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Pitch Accent (高低アクセント)
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Hello!
Now I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with pitch accent (sorry if I sound like I'm underestimating you guys or something, I just don't really know if is a common subject of study) or at least know what it is, but if you care about your Japanese accent, I think it's important to study.
Of course you may like having a foreign accent when speaking Japanese- it can sound nice- but for those of you like me who like to try to sound as native as possible, I really recommend working on pitch accent.
For those of you who don't know, pitch accent is basically the variation of pitches or tones on different morae/sounds in Japanese. This is basically the closest Japanese will get to a tonal system. Apparently a lot of Japanese learners feel that pitch accent is not really important, or don't know of it in the first place. A lot of Internet posts or videos claim that Japanese is a completely flat language with no tones or anything like that, but this is not necessarily true.
So this post is to tell you who don't already know some simple rules of pitch accent in Japanese.
So although Japanese is not a tonal language like Chinese, it does have a similar aspect. When studying pitch accent, think of Japanese as being divided into three tones:
low, flat, and high (this is not necessarily true, but this may make it a bit easier to understand). Also, be familiar with the word "mora", which is slightly different from a syllable as it includes sounds such as "ん", like in "へん" (it's one syllable, but two morae).
Understand that these tones, unlike Chinese, can only be determined by in relation to a different tone. There are no set tones; it all works in relation to each other.
First some vocab:
Mora- Similar to a syllable, but also contains sounds such as ん. ***See buonaparte's reply for more details 
***
Accented Mora- An accented mora is a high-toned mora that is always followed by another mora with lower pitch. If not followed by a drop in pitch, it is not considered an accented mora. I will refer to an accented mora as an "assigned pitch." ***Thanks to buonaparte for the definition fix*** Example: 神 (かみ)
Phrase- A phrase, in this case, is a noun and following particles, an adjective and its conjugations, and a verb or series of verbs and their conjugations. Example: "猫が"
Flat (平板)- A word with no pitch begins with the first mora starting out with a low tone. After that first low mora, the rest of the phrase is spoken in a flat, or medium, tone. Example: 私 （わたし）
The word 神, meaning God, can be distinguished from 髪, meaning hair, based on it's tonal pronunciation. Though they are written the same, 神 is spoken as KAmi (it has pitch on か, while 髪 is spoken as kaMI, with pitch on み. Even without tone though, you'll still be understood based on context, so don't worry too much if you don't decide to study this.
So 神 has assigned pitch on the KA, making it a high tone. A mora with assigned pitch is always followed by lower morae, until the end of the phrase or until another word with assigned pitch is met. So 神は would be pronounced as KA-mi-wa.
The rule here: A mora with a assigned pitch, or a HIGH tone, is always followed by lower morae, MEDIUM/FLAT tones.
A word with assigned pitch on a mora besides the first one is the same; all following ones are lower. Take できる for example, with assigned pitch on the き. で is flat, き is a rise because of the assigned pitch, and it drops again at る, where it will level out.
Even if a word does not have assigned pitch (which most don't), as in there are no high tones, there will still be variation among the morae, and it will not be totally flat. A tone with no pitch will have a low first or second mora, and the following ones will all be flat until either the end of the phrase or until an assigned pitch is met.
So, in Romaji, let's look at the phrase "Watashi wa".
Watashi has no assigned pitch, so its first mora, "wa" will be low, and the following ones will be flat. So it will be spoken like this:
waTASHI WA
***NOTE: When I write words in CAPS, it doesn't mean an assigned pitch, it simply means it's higher than the ones in lowercase; I wrote it like that to show contrast, not pitch.
Remember, it stays at the same tone until the end of the phrase or until a word with assigned pitch is met, whereupon it will rise, then drop again. Since the noun (Watashi) and it's particle/s (は) are in the same phrase, は is spoken at the same tone as -たし. The only different tone is that first "wa", which is lower than the rest of the word.
Now a full sentence.
**In this example, words with a low tone will be written in lowercase, words with a flat/medium tone will be written in UPPERCASE, and words with assigned pitch/high tone will be written in [bold].
HAshi WA kiSU suRU.
(I kiss the bridge.)
hashi, bridge, has an assigned pitch on shi, so it goes from a medium "ha" to a high "shi", then drops back down to a low-medium "wa" at the particle.
kisu, kiss (noun), has an assigned pitch on "ki", so its a high "ki" followed by a low-medium "su". And since "suru" (to do) has no pitch, its a low "su" followed by a flat "ru".
