I finally recorded and posted a video on Japanese Pitch Accent. I hope it's helpful.

http://youtu.be/EeaLEC6KO20

A good lecture.

A transcript + mp3 files of all the Japanese examples recorded by native speakers would nice, too.

For anyone interested in Japanese pronunciation:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid121590

@AlexandreC: Thank you so much!!! Waiting for the other videos to come soon

buonaparte Wrote:A good lecture.

A transcript + mp3 files of all the Japanese examples recorded by native speakers would nice, too.

I'm hoping native speakers post to confirm whether the pronunciation is accurate or not. I won't be recording native speakers.

AlexandreC Wrote:I'm hoping native speakers post to confirm whether the pronunciation is accurate or not. I won't be recording native speakers.

Arekkusu, you shouldn't worry - your pronunciation IS good.
I won't be recording native speakers, either.
What about the transcript?

Good video and easy to follow. Thanks for posting!

@AlexandreC

It took some time but I finally got opinions of couple of native speakers on your video - they agree that you do a good job.

Many thanks for your time and effort - looking forward for the next parts.

Thanks! It's great to get some feedback.

There's a good deal of discussion about the video here too: http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/forum/24/15071/?page=1

Pretty straightforward and easy to follow. Looking forward to the next installments. Just realised I had memorised 人 as HIto. :/

AlexandreC Wrote:Thanks! It's great to get some feedback.

There's a good deal of discussion about the video here too: http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/forum/24/15071/?page=1

I've been reading through that forum post. Some people are saying that it's not important to study pitch in Japanese. Alex makes this brilliant post in response:

AlexandreC (from the lingq forum) Wrote:If you -- all of you -- had to give advice as to how a person should learn English stress, I bet most, if not almost all, of you would say "just listen and copy".

And as far as English is concerned, that's not bad advice. Stress is pretty obvious -- the vowel is louder, often longer, it stands out -- it sticks out even. It's not a complex system, it has no effect on other words, and it never changes. Not only that, but if you remember the vowels right, you can often predict the stress. But if you get the stress wrong, we'll still understand you. After all, there are few minimal pairs in writing (like record, advocate, etc.) and virtually none if you only consider pronunciation. Yet, we teach it, we correct it, we tell students to pay attention to it. Why? Because it sounds better to us. It's easier to understand. The speaker gives off a better impression. If you get stress wrong AND make another error in pronuncing the word, you've made the word twice as hard to understand. Get the stress right, and you can screw up half the sounds, we'll still understand.

The same applies to Japanese. If all learners studied pitch, they would sound nicer, there would be less misunderstandings. But if they don't, it's not the end of the world.

However, we treat Japanese pitch and English stress completely differently. Almost nobody teaches pitch. A quick mention at the beginning of a book, at best, and nada mas. Why is that? In an effort to simplify things for learners of a language that is already very challenging, we've deprived them of information that could make their Japanese clearer, prettier and easier to understand.

While you can tell an English learner than they can just listen and copy, unfortunately, you can't say that for Japanese. Pitch is a lot more subtle, it's affected by neighbouring words and it moves to other morae depending on certain factors (verb endings, etc.). It's more subtle, more volatile and more complex: it requires an explanation. But because it's harder, we just say it's not important. Truth is, it's just more convenient that way.

Learners of Japanese can't just listen and learn pitch. They don't. They can't. It just doesn't happen. It's not impossible that someone who lives in Japan for years may be able to do it with conscious effort, but we know this is exceptionally rare. For the vast majority of students, including people living in Japan, to listen and copy simply isn't a credible option.

I think this is valuable information. I think it's an important part of the language and should be taught, and all students of Japanese should be given access to it. As learners, we can choose to ignore it, but we should be able to make that choice for ourselves.

I can't agree with this more.

AlexandreC Wrote:Thanks! It's great to get some feedback.

There's a good deal of discussion about the video here too: http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/forum/24/15071/?page=1

Is there another version of the speech recording you linked to floating around on the web? I can't seem to listen to it on my mac...

nadiatims Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:Thanks! It's great to get some feedback.

There's a good deal of discussion about the video here too: http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/forum/24/15071/?page=1

Is there another version of the speech recording you linked to floating around on the web? I can't seem to listen to it on my mac...

No. It's on the university's website so I have no control over it, but it is indeed a bit finicky. Many said they needed Firefox to view it.

One comment that was made on the lingq thread is that Japanese spoken with stress (like english) sounds very foreign. It would be very helpful to have a recording of some random sentence with and without stress, and with and without correct accent. For example, I want to hear the sentence "俺は今日学校に行く" read four different ways:

1) stress (like an american would pronounce Japanese) and bad accent
2) no stress (like a japanese person pronounces Japanese) and bad accent
3) stress (like an american would pronounce Japanese) and perfect accent
4) no stress (like a japanese person pronounces Japanese) and perfect accent

I probably am stressing words when I speak Japanese, but I'm not sure how to listen for it myself. It would be really helpful to an easy example from someone else. Maybe a bilingual person would be good?

partner55083777 Wrote:One comment that was made on the lingq thread is that Japanese spoken with stress (like english) sounds very foreign. It would be very helpful to have a recording of some random sentence with and without stress, and with and without correct accent. For example, I want to hear the sentence "俺は今日学校に行く" read four different ways:

1) stress (like an american would pronounce Japanese) and bad accent
2) no stress (like a japanese person pronounces Japanese) and bad accent
3) stress (like an american would pronounce Japanese) and perfect accent
4) no stress (like a japanese person pronounces Japanese) and perfect accent

I probably am stressing words when I speak Japanese, but I'm not sure how to listen for it myself. It would be really helpful to an easy example from someone else. Maybe a bilingual person would be good?

