warakawa wrote:

Necrojesta wrote:

I don't think it matters so much... learn to pronounce each syllable correctly - tons of resources for this online (just imitate the way it's meant to sound). Other than that there's no stress or pitch on most syllables really so complaining about this is a waste of time.

Just imitate you say? Well durr... This is exactly every single adult language learner do, they imitate the pronunciation and the tone from people, from audio tape, from youtube, from their teachers, and the result is almost every language learner have strong accent.

Yeah, so what I'm saying is why learn this? Or you're suggesting it be taught to us, isn't this something much better learned passively through imitation?

no, it would be taught from the very first day, otherwise the Japanese learners' verbal accent production (speaking) would be all random result in unnatural Japanese.

低い音をＬ、高い音をＨで表すことにしますね。
０は、ＬＨＨＨＨＨＨＨ・・・　というアクセント。
１は、ＨＬＬＬＬＬＬＬ・・・　というアクセント。
２は、ＬＨＬＬＬＬＬＬ・・・　というアクセント。
３は、ＬＨＨＬＬＬＬＬ・・・　というアクセント。
４は、ＬＨＨＨＬＬＬＬ・・・　というアクセント。
ということです。

「水曜日」は３ですから、アクセントは　ＬＨＨＬＬ　です。
「大名行列」は５ですから、ＬＨＨＨＨＬＬＬ　です。
「名月」は１ですから、ＨＬＬＬ　です。

kitakitsune wrote:

To add on to yudantaiteki's tips. In order for 2 and 3 to be possible, your native speaker must be from Kanto.

I don't find this to be true.  Most of the educated people from Japan I've met are able to speak at least somewhat in 標準語 even if they are from another part of Japan.  At the very least, they would be able to correct foreigners on pitch accent.

You may not have this intention, but when I read your posts, it seems like you are trying to push the idea that people who are not from Tokyo are completely unfamiliar with and unable to use 標準語. 

In my experience, there are a lot of people who have never lived in 東京 but can produce 標準語-ish Japanese much better than 99% of the foreigners I've ever met.  Being able to speak in good 標準語 seems like an important thing in Japanese if you ever want to do anything formal in Japan (like getting a job?).  Also, 標準語 is probably the easiest accent to understand for the largest number of Japanese people (i.e. fairly easy to understand for almost all Japanese people). 

If anyone lives an some region of Japan and they have experiences that directly contradict mine, I would be interested in hearing them.

kitakitsune wrote:

And you have to remember that a good 50% of Japan doesn't speak Japanese with the Tokyo accent taught in textbooks.

I'm not sure if this is the typical 'there are different accents therefore accents don't matter' fallacy or if you're just pointing out that there are options, but 100% of Japan speaks a consistent accent, so you definitely have to pick it up either way. Regardless of what accent they speak, I'd guess almost everyone does a pretty good job of understanding standard accent though.

Necrojesta wrote:

I don't think it matters so much... learn to pronounce each syllable correctly - tons of resources for this online (just imitate the way it's meant to sound). Other than that there's no stress or pitch on most syllables really so complaining about this is a waste of time.

I find your use of 'syllable' interesting here, because I've heard fluent speakers still using them after years of doing the passive learning thing. It's more common to hear decent pronunciation with all-over-the-place accent though. That Chad guy who appears on TV sometimes is a good example.

I think it may be possible to pick it up eventually after like a decade or more, but there are far more people proving the exact opposite is much more likely. yudantaiteki's steps seem pretty decent. It's really not that big of a deal. Beginner's aren't typically morons and tend to manage learning a ton of other stuff at a decent pace, so I don't think a few pitch patterns are going to set them back.

warakawa wrote:

lol What?

Most words have a pitch, even the ones that don't have homophones. Otherwise you're going to sound like a robot when you talk.

Comeauch said that most words don't have a pitch accent, not pitch in general (think "accent" as a synonym of "emphasis", not "accent" as in "Scouse/Scottish/Jamaican/etc. accent"). In standard Japanese the accent falls on the mora that precedes a downstep, so a word that follows the ＬＨＨＨＨＨＨＨ・・・ pattern has a pitch pattern, but no pitch accent. I think I remember reading somewhere that around 70% of words in Japanese are accentless. I don't think this makes pitch accent unimportant for learners, but some language teachers probably do.

BTW, warakawa, you really don't have to be so goddamn condescending all the time. Makes me wonder whether you started the topic to get a straight answer to your question or in order to passive-aggressively pick a fight.

JimmySeal wrote:

warakawa wrote:

no, it would be taught from the very first day, otherwise the Japanese learners' verbal accent production (speaking) would be all random result in unnatural Japanese.

A good teacher would correct students when they pronounce a word incorrectly.  This is far more effective than trying to memorize a bunch of numbers or Hes and Ls.

