pudding cat Wrote:I'm a bit confused as to why people would get vowel lengths wrong because obviously if you can read the word you can see how long the vowels should be. Is it linked somehow to mispronunciation of vowels?

Just because you know the written form of a long vowel doesn't mean you're going to flawlessly hit the 1.5-2 mora range every time you attempt to pronounce one. It's not a question of remembering the difference between と and とう, but a question of timing. You may still pronounce it as a long vowel, but if it falls outside the range natives maintain, it's going to sound like you have an accent. People do a similar thing with ん, generally shortening it instead of giving it a full mora, which makes something like せん sound more like a syllable than two mora. If your vowels aren't enunciated properly it may affect the length too, or at least the perceived length, as vonPeterhof was describing.

Perfecting mora rhythm in particular is no easy feat for somebody who grew up using syllables, so I have to disagree with nadiatims' suggestion that it's only a problem for beginners, especially since it's yet another thing that can go unnoticed indefinitely if the learner doesn't have the proper awareness. Try seeing how uniform the length of an intermediate student's vowels are in a word like 重症急性呼吸器症候群.

I don't think you can underestimate the influence of your first language when you're speaking freely. Even my Chinese friend who's studied since she was a teenager (5 years in Japan) was off a few times when we met. Clearly, it's nothing for her to worry about, but it shows you can't take anything for granted when you're relying on your English/Chinese/Russian-speaking brain to unconsciously produce a flawless Japanese accent.

I'm not disagreeing with what any of you have said but maybe I should be more specific about what I was thinking about when I posted my question. Basically one of the people I know studied Japanese for several years, over JLPT 1, uses Japanese in their job etc but always pronounces 授業 as じゅうぎょう. I can't believe that they would be misremembering the word which is why I wondered if it might be linked to pronunciation.

pudding cat Wrote:I'm not disagreeing with what any of you have said but maybe I should be more specific about what I was thinking about when I posted my question. Basically one of the people I know studied Japanese for several years, over JLPT 1, uses Japanese in their job etc but always pronounces 授業 as じゅうぎょう. I can't believe that they would be misremembering the word which is why I wondered if it might be linked to pronunciation.

This is exactly the thing I was talking about when I was describing my problems. Whenever I come across the word 授業 while reading I have to pause for a second to recall whether it's じゅ or じゅう. The clear thing in my memory is that the vowel in that syllable is u, while its length is almost an afterthought, although I do usually manage to recall it correctly and don't have to mouse over with Rikaichan. Now, I haven't had to use that word in a conversation yet (I have only had like five actual conversations in Japanese so far), so I have no idea if I would pronounce it correctly off the top of my head. If your acquaintance's native language has no long vowels they might have the same issues. Or maybe it's just a beginner's mistake that wasn't noticed and corrected early enough and turned into a bad habit.

vonPeterhof Wrote:Besides, it is an accepted term in linguistics and it isn't applied just to Japanese - European languages that are described as having pitch accent include Norwegian, Swedish, Serbo-Croat and the Baltic languages, as well as Ancient Greek.

Ah yes. I was wondering when someone would finally mention Swedish. Definitely not just intonation. Getting the pitch accent wrong in Swedish can make things quite unintelligible.

leosmith Wrote:Another thing that might interest you. My teacher told me that Chinese and Koreans have a lot more trouble with Japanese intonation than westerners. That was a surprise to me.

Ditto. I've sat next to Italians and our teacher said their accent was excellent. Not that they had no accent — they sounded still noticeably Italian to me — but they got the idea of pitch accent at least. I suppose native English speakers often had the worst accents…

Harpagornes Wrote:I have long wondered why pronunciation is such a neglected topic in the language teaching when it is of such importance. I have always assumed thar the reasons are historic; a combination of the primacy of text in an educational setting, and the fact that until recently the technology to work with sound was lacking.

