SammyB Wrote:Dude, you are so annoying. Perhaps because English is not your native language you don't realise how obnoxious you sound when you write. Or perhaps you are rude in your native language too...

I'd prefer to be able to express myself clearly and naturally in Japanese (without offending people) than have perfect pitch accent.

Everybody have their own preferences. I respect yours, and you should respect mine. No need to call me rude and obnoxious which ironically would make you rude and obnoxious.

This thread is about Pitch accent and it's importance in learning Japanese. I would appreciate if you keep it on topic.

I don't think someone calling someone rude and obnoxious automatically makes the speaker rude and obnoxious.

I also don't think it was ironic.

kitakitsune Wrote:Blows my mind how you can get perfectly fluent in Japanese and still sound like that.

Good lord, how can he have an accent like that and be an expert? Does he even care?

legendmaxx Wrote:

kitakitsune Wrote:Blows my mind how you can get perfectly fluent in Japanese and still sound like that.

Good lord, how can he have an accent like that and be an expert? Does he even care?

Well, as Yudan pointed out, he was well into his adulthood before he started learning Japanese, and even then (apparently), learning to speak Japanese at all was a novel concept in those days.

His expertise lies mainly in Japanese literature, not pronunciation.

The average Japanese teacher won't teach pitch because they can't. They don't know how it works and they never paid attention to it. Those with proper training will tell you it was brought up in their training, but they probably don't remember anymore. And then there's the fact that teachers come from different regions and aren't actually confident enough about their accent to teach it as being the proper pronunciation.

nadiatims Wrote:Has anyone actually met someone who has managed to accelerate their acquisition of (near)native accent by studying/drilling/memorizing pitch accent?

Has anyone met a non-fluent speaker with a perfect accent?

I improved my recognition quickly after dedicating a small amount of time familiarising myself with the patterns and practising a bit. I remember the accents of words like 代数 jumping out at me, and they started to stick. All ignorance got me was two years less exposure to pitch and a lot of acquired bad habits that I may never reverse, at least not this decade.

nadiatims Wrote:You have been speaking norwegian for 20+ (I'm guessing) years, but for most english speakers seeing something like YOru or yoRU in writing is meaningless until they actually know how to apply that distinction in how they use their mouths. They aren't even capable of deliberately applying it to single words, let alone using during fluent speech. It barely even discernible at first.

And making it discernible at first is detrimental how exactly? We already have enough examples of foreigners who sound terrible given a lifetime to "pick it up", and you don't seem interested in addressing this. Why would you discourage hopeful beginners from dedicating a minor amount of time to understanding a fundamental aspect of Japanese pronunciation? Because it's not a foolproof means to "perfect" accent? I would've got a massive advantage from doing it far earlier than I did, and I wouldn't have even needed to break a sweat to do it.

Zorlee Wrote:. However, after 2,5 years of intense study (and JLPT N1 under my belt) I still didn't pronounce basic verbs like "aru" "naru" "dekiru" with the correct pitch.

And that's why I think that if a person is going to bother learning pitch, at least in the beginning, adding pitch notation to their cards is a bit of an overkill: instead, they need to go back to the basic words they use all the time and make sure they got those down pat first. Then you can start worrying about less common words.

legendmaxx Wrote:

kitakitsune Wrote:Blows my mind how you can get perfectly fluent in Japanese and still sound like that.

Good lord, how can he have an accent like that and be an expert? Does he even care?

Probably not. He's 90 years old and an internationally known and respected authority on Japan, with tons of books to his credit. I doubt his pronunciation gives him too much worry.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Probably not. He's 90 years old and an internationally known and respected authority on Japan, with tons of books to his credit. I doubt his pronunciation gives him too much worry.

Well you see, had he mastered Japanese pronunciation and pitch accent from the inception, it would make him even more convincing, and all these criticism about his speech would not occur.

In all honesty, I don't really care how much of an expert he is on Japanese literature, he still sound no better than your average gaijin.