This might be true. However, we don't always have a teacher available, now do we?
This forum is primarily based around self-study, and with this in mind I think it makes perfect sense to memorize the pitch of a word together with the reading / meaning.
Why?
- It's not hard at all, just add the pitch code in Anki. This takes a maximum of 2 seconds!
- It makes you more aware of pitch when listening in general, thus making immersion more efficient.
- Immersion only won't fix your pitch problems. Seriously. Stop believing in this.

Memorizing the pitch of single words is not enough though. The pitch of verb conjugations / an entire sentence is a whole different story, with a lot of variations going on. However, it will definitely help.
I can attest to this - I believed immersion was more than enough. I even got complemented on my Japanese on here. 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 I believe I have a very good ear when it comes to imitating others.
We got to face the facts - you got to work hard and TALK (not just listen) in order to sound good. There's no way around it, there is no short cut.

If people choose to ignore pitch accent in Japanese and act as if it does not exist, then so be it. Heck, I ignored it during my first 2,5 years of studying. I actually got pretty pissed off when people talked about its importance - my ego was too big for me to listen to other people's advice. It all changed when I signed up for a Japanese speech contest this winter. I wrote my speech, recorded it and sent it to some of my friends in Japan. I believed I sounded very good and prepared for compliments. However, the first thing EVERYONE said to me was: "Your accent sounds unnatural". I was shocked, I believed my accent was flawless. I couldn't hear what I was doing wrong.
I started eating some humble pie as I worked hard together with a Japanese friend in order to improve my speech - we probably spent 95% of the time working on pitch accent.
And the hard work payed off - I won the speech contest! And ever better - I got aware of the importance of pitch accent and active practice (speaking!) and have since changed my approach to learning Japanese completely!

Last edited by Zorlee (2012 August 28, 6:25 am)

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

Anyone who speaks English as their second language know how much work it is to get rid of your original accent

Memorising the tones when learning words is like memorising every on and kun when learning the kanji, too much at once. I would rather have gaijin-sounding understandable Japanese and then focus on perfecting my intonation.

all the luck to you guys trying to speak Japanese without learning pitch accent, picking tones randomly. Don't blame me when Japanese people mock behind your back like how Americans mock India accent.

Peace out.

Last edited by warakawa (2012 August 28, 7:55 am)

Zorlee wrote:

Stian wrote:

Memorising the tones when learning words is like memorising every on and kun when learning the kanji, too much at once. I would rather have gaijin-sounding understandable Japanese and then focus on perfecting my intonation.

So learning Chinese is impossible for a foreigner?
It's not harder, if anything it makes learning readings easier.

To be fair, every word/kanji in Chinese is not a guessing game like Japanese.

So with Chinese its, Kanji, meaning, reading-tone.
Japanese its Kanji, meaning, reading-pitch, reading-pitch, reading-pitch, reading-pitch...

dizmox wrote:

Having a foreign accent isn't a bad thing anyway... a Japanese girl without a Japanese accent wouldn't be as cute to me for example.

Not everyone share your fetish. I personally rather have a near native accent than a obvious foreign accent.

Zorlee wrote:

Stian wrote:

Memorising the tones when learning words is like memorising every on and kun when learning the kanji, too much at once. I would rather have gaijin-sounding understandable Japanese and then focus on perfecting my intonation.

So learning Chinese is impossible for a foreigner?
It's not harder, if anything it makes learning readings easier.

But doesn't chinese depend much more on pitches and tones? And doesn't the pitches vary a lot depending on dialects in Japanese?

warakawa wrote:

all the luck to you guys trying to speak Japanese without learning pitch accent, picking tones randomly. Don't blame me when Japanese people mock behind your back like how Americans mock India accent.

Peace out.

If you worry about getting mocked because of your accent, then you're hanging out with the wrong people. Judging by this post, though, I would assume that you are one of them.

Last edited by Stian (2012 August 28, 9:30 am)

A few questions:

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?


Are you expecting too much too soon?

Expecting perfect accent to come before even having basic fluency seems pretty naive to me. This is because part of speaking naturally comes from being able to speak at a natural speed, and that comes from being able to think at a natural speed. Ask yourself this: Are you capable of understanding something as basic as say a Doraemon cartoon easily and without subtitles in any language? How about if you were only listening to it while doing something else? Would you be able to transcribe it easily? are you hearing every little syllable correctly? Would you be able to transcribe the pitch accent based solely on what you are hearing? Are you picking up on the sentence level pitch/intonation etc and how it effects the meaning. Are you understanding the subtleties in meaning that come from how things are said? etc etc

If you were to turn on Japanese TV now and listen to people speaking about a general topic at normal speed would you be reasonably able to shadow it?


And to Zorlee specifically...
May it not perhaps be the case that producing correct pitch accent after seeing it in writing is easier for you because your native language is norwegian (which wikipedia tells me also uses pitch in a similar way to Japanese)? You can (presumedly) experiment with saying norwegian words while putting the accent on different syllables just as easily as a native english speaker can say INtonation, inTOnation, intoNAtion, INtonaTION and recognize easily when people say it differently than you do.

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.