I've taken some voice coaching and accent lessons in English for professional reasons. If you find a good teacher, it makes a tremendous difference, and it actually it trains your ear in general. I'm not sure about my Japanese, but my French pronunciation definitely got better as well, en passant so to speak. If I had the chance, I would definitely try that in Japan!

In general I find that there are few people who "get" accents, including pitch accent, by immersion. The vast majority of people don't. If they did, Canada would be full of people who speak both French and English with native accents, and that's clearly not the case.

Irixmark Wrote:

vonPeterhof Wrote:Besides, it is an accepted term in linguistics and it isn't applied just to Japanese - European languages that are described as having pitch accent include Norwegian, Swedish, Serbo-Croat and the Baltic languages, as well as Ancient Greek.

Ah yes. I was wondering when someone would finally mention Swedish. Definitely not just intonation. Getting the pitch accent wrong in Swedish can make things quite unintelligible.

I'm a Swedish native speaker and I've never really thought of our pitch accent as a linguistic feature, but more like how it's just how some things are said and others aren't, so I can't relate much to foreigners studying Swedish. However, I want to say that our pitch accents and intonations are almost completely dialect dependent (And there are a lot of dialects here. Some of them are so crazy I can understand "standard" Norwegian better). So if you want to study your way into sounding like a native speaker with proper pitch, you'd have to choose and stick to a dialect.

This means that you're essentially studying a dialect as you're learning the language in general, which I think is pretty absurd. A dialect can be something that influences you after you've been making good progress, because you've become familiar with the differences between some dialects and have been leaning towards one because you either like it, or because it dominates your listening input - which the Stockholm area's dialect will, since it seems to dominate the Swedish media, or if you've spent a lot of time with native speakers from another certain area.

I'm not sure what you mean by how the wrong pitch accent would make things unintelligible. There aren't that many homonyms or words in general that need a certain pitch to be distinguished from others. If your pitches are really off, it'll be as if you've got some sort of out-of-place dialect, but if you speak clearly people will still understand you.

pudding cat Wrote:I'm a bit confused as to why people would get vowel lengths wrong because obviously if you can read the word you can see how long the vowels should be. Is it linked somehow to mispronunciation of vowels?

Beginners who are native English speakers get vowel lengths wrong because English does not have the long vs. short vowel issue that Japanese does. People who are more advanced either don't remember whether the word has a long or short vowel (happens to me sometimes), or they just never worked on their pronunciation much.

From what I've seen of learners of all languages, not just Japanese, pronunciation has very little to do with overall ability. This idea that immersion automatically fixes pronunciation problems even if the person doesn't consciously work on it simply has no basis in reality. There's almost a "no true Scotsman" fallacy going on here where people assert that immersion = perfect pronunciation, and then when presented with counter examples, they just claim that either the person wasn't immersed long enough or they didn't have the right attitude, or whatever. I will repeat again -- it's not very helpful to say that "immersion solves everything", but only for certain specific definitions of "immersion" that exclude almost every learner of Japanese.

(I also find it very ironic that people constantly say things like "verb tables don't help you conjugate in 1/2 second" but they're participating on a forum that is based around a book that has no Japanese in it at all and is purely a foundation-builder for later activities.)

Typically only long-term residents of foreign countries or rare particularly talented individuals ever develop perfect (indistinguishable from native) pronunciation. What constitutes as long term will vary a bit depending on age, intensity of immersion etc. For example a kid who moves to a new a country at age 12 and completes 6 six years of highschool is gonna come out of it pretty damn near perfect regardless what they speak at home, unless they basically ghettoise themselves and only hang around with speakers of their own mother tongue. If the kid is younger they'll probably pick up the great accent even quicker. I've met quite a few Japanese people that have completed university degrees overseas (so 4 years or so of very intense immersion) in English and these people come back with very near-native (if not perfect) accents, though they degrade slowly with time upon returning to Japan. These people obviously were strong enough at English to be able to study abroad though. Then there's people who immigrate as adults knowing nothing, but integrate fully into society (ie. don't ghettoise themselves) for 10 years or so, maybe even getting a native spouse/kids and end up near native. Almost no-one gets a near native accent after a couple of years of casual study, especially if when viewed objectively most of that time was spent studying with other foreigners in a classroom or reading/writing. You can't pick up a native accent without having spent significant time listening to natives.