Javizy Wrote:And making it discernible at first is detrimental how exactly? We already have enough examples of foreigners who sound terrible given a lifetime to "pick it up", and you don't seem interested in addressing this. Why would you discourage hopeful beginners from dedicating a minor amount of time to understanding a fundamental aspect of Japanese pronunciation? Because it's not a foolproof means to "perfect" accent? I would've got a massive advantage from doing it far earlier than I did, and I wouldn't have even needed to break a sweat to do it.

I definitely want to practice my pitch accent, but I think there might be a danger of English speakers trying to get the pitch right and ending up adding stress where they shouldn't be. Or that's what I do no matter how hard I try. Does that make sense?

I feel like my accent isn't very terrible compared to some I've heard, but when I try to use correct pitch, I can't help but start adding emphasis to certain syllables because I'm trying too hard to change my pitch. It doesn't really matter when I'm speaking full sentences and don't think about it, but when I try to practice similar-sounding words in isolation and ask my [Japanese] students to help me, they think I sound weird because I keep adding stress where it shouldn't be. It's really hard for me to get away from this, unless I just forget about pitch entirely.

EDIT: I realize this really depends on the person, and not everyone will encounter this danger. I feel like there's a parallel situation going the other way, too. Some of my students with very heavy Japanese accents are actually easier to understand than others who have implemented too many tricks to emulate a "native" English accent. The ones with really good hearing can use the instruction they've received to emulate pretty good accents, but some of them who can't hear as well will simply follow instructions like "move your tongue like this" and can't tell if they're doing it right or doing some kind of mutated version of it.

warakawa Wrote:Everybody have their own preferences. I respect yours, and you should respect mine. No need to call me rude and obnoxious which ironically would make you rude and obnoxious.

This is a message board where people exchange ideas and people (including you) ask questions. There's no need to "respect" rude people, especially rude people who want others to answer questions for them.

warakawa Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:Probably not. He's 90 years old and an internationally known and respected authority on Japan, with tons of books to his credit. I doubt his pronunciation gives him too much worry.

Well you see, had he mastered Japanese pronunciation and pitch accent from the inception, it would make him even more convincing, and all these criticism about his speech would not occur.

In all honesty, I don't really care how much of an expert he is on Japanese literature, he still sound no better than your average gaijin.

Something tells me you don't have that much experience with interacting with foreigners in Japan. What does the average gaijin sound like?

Even with that accent, he has become one of the most respected "gaijin" in Japan. His decision to take Japanese citizenship made national news for a week. And a room full of Japanese people laughing at his jokes would imply that his accent isn't a barrier to communication. The guy did something right and most of us posting here will only dream of speaking Japanese at a fraction of his level.

You'd have to be Japanese to sound naturally Japanese, the best one can do is sound as natural as possible, of course you'll sound different anyway. You can sound as Japanese as possible but you still stick out like a sore thumb

Necrojesta Wrote:You'd have to be Japanese to sound naturally Japanese, the best one can do is sound as natural as possible, of course you'll sound different anyway. You can sound as Japanese as possible but you still stick out like a sore thumb

I know a few people that are hard to tell apart from native speakers. And a few of them are Korean so they don't really stick out so much, haha.

kitakitsune Wrote:Something tells me you don't have that much experience with interacting with foreigners in Japan. What does the average gaijin sound like?

Honestly it sounds like he doesn't have much experience with foreigners period. Most of the foreigners I've met (I live in a tourist destination and I travel on business) have strong accents. I'm not sure why people with strong accents, be it Indian, French, Spanish etc. would be made fun of behind their back.

I also don't understand the obsession some people have with sounding Japanese. I understand people wanting to sound that way, what I don't understand is why they project their goals on to everyone else. Some people are really quite happy sounding foreign. You don't go to England and feel bad you sound American do you (or whatever country you're from)? Once you're easily understandable it's all good in my books.