A slight distinction is that a mora directly following an assigned pitch could be lower than a usual flat tone, and might be in between low-medium.
Once again, if an assigned pitch is on the LAST mora of a word, the following particles/conjugations will be low-flat; they will NOT BE HIGH UNLESS THE NEXT WORD HAS ASSIGNED PITCH ON THE FIRST SYLLABLE.
Extra Info:
1) Once again, this is different from a tonal system. The tones can only be distinguished when contrasted with a different sound. It's not a set series of sounds.
2) During speech, full sentences may often change in tone, meaning that not only do words have different heights but you may hear natives' sentences begin to lower in tone throughout the sentence- this is a different matter altogether; it's like sentence intonation rather than actual pronunciation.
3) When reading/watching other tutorials on pitch accent, you will almost definitely find that other people say there are only TWO tones: low and high. The reason I have divided them into low, medium/flat, and high is because the mora of an assigned pitch is usually higher than the usual "high" mora. In other explanations, the KA in kami and the TASHI in watashi will be both regarded as high; but I have grouped them separately just to distinguish them.
WEBSITES/LINKS (these do not belong to me):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeaLEC6KO20
Great video. I got most of my info from here, as well as a few other websites. If you didn't understand my explanation, watch his. He also gives better example sentences. The reason I wrote this all was just to put it in writing and try to clarify a few things (sorry if I actually made it too complicated; I didn't mean to 
)
http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/
An online dictionary with tones. If a mora has no bar over it, its low or with no pitch. If it has a black bar over it, it is medium/high, but still with no assigned pitch. If it has a red bar above it, that's an assigned pitch, and it's high.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
This is STANDARD pitch accent, the kind you will hear on the radio. Keep in mind there are other dialects.
Lastly, if you find any mistakes in my post, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE correct me so I don't give anyone false information.
Thank you! Hope I helped and taught at least one person! 
Last edited by Socky (2013 July 16, 1:47 pm)
buonaparte wrote:
Socky wrote:
Mora- Similar to a syllable, but also contains sounds such as ん.
Pitch- A word with pitch is a word containing a high-toned mora. Example: 神 (かみ)You seem to be confusing pitch with accented mora.
Japanese spoken words are composed of morae (singular: mora). A mora is a beat, a basic unit of rhythm.
Each mora has the same length, which means each mora occupies about the same amount of time.
(A mora shouldn’t be confused with a syllable – unfortunately, it often happens. They usually say syllable but mean mora.)
Each mora in a word has a pitch (higher or lower).
Morae (moras):
short vowel 1 mora
consonant + short vowel 1 mora
long vowel 2 moras
consonant + long vowel 2 moras
っ(small tsu, to double a consonant) 1 mora,
んN (uvular) 1 mora
So, in short: one mora = one kana character. (きゃ, etc are one character of course.)
簡単 かんたん – two syllables kan-tan, four morae ka-n-ta-n.
お父さん おとうさん – three syllables o-tou-san, five morae o-to-u-sa-n
In English, Russian, Polish – dynamic accent: the accented syllable in a word is pronounced louder. (And in English and Russian unaccented syllables are significantly reduced, they are less clearly pronounced.)
In Japanese – pitch accent (pitch rises or falls). A word is considered to have an accented mora (mora = a beat, a unit of rhythm), if, and only if, a mora with a higher pitch is immediately followed by a mora with a lower pitch. No fall in pitch, no accented mora.
More about it here:
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=7082
Thank you for correcting the definitions, I'll edit it right away. I chose poor wording for the vocabulary, particularly for the word "pitch"; sorry about that 
Also thanks for explaining all the details of a mora I kept all of that out because I didn't want it to be too long, so thanks for giving more details!
Socky wrote:
Now I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with pitch accent (sorry if I sound like I'm underestimating you guys or something, I just don't really know if is a common subject of study) or at least know what it is, but if you care about your Japanese accent, I think it's important to study.
No need for the "you guys" and everything. You're one of us. And of course there are users on the board who have little to no knowledge regarding pitch - some are pretty much complete newcomers to Japanese.
Nice write-up, even if it is at times confusing. Most of all, as a reader new to this you'd be baffled by how there are words with "no pitch" (defined as "a word containing a high-toned mora") that still have morae with relatively higher tone, since everything is meant to be read in relative terms. When for example a person utters a two-morae word, how would you tell if it's going "low" to "flat" or "low" to "high"? As a reader you want answers to questions like this to feel like you know the basics, at least as I see it.