I think in all the cases where people have lived for years in a foreign country and still have thick accents, it is either the case that they a. aren't yet actually particularly fluent or b. have spent a significant amount of time speaking the language as a lingua franca or academic language with other foreigners back in their home country or elsewhere and/or c. still spend most or a lot of their time speaking their mother tongue (with their spouse/family/work or as part of an expat community or whatever). If you compare a person who is totally immersed with another who still has one foot in their home country so the speak, the former could easily be getting twice as much or more authentic listening practice.

But anyway none of this matters because no one worth speaking with actually cares if your accent isn't perfect as long as it's not a barrier to communication.

It is a misconception that immersion is just merely living in a certain region. Immersion isn't the act, but putting the effort to justify the reasons for using immersion as a learning tool. This requires more work than many would like to believe. It is about putting on in an environment where by which every act leads to obtaining a level where everything feels natural (and that is an over simplification). Time is only for measuring progress. It is what is done in that time that matters. That includes studying, learning, and interacting in situations that the skills learned are utilized.

hey guys, I'm curious if any of you know whether or not you accent the ~tai forms differently? What would it sound like to a native speaker if you didn't?

unaccented verbs: susumu　　susumitai
accented verbs: tate'ru tateta'i

(btw, AlexandreC: is it tabe'nai?)


Re: accent -

Several people had remarked that it's pointless for beginners to work on perfecting their accents. Just wanted to clarify: That's not the goal of 'early intervention'. It's about getting off to a good start, avoiding common problems and noticing. The common problems have been identified (based on L1), so it makes sense to pay attention to them.

I've used the term "near native" b/c I've been reading about how age and other factors affect the ability of adults to learn languages (grammar, vocab and accent). The folks debunking the critical period want to show that adults can indeed reach a high level, so they hunt around for "near-native" specimens. I don't want to give the impression I think near-native accent should be the goal for learners (if that's what it sounded like.)

As long as accents don't interfere with meaning or are somehow off-putting, I quite like them. A pleasant accent might still take some guiding, though.

After 4 years immersed in Kansai-ben, I moved to Tokyo. I got tired of getting the "so cute!" reaction and getting asked to perform at parties, so I worked to change my accent. :-) I don't recommend assuming you can easily change the way you speak later. [no edit - wrong post]

Thora, to my ears it seems the accent falls on た　（たべたい）, except if it's a question, then it falls on い　（たべたい？）

According to Jorden:
-tai
accented tabetài want to eat tabetàku -- tabetòu tabetàkute tabetàkkata tabetàkattara tabetàkattari tabetàkereba tabetakaròu tabetàku nài
unaccented ikitai want to go ikitaku -- ikitou ikitàkute ikitàkatta ikitàkattara ikitàkattari ikitàkereba ikitakaròu ikitaku nài
-nai
accented tabènai doesn’t eat tabènaku tabèzu -- tabènakute tabènakatta tabènakattara tabènakattari tabènakereba tabenakaròu --
unaccented ikanai doesn’t go ikanaku ikazu -- ikanàkute ikanàkatta ikanàkattara ikanàkattari ikanàkereba ikanakaròu --

Thora Wrote:hey guys, I'm curious if any of you know whether or not you accent the ~tai forms differently? What would it sound like to a native speaker if you didn't?

unaccented verbs: susumu　　susumitai
accented verbs: tate'ru tateta'i

(btw, AlexandreC: is it tabe'nai?)

Thora, as buonaparte indicated, I think the forms you mention are all correct. Tai is a 0/-2 morpheme (zero effect on accentless, accent moves to second mora from the end for accented verbs), while nai is 0/-3.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:Some of them are so crazy I can understand "standard" Norwegian better). So if you want to study your way into sounding like a native speaker with proper pitch, you'd have to choose and stick to a dialect.

