dizmox wrote:

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..

exactly. everyone i know, japanese or otherwise who picked up a good accent in a foreign language did so by spending a good chunk of time immersed in a country and interacting with locals.

I have been re-studying my core2000 with pitch accent, I found that most words are pitch accent type 0. So I guess you couldn't say that Japanese don't really have a pitch for most words.

Pitch accent type 1 tend to exists if there is homophone(s) for that word.

But still, I think it is important to study pitch accent from the start, it is that hard, since you have to say the words from the day one when you started Japanese, do it the right way. In the long run, it would more efficient than having to go back to fix it.

Last edited by warakawa (2012 August 30, 1:16 am)

dtcamero wrote:

you can totally get by without any pitch accent. flat japanese is perfectly acceptable. you dont NEED it. you do need grammar and vocabulary. these are things much more valuable to study through intermediate levels.

moreover I find it hard to believe that an intermediate westerner with knowledge of pitch accents could still pronounce these words correctly using pitch accent. most likely you will mangle up what was already error-riddled language into something unintelligible.

one needs to learn to speak like a gaijin with good japanese before you can try to put on a native accent... otherwise you will just sound silly.

Sure you can get by without pitch accent.

With that logic, you can get by life without learning Japanese, so why bother learning Japanese at all, it is totally unnecessary and Japanese economy is a craphole for the past two decades, most Japanese culture export have an English version of it.

Last edited by warakawa (2012 August 30, 1:37 am)

warakawa wrote:

I have been re-studying my core2000 with pitch accent, I found that most words are pitch accent type 0. So I guess you couldn't say that Japanese don't really have a pitch for most words.

Nobody said that "Japanese don't really have a pitch for most words". You pretty much re-stated what I said in my comment. Pitch accent type 0 = no pitch accent =/= no pitch.

nadiatims wrote:

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?

...

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.

Has anyone actually met someone who has managed to accelerate their acquisition of (near)native accent by studying/drilling/memorizing pitch accent?
I have!
I have improved my accent a lot since I started adding pitch to my cards in Anki. I fail a card if I get the pitch wrong, so I learn the pitch just as easily as I learn the reading of a word.

Has anyone met a non-fluent speaker with a perfect accent?
No, I haven't. Yet.

Are you expecting too much too soon?
Maybe. I don't know. All I know is that I've improved tons by studying how pitch works and how to apply it. And I definitely could've enjoyed these benefits earlier.

And about me speaking Norwegian. It probably helped some, but I still have a lot of pitch problems. So it's not like all my "pitch-knowledge" transferred nicely into a Japanese. I do however realize the importance of pitch based on my own language, which is one of the reasons why I want to improve my Japanese pitch actively.
Almost all the Norwegians I know that speak Japanese fluently have major pitch problems. Some of them speak better Japanese than me (vocab/grammar).
Two guys I spoke with had been living in Japan for 10+ years and didn't know pitch existed in Japanese. I then talked with them about the classical example "haNAGA" (nose + ga) and "haNAga" (flower + ga). They couldn't hear the difference.

AlexandreC wrote:

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.

It might be a bit of an overkill to all of a sudden add pitch notation to all your cards if you've been studying using Anki for a long time. (I added pitch notation to around 10k cards and my review load went through the roof the first weeks. Now it's back to normal, thank God!). But if you're just starting out using Anki, studying single vocabulary words, I don't see why you shouldn't add pitch notation. Learning the pitch along with the reading is not that hard, and it's SO much easier to remember it if you use Anki. Full sentence pitch etc. can't be done that easily in Anki though...

Last edited by Zorlee (2012 August 30, 2:56 am)

Yeah, it does seem that this 0 annotation for the pitch accent is confusing people. So:
1. Pitch accent occurs when there is a fall of the pitch in a word/phrase.
2. If there is no fall of the pitch, it is said that the word does not have the accent (which is indicated by number 0). It doesn't mean that the pitch is flat though.

For example, here are three syllable pitch patterns:
0 - LHH (no fall of pitch)
1 - HLL (fall of pitch is after the first syllable/mora)
2 - LHL (fall of pitch is after the second syllable/mora)
3 - LHH (fall of pitch is after the third syllable/mora. This one looks similar to 0 but note that in case of 0 the pitch doesn't fall down, whereas here it does after the last syllable/mora.)

You may also notice that after the first syllable/mora the pitch always changes - in cases other than 1 it is a rise, in the case of 1 it is a fall of the pitch.

warakawa wrote:

vonPeterhof wrote:

Pitch accent type 0 = no pitch accent =/= no pitch.

Agree, but if you re-read first page of this thread, someone said that most Japanese vocab does not have pitch accent. My comment was targeted at those people.

Pitch 0, LHHHHH.. is a pitch accent itself but to most ear it sounds as if it's flat.

At first I thought you were referring to comments by comeauch and myself, but then I noticed Necrojesta's comment, specifically the "there's no stress or pitch on most syllables" bit, which is indeed phrased rather awkwardly. Of course there's no stress in most syllables, since Japanese doesn't have stress in the first place. And if by "stress" we mean "pitch accent", then it naturally won't be in most syllables, since there only needs to be one pitch accent in a word where it occurs. As for "no pitch on most syllables", you can't really talk about syllables having pitch in isolation, because Japanese isn't a fully tonal language. The pitch of a syllable is determined in relation to the other syllables in the word. This relative pitch exists in all sylllables that are part of words and sentences, even in words that aren't accented.

