a fair few in the market.

For those who are interested, there are also many digital resources. Some pitch accent dictionaries are available on Apple devices. My favourite resource is Dictionaries by Monokakido because you can purchase multiple dictionaries (like Shinmeikai, Daijirin and the NHK pitch accent dictionary) and search all those dictionaries at once. There are also legal ways (and less than legal ways) of acquiring pitch accent dictionary files and putting them into software like GoldenDict or Qolibri (old, new) on Windows, Linux or MacOS or into Yomichan (which can also work as a searchable dictionary) in Firefox or Chrome. I also believe Macs have a built in Japanese dictionary with pitch accent markings. For whatever reason, this luxury does not seem to extend to iPhones or iPads. On Android, Daijirin has pitch accent information, and in theory, Shinmeikai should as well, but I can't check for myself.

księżycowy wrote:How does one learn it under those circumstances? I have found OJAD, but it appears as though not all of the vocabulary is covered. I'm too low level to make much use of the Japanese notes in the pronunciation book I recently bought from 3A (and even then, I'm not sure how much detail it gives on this part of pronunciation). Any suggestions?

Dogen's series is an excellent way to start. You do have to pay for it, but you can get away with subscribing for one month, ploughing through the material and moving on. Weblio used to have pitch accent information from Daijirin, but it seems they've recently done away with it. This website seems to have that covered, however. If you learn the number notation for pitch accent (which is covered in Dogen's series, I believe), then you can simply look up the word you want and check the number in the [square brackets] beside the entry to learn the pitch accent for a word. This will work 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time, you'll come across words that change accent depending on the meaning and if you can't read Japanese well enough, it'll be hard to tell which meaning has which pitch accent. It also won't help much if you don't know the kanji of the word you're trying to find.

Wadoku can also be useful if you know German as it uses bars and numbers to represent pitch accent for a large number of its entries.

Unfortunately, I can't help much more than that since I only really started with pitch accent when I had a decent level in the language and could use most of the Japanese-language resources out there. I would recommend using the audio that comes with learning materials as much as possible and to pay attention based on what you learn about pitch accent. If you use flashcards to learn vocabulary, it can't hurt to add pitch accent notation to your cards and to test based on that as well. You're not going to be perfect at first in any case, so don't stress if you can't hear the difference or get it wrong. The point is to build awareness and a proactive habit of correcting your knowledge based on what you hear in the real world and find in dictionaries. This eventually feels natural and automatic like any other part of learning a language (memorizing gender, verb forms, stress accents, cases) if you keep at it. You might even stop noticing yourself picking up on the accent of words.
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby księżycowy » Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:31 pm

Sizen wrote:Dogen's series is an excellent way to start. You do have to pay for it, but you can get away with subscribing for one month, ploughing through the material and moving on. Weblio used to have pitch accent information from Daijirin, but it seems they've recently done away with it. This website seems to have that covered, however. If you learn the number notation for pitch accent (which is covered in Dogen's series, I believe), then you can simply look up the word you want and check the number in the [square brackets] beside the entry to learn the pitch accent for a word. This will work 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time, you'll come across words that change accent depending on the meaning and if you can't read Japanese well enough, it'll be hard to tell which meaning has which pitch accent. It also won't help much if you don't know the kanji of the word you're trying to find.

Wadoku can also be useful if you know German as it uses bars and numbers to represent pitch accent for a large number of its entries.

Unfortunately, I can't help much more than that since I only really started with pitch accent when I had a decent level in the language and could use most of the Japanese-language resources out there. I would recommend using the audio that comes with learning materials as much as possible and to pay attention based on what you learn about pitch accent. If you use flashcards to learn vocabulary, it can't hurt to add pitch accent notation to your cards and to test based on that as well. You're not going to be perfect at first in any case, so don't stress if you can't hear the difference or get it wrong. The point is to build awareness and a proactive habit of correcting your knowledge based on what you hear in the real world and find in dictionaries. This eventually feels natural and automatic like any other part of learning a language (memorizing gender, verb forms, stress accents, cases) if you keep at it. You might even stop noticing yourself picking up on the accent of words.

Thank you for all of the suggestions. I'll have a look at Dogen's materials.

In the meantime, what I think I'll do is use the audio for MnN (including for the vocabulary lists, which I have largely ignored thus far) and couple that with the entries in my pitch accent dictionary.
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby Saim » Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:37 pm

Wiktionary indicates pitch accent in most of its Japanese entries: in IPA with high/low accent marks and an arrow for the downstep, Hiragana notation with the downstep marked with a line, and the Japanese name of the pattern.

See this entry, for instance:
わめ​_く [wàméꜜkù] (Nakadaka – [2])
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby gsbod » Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:18 pm

księżycowy wrote:The only textbook I can think of that consistently shows pitch accent throughout in Japanese: the Spoken Language. I have thought of going through that text after MnN, but that seems like it might be less than ideal.


Japanese for Everyone is also quite thorough on pitch accent, which sets it apart from other popular beginner courses.
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby księżycowy » Fri Jun 04, 2021 10:28 pm

gsbod wrote:
księżycowy wrote:The only textbook I can think of that consistently shows pitch accent throughout in Japanese: the Spoken Language. I have thought of going through that text after MnN, but that seems like it might be less than ideal.


Japanese for Everyone is also quite thorough on pitch accent, which sets it apart from other popular beginner courses.

I used to have a copy of that textbook, but couldn't remember the contents. At any rate, I've been using MnN for far too long to switch now. I might still use Japanese: The Spoken Language if only with a focus on the pitch accent. We'll see how it plays out.
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby leosmith » Sat Jun 05, 2021 3:21 am

księżycowy wrote:How does one learn it under those circumstances?

Others have mentioned resources; I will mention technique.

If I were to study Japanese again from the start, I would do both of the following when learning/reviewing new words and sentences:
1) Have audio and never give myself a "pass" for just producing the correct vowel and consonant sounds.
2) Never give myself a "pass" without citing the correct pitch pattern for words, or knowing the rules for applying pitch to sentences.

Notice that 1 does not rely on written rules, and 2 does not rely on audio. I feel that makes this technique pretty robust. In addition, I would do both of the following regarding conversation:
1) Be hyper-aware of my pitch, and strive to be correct.
2) Record myself occasionally to see how I can improve.
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Re: The Pitch Accent Wars

Postby sirgregory » Thu Jun 17, 2021 6:30 am

Native Japanese YouTuber Yuta offers his thoughts here:



-He says you don't "have to" study it depending on your goals. But if you want to sound really good, you probably need to give it some dedicated attention.
-He thinks it's generally worthwhile for most people to spend at least *some* time with it and that there is a probably a very high return on investment with learning at least the basics of it vs ignoring it entirely.
-He says many teachers and books don't cover the topic and he thinks this is a disservice to students because they should be able to
make an informed decision about it.
-He says the pitch accent does vary across dialects but he doesn't think this is a good reason to ignore the topic.
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