(...)
I'm not sure what you mean by how the wrong pitch accent would make things unintelligible. There aren't that many homonyms or words in general that need a certain pitch to be distinguished from others. If your pitches are really off, it'll be as if you've got some sort of out-of-place dialect, but if you speak clearly people will still understand you.

Well as you said, some dialects are so crazy that you understand standard Norwegian better. My Swedish is quite poor, and in Dalarna I met several people who I could have sworn were speaking some kind of Old Norse or something. It just so happens that Swedish in general has a pitch accent, and that (much like in Japanese) on top of that the pitch accent varies with dialects.

Actually, it's suSUMITAi. It's -TAi, whether the verb is accented or not

Thanks all. My question wasn't very clear. I wanted to ask whether anyone makes the distinction between ~tai　(for unaccented) and ~ta'i　(for accented) when speaking. Certain words sound weird to me if the accent is wrong, but these don't. So either I'm doing it right without realizing it, I'm "blissfully ignorant" that I sound odd , or it doesn't matter.

There seems to be variation: variation in native speaker accent, the drop is sometimes delayed, perception can lie, and some tone changes are more subtle. So I don't know when it matters.

(Note for eg below: 食べる is the only accented word. \ = slight drop b/w words. Initial L raised to H per heavy syllable rule (公園, 豆腐)　and Tokyo-ben connected speech (生きたい,食べたい.)

公園へ生きたい子供 　　　　　　　　　　　　豆腐を食べたい子供
　　 　 HHHHH \HHHH \HHH* HHHH \LHHL \HHH*

[*edit: I took a closer look at the accent rules and those are incorrect. I'll try to explain in a later post, but I think they should be:
HHHHH \HHHH \H'LL HHHH \HHHH \H'LL
[edit2: the rules are quite confusing...]

If 子供 gets slightly stepped down, maybe some of the slide down occurs during the final　い　of 行きたい,　making it sound like HHHL? (speculation)

@nadiatimes
Yeah, the interaction of word accent and phrase intonation is interesting. I think technically there's a little drop down to the i and then a larger intonation rise for the question. But apparently only for accented verbs. I can't tell if I accent these differently: ikitai? tabeta'i? If I had to say? Probably a small accent on both (which apparently is not standard.)

@buonaparte
Thanks. JSL is indeed...detailed. Does it provide a few simplified rules to explain V and adj conjugations? I think it takes 3 or so? Also, the different accenting of Vnai and adj-nai is worth noting; another indication that the "nai"s are actually different parts of speech.

@AlexandreC.
Then I think there's a typo in your earlier post.

AlexandreC Wrote:Actually, it's suSUMITAi. It's -TAi, whether the verb is accented or not

hmm, seems like the experts don't agree again. Who's yours? It's now 2:1. Best of 5? :-)

Thora Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:Actually, it's suSUMITAi. It's -TAi, whether the verb is accented or not

hmm, seems like the experts don't agree again. Who's yours? It's now 2:1. Best of 5? :-)

You weren't clear enough indeed.

It's iKITAi, but iKITAI KODOMO.

And the typo in the other post... I guess it's taBEnai, sorry.

But according to Jordan, Shosuke Haraguchi and another I checked ikitai is unaccented. What source are you using?

Thora Wrote:But according to Jordan, Shosuke Haraguchi and another I checked ikitai is unaccented. What source are you using?

You're right. I have the Shinmeikai. The problem is that those sources are references for Standard Japanese, which is not the same as Tokyoben. My Japanese friend confirms it's naKITAi...

There is no doubt that once you get down to it, there are loads of confusing information and variation in the general system of Japanese pitch. I suppose this is mostly what leads a lot of people, students and teachers alike, to dismiss it as unteachable.

However, if we did find a proper method of teaching that went beyond the usual "you should copy native speakers", I think we'd be able to send learners on their way to better pronunciation right from the start.