Stian wrote:

Zorlee, I just looked up pitch accent. Is it basically the same as how we pronounce "bønder" and "bønner" differently?

Yes, that's correct.
Using pitch notation:
Bønder 1
Bønner 2

partner55083777 wrote:

dizmox wrote:

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.

I feel like you might as well be saying "I think the idea of trying to learn a language by memorising the definition of every conceivable word is unrealistic and silly... that's something that'll only be really achieved through attentive listening and mimicry."

I agree with you that attentive listening and mimicry are really important, but memorizing the pitches of words is something that Anki would make really easy.  It wouldn't even be that different from memorizing the reading of kanji compounds.  It's just another piece of information. 

Also, Zorlee is saying that memorizing the pitch of words really helped.  How can you be making the statement that it's silly and unhelpful?

I meant I would find it very difficult and time consuming to remember where accents go on thousands/tens of thousands of words... it seems to me that once you've realised that pitch accent exists and can hear the difference you should be able to pick it up from audio information alone.

If someone can't hear the difference at all, I don't see how they'd be able to make great use of the L/H notation.

dizmox wrote:

partner55083777 wrote:

dizmox wrote:

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.

I feel like you might as well be saying "I think the idea of trying to learn a language by memorising the definition of every conceivable word is unrealistic and silly... that's something that'll only be really achieved through attentive listening and mimicry."

I agree with you that attentive listening and mimicry are really important, but memorizing the pitches of words is something that Anki would make really easy.  It wouldn't even be that different from memorizing the reading of kanji compounds.  It's just another piece of information. 

Also, Zorlee is saying that memorizing the pitch of words really helped.  How can you be making the statement that it's silly and unhelpful?

I meant I would find it very difficult and time consuming to remember where accents go on thousands/tens of thousands of words... it seems to me that once you've realised that pitch accent exists and can hear the difference you should be able to pick it up from audio information alone.

If someone can't hear the difference at all, I don't see how they'd be able to make great use of the L/H notation.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree.
It's not very hard nor very time consuming. (I'm talking about learning pitch of isolated words in Anki). If you're going to use Anki to remember thousands of words to begin with, I don't see why you shouldn't add pitch intonation as well. It might be hard in the beginning, just like when you start out learning readings of kanji, but when you've done 50 words or so it will become MUCH easier, I promise. And it's not like everything is random - there are a lot of patterns when it comes to pitch which will make it easier for you to guess the pitch of a new word (the patterns are not bulletproof, but better than nothing).
And about not being able to hear the difference - this is solved by practicing. Ideally with a native speaker. Just like a Chinese student must spend some time on drilling pronunciation and tones with a native speaker, a Japanese student should spend time with a Japanese native getting pitch down. And yes, I do believe that this can be learned by everyone. Just listening won't do, you must practice saying words out loud, together with a native speaker. Recording yourself would also be a great idea

PS: I guess I better change my avatar soon. I'm a guy, not a girl, haha The girl in my avatar is Hiromi Uehara, a GREAT jazz pianist. Check her out if you haven't, you will be blown away!

Last edited by Zorlee (2012 August 30, 5:24 am)

I guess there's no harm in having the pitch accents noted down in Anki as well as copying the audio (not sure how to find/add them easily though).

I met a Japanese person who studied in Liverpool for six months and managed to pick up the accent in that time just from being surrounded by Liverpudlians, so it is possible to pick up accent naturally... given the right state of mind and enough exposure anyway. I don't want to believe that it's an inborn ability that only some people can ever be capable of.

Last edited by dizmox (2012 August 30, 5:47 am)

Hmm, I couldn't get the plugin to work for me either, replied to the thread and asked for help  http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?p … 4#p185164.

And sorry, I edited my post after you quoted it..

Last edited by dizmox (2012 August 30, 6:01 am)

yudantaiteki wrote:

Nobody says that you should ignore tones in Chinese or pick them up automatically rather than studying them -- because you really do need the tones to make your Chinese comprehensible.

For what it's worth, I'm ignoring tones in my studies of chinese. I'm not saying people should do this. I'll have to wait and see how well it actually works out.

All I know is that when I first started and tried saying things with correct tones it was a massive pain in the arse. But it'll need to be next to effortless if I hope to apply it during fluent speech. I'm happy for my accent to be a bit crappy for the first three years or so, just as a native baby's is.

Zorlee, how well are you able to apply deliberately learned pitch when speaking fluently?
I remember a while ago you posted a recording, and I commented that your accent wasn't as good as a previous one you had posted perhaps because you weren't speaking spontaneously. You agreed that your pronunciation was worse for a lot of words you weren't accustomed to hearing all the time. Does that not point somewhat to the conclusion that a major part of getting pronunciation right is just being very very used to hearing how things are said? Was that recording made before you started working on your pitch?

It seems most of the japanese people I know with the best accents actually treated the subject extremely non-academically and just spent a bunch of time overseas. Often their grammar would be worse than their pronunciation. I've even met and correctly guessed that people have spent time in places like Singapore, Thailand and Philippines because of the accents they picked up without even realizing it. No japanese person spends time deliberately trying to acquire such accents.