For pitch accent, I think it's just a case of one thing too many. While some people are saying it's not that much more work, it's another seemingly alien task that you have to learn along with everything else. I think a lot of people would get discouraged from having to "deal with" pitch accent on top of everything else. That is me projecting my feelings on to other people

That's not to say it should never be taught, the option to have a textbook or class to learn it would be awesome.

warakawa Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:Probably not. He's 90 years old and an internationally known and respected authority on Japan, with tons of books to his credit. I doubt his pronunciation gives him too much worry.

Well you see, had he mastered Japanese pronunciation and pitch accent from the inception, it would make him even more convincing,

I'm not sure how much more convincing Donald Keene can be. He's the standard that almost anybody in Japanese studies (especially literature) aspires to.

ojousan Wrote:I definitely want to practice my pitch accent, but I think there might be a danger of English speakers trying to get the pitch right and ending up adding stress where they shouldn't be. Or that's what I do no matter how hard I try. Does that make sense?

Yes, this is a problem. In fact, it's a problem I had (have). The easiest solution is obviously to get a native speaker to correct you when you're accidentally adding stress to words. From my limited experiences with doing this, adding stress to words really jumps out at a native speaker, so they should be able to correct you if you do it wrong.

However, if you're trying to learn pitch without the help of a native speaker, maybe you could just do recognition instead of production. At least it would be a first step.

Use Core2k, add pitch markings to all the words, and then make a card where you get a recording of the word on the front of the card, and on the back you have the pitch. All you have to do is listen to the word and figure out what the pitch is.

Another possible card type would be kanji and possibly kana on the front, and then accent markings on the back. I guess this would be more of a production card so you should probably be more careful.


Also, keep in mind that the "don't learn output/production until you are able to get it right 100% of the time" is an idea that's strongly pushed by AJATT & antimoon. A lot of people (even people on this forum) have gotten to a very high level by directly disregarding this advice. From my experience, learning to correct bad habits (formed through studying incorrectly, etc) at a much later stage is not nearly as hard as AJATT and antimoon make it out to be.

It may be good and rewarding for you to study pitch even if you aren't getting it 100% correct.

I think it would be useful if there were more audio resources providing guidance on it, I feel you need to hear it really, at least I know I do, I just don't understand it when I see it written down. The variations add a lot of potential confusion, as well - I just listened to the examples on Wiki, and honestly I think I've heard 今 pronounced closer to the second example more often than the way it's apparently pronounced in the Tokyo dialect. That was the way my teacher pronounced it, anyway, and she'd at least mostly lived in Tokyo, though I'm not sure she was originally from there so I guess that's why. So, I suppose learners do have to specifically focus on it, rather than just hoping listening a lot will cover it (though if they practice shadowing a lot, surely their accent should at least be Ok?). I guess it isn't taught because it's not completely essential, and does vary.
Well, even standard English...isn't, really, there's a lot of variation just in British accents alone. My native Brummie accent is just as valid as the supposedly more standard English a learner might be taught. As long as it's understandable, a more foreign accent wouldn't really be considered a problem here, either (and that's without getting into that some native accents *coughGlaswegiancough* are often considered pretty incomprehensible by other native English speakers).

I think it depends what you want to do, anyway. If you want to sound perfectly like a Tokyo-native, then I guess it's worth practising. For me, I'd be happy to have an accent like Donald Keene's if I could be even a third as respected, it's the literature I'm really interested in, I don't particularly even care about being able to speak Japanese other than it might be impractical not to be able to.

It should be pointed out that Donald Keene is really really old, and might actually have trouble speaking English as well at his age. It's kind of unfair to pick on him for his accent in that video, and the entire thing is so dumb.

Donald Keene is well-respected because of what he says, not the inflections or tones with which he says it. I doubt he'd choose to trade an ounce of his expertise for minor cosmetic improvements in his pronunciation, and I'm not sure many of you would either in his same position.

erlog Wrote:It should be pointed out that Donald Keene is really really old, and might actually have trouble speaking English as well at his age. It's kind of unfair to pick on him for his accent in that video, and the entire thing is so dumb.

Donald Keene is well-respected because of what he says, not the inflections or tones with which he says it. I doubt he'd choose to trade an ounce of his expertise for minor cosmetic improvements in his pronunciation, and I'm not sure many of you would either in his same position.