So the question remains whole: how do you teach it? Or better yet: how do you make learning and teaching pitch easier and more systematic? Surely, this could be presented as a much simpler system than kanji.

There is no doubt that verbs are by far the most volatile in terms of pitch, but any information gained is easily applicable to all verbs, provided you only remember if a given verb has pitch or not (and most do). The first verb affixes that I learned to apply systematically were -te and -ta. When a verb is accentless, nothing happens and pitch stays high. If the verb has pitch, regardless of where it is, then pitch will be on the 3rd mora from the end, yielding TAbete and TAbeta. This is consistent and works EVERY TIME. Surely, learners could gain from such simple information.

I spent some time last night going through the forms unaccented and accented verbs take when the most common morphemes are affixed. After some time, certain patterns started to emerge, and I found that many morphemes could be grouped together. For instance, certain morphemes (such as ので、より、まで、のに、けど、が, etc.) only affect unaccented verbs. Others (such as て、た、ない、たり, etc.) have different values for accented and unaccented verbs. I see no reason we couldn't label the former weak morphemes and the latter, strong morphemes. Other morphemes yet never change regardless of the verb they are attached to, such as ます、ません、etc. -- let's call them fixed morphemes.

I'm not arguing that this is necessarily an elegant method of classification, but I think there are ways to systematize the information and make it more manageable for learners. As for as I can see, no effort of the sort has been made and there is much to gain from trying.

I've always been really interested in this topic, especially after becoming aware of pitch accent I'm one of those learners who really only became aware of pitch after years and years of studying Japanese. I felt confident about my pronunciation, but one time after giving a speech in class, my teacher handed me a sheet where she had marked everything I had gotten the intonation (not pronunciation) wrong on... I was shocked :O There were so many areas!

I think that, after studying and immersing yourself in Japanese, you will pick up pitch accent to a certain accent - perhaps without even being aware of it. To give an example for myself, before I was aware of pitch, if I read aloud verb phrases like 心配する and 勉強する, I would read する with the correct pitch, rising on the る. But, when I said just the verb する by itself, I would put the pitch on す and have it fall on る, which was incorrect -that would be a different verb altogether, 擦る. (I have a recording of myself saying these, in case you're wondering :lol In other words, when I read する in context, I would pronounce it fine (I assume just from hearing it so many times), but I wasn't actually aware of the pitch of the words individually. I just thought that する was する and that was it.

But to really get it down, you have to be AWARE of it and listen for it. Even as an advanced learner of Japanese, it still took me awhile at first to hear the differences between certain levels of pitch. On one hand, I wish I had learned about it earlier on in my studies, but on the other hand, I feel like learning about it too soon could have been demotivating, as it can be really hard to distinguish at first.

AlexandreC Wrote:I'm not arguing that this is necessarily an elegant method of classification, but I think there are ways to systematize the information and make it more manageable for learners. As for as I can see, no effort of the sort has been made and there is much to gain from trying.

This is a very interesting thread. I keep thinking that sorting out an effective way of teaching pitch accent would make a fascinating research topic. As AlexandreC mentioned in a previous post, most language teachers seem to be uninterested / untrained in this area.

Given that people who come from an English speaking background have trouble even hearing the changes in pitch, it would seem to me that coming up with a set of exercises where the student listens and then indicates pitch would be useful.

Long term, perhaps software could be developed to analyze and correct students production of pitch. At the moment it seems the only training possible is to rely on correction by someone who a) speaks Japanese fluently, b) understands pronunciation both in theory, and at the practical,how to produce it, level and c) knows how to teach effectively. Such people must be vanishingly rare.

Harpagornes Wrote:Long term, perhaps software could be developed to analyze and correct students production of pitch. At the moment it seems the only training possible is to rely on correction by someone who a) speaks Japanese fluently, b) understands pronunciation both in theory, and at the practical,how to produce it, level and c) knows how to teach effectively. Such people must be vanishingly rare.