I don't know if there are any words in English which could serve as examples of rising and falling tones, or words that would work well for describing the difference between morae and syllables. If there are, using those would probably be a good way to help the reader become familiar with the concepts before applying them to Japanese. This way, they can do things one at a time instead of being faced with two possibly unfamiliar knowledge areas at once. Also, including audio links with native pronunciation of example sentences/words would help a lot to make things clearer. There are plenty of simple spoken sentences you can find with google.
Writing up explanations like this to make things more lucid for yourself is a very good method of deepening your understanding as well as retention, and using it continuously makes it a lot easier to explain things for others as well in the long run. Especially since you will be better at understanding different perspectives that depend on level of knowledge and other individual factors. It also contributes to your ability to transfer the skills you learn to new areas. For instance, if you start learning another language, or you may find unexpected analogies in e g music or natural sciences. So, keep it up
Arupan wrote:
I don't know if you're particularly interested in phonetics or not but you don't really need to know anything about it in order to have a good accent. Rather, you have to make sure that you get the sounds right when you study hiragana. Your accent can be corrected by a teacher (if he's either a native or a professional with good accent himself / herself) since it's very hard to fix afterwards once you get it wrong. It could be a bit frustrating at start, but this is also one of the (many) reasons I always recommend people to get a tutor by the way.
The thing about pitch is it's not about how your saying the character itself, but rather the pitch/tone at which you are saying it. It's distinguishing a low "ka" and a higher "KA", and through the use of pitch it distinguishes words from each other. Most Japanese people are unaware of pitch accent; it's just part of how they speak. However incorrect pitch accent is a clear sign and indicator of a foreign accent- though they don't necessarily know its rules, they can tell when your pitch accent is off.
daevil wrote:
Studying how the pitch accent works sounds like one of the most boring things one can do.
Even if it is boring, I highly suggest studying it. I personally find it fun, but then again, it is your choice to study. Besides, at the end of the day, learning a language is learning a language; you can't expect everything about it to be fun. To learn a language you need hard-work and perseverance, ESPECIALLY during the most boring times.
Inny Jan wrote:
Actually, Socky's post is a bit off. buonaparte, OTOH, did quite a good job. Either way bringing up the issue, if just as a refresher, is a good thing.
I apologize for any mistakes in the post. I just fixed up the vocabulary according to buonaparte's information. If there is anything else that you see incorrect or unclear, please let me know so that I can fix it. Perhaps in trying to simplify the subject I may have made it a bit too complicated
It sounds like you already have experience with pitch accent, but for those of you who don't, please watch the video. If my post had any mistakes or confusions, the link to the youtube video (which DOES NOT belong to me, by the way) is sure to clear it up
Surreal wrote:
Nice write-up, even if it is at times confusing. Most of all, as a reader new to this you'd be baffled by how there are words with "no pitch" (defined as "a word containing a high-toned mora") that still have morae with relatively higher tone, since everything is meant to be read in relative terms. When for example a person utters a two-morae word, how would you tell if it's going "low" to "flat" or "low" to "high"? As a reader you want answers to questions like this to feel like you know the basics, at least as I see it.
I don't know if there are any words in English which could serve as examples of rising and falling tones, or words that would work well for describing the difference between morae and syllables. If there are, using those would probably be a good way to help the reader become familiar with the concepts before applying them to Japanese. This way, they can do things one at a time instead of being faced with two possibly unfamiliar knowledge areas at once. Also, including audio links with native pronunciation of example sentences/words would help a lot to make things clearer. There are plenty of simple spoken sentences you can find with google.
Writing up explanations like this to make things more lucid for yourself is a very good method of deepening your understanding as well as retention, and using it continuously makes it a lot easier to explain things for others as well in the long run. Especially since you will be better at understanding different perspectives that depend on level of knowledge and other individual factors. It also contributes to your ability to transfer the skills you learn to new areas. For instance, if you start learning another language, or you may find unexpected analogies in e g music or natural sciences. So, keep it up
It's true, I could have added more examples/details and explanations. I truly hope nobody got too confused and was mislead in any way (which is why I really hope you watch the video, because that guy explains it much better than I did!) If my post didn't help anybody, I at least hope the links will
As my first real contribution to the forum, it's not very well explained. Next time I'll try to take some more time to explain it in a more presentable and detailed way (WITH audio! )
Thanks for the reply, it was encouraging and helpful! I'll put your tips into action for my future posts, and hopefully I can help out more then.
And yes, writing stuff like this does in fact help ME understand too... that's part of the reason I do it. Even while teaching you learn