I've heard older audio than that of Dr. Keene speaking and his accent was still all over the place, but my point in posting that video wasn't to criticize or make fun of him. My point was the same as yours, that you can be one of the most respected people in Japan without having a perfect accent.

partner55083777 Wrote:Yes, this is a problem. In fact, it's a problem I had (have). The easiest solution is obviously to get a native speaker to correct you when you're accidentally adding stress to words. From my limited experiences with doing this, adding stress to words really jumps out at a native speaker, so they should be able to correct you if you do it wrong.

However, if you're trying to learn pitch without the help of a native speaker, maybe you could just do recognition instead of production. At least it would be a first step.

Use Core2k, add pitch markings to all the words, and then make a card where you get a recording of the word on the front of the card, and on the back you have the pitch. All you have to do is listen to the word and figure out what the pitch is.

I think I will likely work on recognition rather than production, using your suggested card method. I do want the benefits of improved listening skills through learning how to hear pitch, but I don't really care if my own pitch isn't perfect. I think people will be thrown off by my bad grammar more than my imperfect pitch.

I'm in an awkward situation for this kind of study, though, because I live in the semi-inaka in Kansai--and my co-workers definitely speak Kansai-ben a LOT. Therefore, even if I study Tokyo dialect through professionally-recorded audio clips, when I hear Japanese in my daily life it may clash with that, rather than reinforce what I've learned. Any suggestions, anyone? I don't really want to ask my coworkers to carefully monitor my Japanese, because 1) they're really busy, and 2) I find it awkward correcting people's English and they probably feel the same with Japanese.

Maybe if I just work on being able to HEAR pitch accent rather than memorize it, then I'll still get the benefit of improved hearing but won't experience any confusion for specific vocab. What do you think?

Personally, I think the idea of trying to effect an accent by memorising how every conceivable word is pronounced by its speakers is unrealistic and silly... that's something that'll only be really achieved through attentive listening and mimicry.

People who manage to pick up local accents in any language tend to do so naturally and I don't think pitch accent is particularly special.. no more than knowing where to put stresses on words in English anyway, and I haven't met a foreigner who "studied" how to speak a good English accent..

@ojousan
Find a person who would like to improve their English pronunciation in exchange for helping you to improve your Japanese one. If this is going to be 関西弁 so be it - there is nothing wrong with having an authentic Japanese accent, event if this is not a "standard" one.

(Re: my English accent. The only accent that I would not like to acquire in English is North American but all the shades of British would be fine with me. These days though, I probably sound more of an Ozie than a Brit...)

@dizmox
My thoughts on that are the same.

Again, calling on my past experience, during my English studies I didn't try to remember the accent/stress but I did take notice of it. These days I'm doing the same with Japanese and my cards do have accent annotations. I don't fail them if I get the accent wrong though.

ojousan Wrote:I'm in an awkward situation for this kind of study, though, because I live in the semi-inaka in Kansai--and my co-workers definitely speak Kansai-ben a LOT. Therefore, even if I study Tokyo dialect through professionally-recorded audio clips, when I hear Japanese in my daily life it may clash with that, rather than reinforce what I've learned. Any suggestions, anyone? I don't really want to ask my coworkers to carefully monitor my Japanese, because 1) they're really busy, and 2) I find it awkward correcting people's English and they probably feel the same with Japanese.

Maybe if I just work on being able to HEAR pitch accent rather than memorize it, then I'll still get the benefit of improved hearing but won't experience any confusion for specific vocab. What do you think?

I understand your situation because I was in the same spot while learning Japanese in Ehime and eventually marrying a girl from Osaka.

There's no easy solution here. The Kansai and Tokyo accents are completely different and most people from Osaka cannot teach the correct Tokyo accent that appears in most learning materials. It's like if you were learning English in London and trying to get your British friends to help you sound like an American from Ohio. It just isn't going to work out so great.

Maybe you could ask your Kansai friends to help you recognize the difference between the accents and then you can concentrate on one or the other, depending on your goals.