Doesn't Rosetta Stone have something that lets you record something and then compare your waveform with that of a native speaker's? Has anyone tried it? "Seeing" the pitch might help people who have difficulty hearing it at first.

@ALexandre, Okay, I did a bit more poking around. I learned a bunch, but not sure it's worth trying to summarize it. I'll at least try to clear up my Vtai accent question.

After taking a closer look at accent rules, I think we were both mistaken. I noted the correction on my earlier post.

Alexandre Wrote:It's iKITAi, but iKITAI KODOMO.

Quote:Actually, it's suSUMITAi. It's -TAi, whether the verb is accented or not

I assume those earlier suggestions were meant as normative forms (not intuition of accent). I'm afraid I can't see how you got those. This is my current understanding of the rules for unaccented Vtai:

unaccented V (per std dict): iku
isolated tai form: iKITAI (unaccented)
following content word: iKITA'i (may vary depending on 3rd word)
before content/function word: depends on length, accents, POS & features
iKITAI (unaccented)
iKITAI' (final) or
iKITA'i
Content word egs:
iKITAI KO'domo -2nd word > 2 morae, unaccented noun
=> on first mora of 2nd word (called 生起型)
iKITAI SENSE'i -2nd word > 2 morae, accented noun
=> keep 2nd word accent (called 保存型)
iKITAI' ko -2nd word < 2 morae noun (called 標準型)
iKITA'i ko -2nd word <2 morae noun (called 平板型)

No idea what's going on with those last 2 (and don't really need to find out.) There is a phonemic/accent rule which says that if the resulting accent is found on a [vowel preceded by another vowel, the accent shifts leftward by one.] Perhaps that would kick in for iKITAI'.

[A separate rule says the accent shifts one to the left if the resulting accent falls on a double vowel, double consonant, or syllabic nasal. (Varies b/w speakers.)]

Function word egs:
If the 2nd word is a function word, there are 3 possible phrase accents (1st word's, 2nd word's, new phrase accent) depending on length and accent type of 1st word, and accentual features of the function word. There's 5 types of function compounds, but 2 outcomes overlap. (Not 100% sure about following egs - weirdo Vtai has features of both verb and adj - but it gives an idea about outcomes.)

unaccented: naKITAI MA'de naKITA'i shi
accented: taBETA'i made taBETA'i shi

(Well... no wonder both accent patterns sounded okay...) :-)

AlexandreC Wrote:My friend confirms it's naKITAi

Thanks for asking your friend. Was that their intuition (as a Tokyo speaker) that the Vtai of unaccented naku (泣く?) always/usually sounds like naKITAi? Or were they suggesting that the isolated form of unaccented Vtai is -1? I've read at least 3 reasons a High final い might end up sounding lower. So, again, can't tell if the distinction really matters.

In any event, it's pretty unlikely a learner would even get the correct pitch patterns for the 6 words in my earlier 2 phrases never mind know how to adjust the binary tones to generate natural sounding speech. "Perfect" sounding sentences? Cmon. Even the speech synthesizers do better with corpus learning than with rules. :-)

[edit: fixed description of rule]

I'm feeling a little too lazy to look everything up again, however, if you search out the -other- pitch accent thread and look at articles linked there, and look at the article that is linked in both this thread and the other thread as a justification for why pitch accent isn't for beginners or some such, as well as the wikipedia articles on pitch accent/japanese pitch accent...

you should find that accent is marked -mostly- by a descending tone on the mora after the accented mora, and that pitch tends to otherwise slowly rise (give or take questioning tone at the end.)

The article that is linked to say how pitch accent isn't for beginners or some such has some useful graphs of actual pitches and some useful observations on unvoiced and yet 'accented' mora. (You'll note, I expect, that the graphs show how the pitch descends in the mora following the accented yet unvoiced mora.)

There may be other elements, but in any case, at the moment I'm personally mostly trying to identify accented mora and to hear how the Japanese identify an accented mora. I find this much more useful than obviously broken L/H pattern attempts to describe pitch accent.