That would be interesting. I know some people from Kanto, Kansai, Tohoku... and some Canadians. I could record them all saying the same few sentences.

partner55083777 Wrote:One comment that was made on the lingq thread is that Japanese spoken with stress (like english) sounds very foreign. It would be very helpful to have a recording of some random sentence with and without stress, and with and without correct accent. For example, I want to hear the sentence "俺は今日学校に行く" read four different ways:

1) stress (like an american would pronounce Japanese) and bad accent
2) no stress (like a japanese person pronounces Japanese) and bad accent
3) stress (like an american would pronounce Japanese) and perfect accent
4) no stress (like a japanese person pronounces Japanese) and perfect accent

I probably am stressing words when I speak Japanese, but I'm not sure how to listen for it myself. It would be really helpful to an easy example from someone else. Maybe a bilingual person would be good?

you could watch the Nodame Cantabile drama and observe 竹中直人さん／Stresemann's imitation of a foreigner (German, in this case). Of course that's just comedy and not really instructional.
i too, eagerly await videos 2 and 3. thank you AlexandreC

For anyone interested.
About pitch accent from
新明解日本語アクセント辞典 2001年
http://akusento.narod.ru/akusento_syuutoku_housoku.pdf
The tables:
http://akusento.narod.ru/hyou01-14.zip

AlexandreC Wrote:That would be interesting. I know some people from Kanto, Kansai, Tohoku... and some Canadians. I could record them all saying the same few sentences.

That would be really helpful. Maybe it would also be helpful for me to study how stress works in English.

tashippy Wrote:you could watch the Nodame Cantabile drama and observe 竹中直人さん／Stresemann's imitation of a foreigner (German, in this case). Of course that's just comedy and not really instructional.

Thanks. Is there a specific episode I should watch? Or does this happen throughout the whole series?

partner55083777 Wrote:Thanks. Is there a specific episode I should watch? Or does this happen throughout the whole series?

I've uploaded a second video in the series on Pitch Accent. This one teaches learners how and where to find pitch info on their own and gives an overview of what a mora is.

http://youtu.be/ZKWrmxYmdy4

Yeah! Your videos are great, very informative!
Another source for pitch accent information I've found after watching your first video is the digital (software) equivalent of the NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 (which can be found on the lost and found section of the Internet, or by searching "NHK" on uz-translations). I think I've talked about it in some other thread, but yeah, I personally find it much more convenient than yahoo's dictionary.

Cool beard by the way!

I gave it a shot, but it's hard to do bad stress with good accent and vice versa, and my American accent might sound a bit stereotypical since I don't really know how to properly fake it (I'm a Japanese American)

1) stress (like an american would pronounce Japanese) and bad accent
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0nHbLSnoEHx
2) no stress (like a japanese person pronounces Japanese) and bad accent
I'm not really sure how I can accomplish this without messing up other aspects of pronunciation.
I just tried 棒読み
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1TwM8a96pmD
3) stress (like an american would pronounce Japanese) and perfect accent
This is also difficult. The stress makes it hard to do a proper accent.
http://vocaroo.com/i/s19abkx3cDvP
4) no stress (like a japanese person pronounces Japanese) and perfect accent
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1U1UFpfgxAl

weirdo Wrote:I gave it a shot, but it's hard to do bad stress with good accent and vice versa, and my American accent might sound a bit stereotypical since I don't really know how to properly fake it (I'm a Japanese American)

This is really cool! Thanks. Your fake American accent was really funny.

I think I need to practice listening more. I couldn't tell the different between 2) and 4)! :-( Also, I could tell that 3) and 4) are totally different, but I wasn't able to tell that 3) has good accent. It's hard to hear it over the stress.

Can other people on this forum tell right away that 2) is bad?

partner55083777 Wrote:I think I need to practice listening more. I couldn't tell the different between 2) and 4)! :-( Also, I could tell that 3) and 4) are totally different, but I wasn't able to tell that 3) has good accent. It's hard to hear it over the stress.

Can other people on this forum tell right away that 2) is bad?

That might be just me just sucking. Again, I wasn't sure how I'd achieve it. It's not easy to "sound Japanese" and have "bad accent" at the same time. It feels mutually exclusive to me. Every time I try to change up the accent, I end up with a faux-kansai ben or something.

Thanks for the vids.

I have a question - for something like 一段動詞 [いちだんどうし], is that considered two words with each having its own pitch rules, or are there 4-kanji words with its own pitch? Are 4-kanji words always just considered 2 words?

Sorry for my late reply, I hadn't noticed your post.

ASAIK, a compound like 一段動詞 is considered a single unit and will have a single pitch -- I would guess it's on DO, though I have absolutely no idea, because pitch tends to be on the first mora of the second part of the compound, even when that second part itself can then be split in half. On its own, 一段 would also have its own pitch, so would 一 and 段 in isolation. If you can add a particle to it, it's a pitch-worthy unit; with 一段動詞, you could only add 1 particle.