Linguists like to describe and classify phenomena that occur in languages. Pitch accent is one of those details of a language that the average learner will get close to naturally, but needn't worry about. Pitch accent, or lack of it, is not important to communication or comprehension. FREE Language Learning Resources 10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/ My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/ The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/ My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingostevepodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870 --- Social Media Instagram ⇢ instagram.com/lingosteve_/ TikTok ⇢ www.tiktok.com/@lingosteve Facebook ⇢ facebook.com/lingosteve Twitter ⇢ twitter.com/lingosteve LingQ Discord ⇢ discord.gg/ShPTjyhwTN
@@exponentzero What elementary Japanese book is used at Columbia University? How did you like it? I referenced a good intonation text in a different comment here.
@@exponentzero For beginners, Minna no Nihongo is popular in Japan-based language schools and Genki is popular in US universities. MNH is entirely in Japanese and at an accelerated pace. According to my teachers, some content is missing; that is highlighted in the teacher's manuals, so makes self-learning a bit challenging. Genki seems to be well edited and a more gentle introduction to Japanese targeted to western students. I can see why it is popular; you just need to blow through a lot of pages every day to make progress. Intermediate Japanese textbooks are more of a challenge and I did not see a favourite text in Japan. Many schools create their own materials and use JLPT materials. One school in Shin-Okubo used the Somatome JLPT book but you should know most students are Chinese or Koreans looking to enter Japanese university so are on an accelerated track to pass the JLPT exam (and get fluent enough for university). I also see students with Tobira, Integrated Approach, MNH intermediate books; Quartet is the newest intermediate text to the market so might be worth a look.
@@exponentzero My teachers in Japan said that there were some good beginner books, the intermediate books were not good enough. So to clarify, I didn't see many people with either Tobira or Integrated Approach, but have seen some complaints. I sense MNN missing materials are more obvious for the earlier chapters of the first book, such as counters, conjugations, and some subtle grammar points slid in the chapter without explinations. Additionally, the keigo section is weak. Separate kanji book is needed. One needs more questions, reading, listening (one could buy the separate books in the series but they are expensive). You can pick up some of this with a different beginner textbook or JLPT drill books.
@@exponentzero You can look for supplemental keigo materials elsewhere when you get to the section. I have seen that other intermediate textbook before but am not sure how popular it is; publishers periodically release newer competing texts so no surprise. BTW - your kanji comments were not edited by Steve. RUclips is buggy so you need to open the video page to see all comments, not just click on the bell.
Hi Steve, I know you couldn't remember my name, so I will introduce myself here. I am George Trombley from "Japanese From Zero!". I appreciate you taking time to let us know your thoughts on the pitch accent debate. I would love to have a conversation with you one of these days about language in general.
There is a native Japanese polyglot (English and Chinese nearly native) RUclipsr: Yudai Sensei. He creates videos mainly about Japanese pronunciation and language origin. He details how he thought to correct his pitch accent when he was younger (as a native who grew up with a heavy dialect) and why he did so and his current thoughts about doing so and the importance of pitch accent. I enjoy using LingQ and your content but I think I would suggest relying on Yudai's videos for those wishing to draw their own opinions on this instead (tailored to your learning objectives). His advice is more detailed than saying it's either A or it's B. If I get by without something that doesn't mean that it lacks importance. I think there is value in knowing about pitch accent for the purpose of improving communication. Whether you benefit from that value depends on your needs. Maybe it's that some people find your voice more appealing. Maybe without it your voice sounds more entertaining to some. Maybe I don't think it's very useful or can't find a way that it would come in handy but that doesn't mean that other people won't. Sorry, this video was too black and white for me. I think there is a gray area.
It's nice to hear different opinions of a mostly two sided debate without being rude. I think that it all comes to the needs of each person, so yeah, it could be that this isn't a matter of a black or white area.
Nothing is important in isolation. People can get by in the English without distinguishing between the æ and ɛ, or ɛ and ei. You get by without the past tense or by speaking with the wrong stress all the time. Yeah sure, we can usually tell by the context, but it does hinder communication; all these things give your listeners a pause. Do you go around telling people to ignore æ and ɛ just because there are many variations and they overall don't impede communication? What about "the" and "a"? Should a teacher who doesn't fully understander the concept say "I am good in other aspects of English but don't quite get articles. Hey I get by! They have never impeded communication. It's stupid to learn it." As a teacher, you are doing students a huge disservice if you don’t at least point out stress/pitch accent to students. Not everyone can naturally pick it up like us. Though not often, I’ve encountered many students who can not pick up the correct sounds or pitch and they are not easy to understand. My biggest beef with yours and George’s stance is you assume everyone can naturally pick it up like you guys did and ignoring the fact that not everyone can. Nothing needs mastering but you don't get to decide what is important for a student/your viewer. If one of your viewers happens to be tone-deaf then having the awareness of pitch is a necessity. Hey student learning American English! Your accent sounds like a combination of Scottish + Appalachian + Singaporean which are all pretty niche and not easily understandable to a regular American person, but that’s ok, right? Wait…. I thought the goal is to learn what facilitates communicate…....? “I put a piece of shit on the bitch” still sounds like “I put a piece of shit on the bitch” even if we know you meant to say “I put a piece of sheet on the beach.” Likewise, 運行しているstill sounds likeウンコしている even if native speakers know what you are trying to say.
There is something distinctly artificial about Dogen's Japanese. It could just be his demeanour, but it isn't natural. Its too self-conscious, I think. Its more like he is talking at than talking to, in the end.
It does exist, Japanese people do know about it (they don't refer to it as 高低アクセント, but as イントネーション, or just notice that it is off). Just as you say, it is not necessary for people to understand you (not like tones in Chinese). Yes it is true you need to imitate it, but there are lots of people who despite living in Japan for a long time and otherwise imitating other parts of the language, because they don't understand how it is linked to the pronunciation of the word (they use the patterns that they picked up imitating from Japanese people, but kind of just apply them randomly (my room mate is like this)). Thus, learning that pitch accent exists and paying attention to imitating it as an aspect of the pronunciation of the word (rather than just a common inflection pattern that is used for emphasis and such) goes a long way in improving pronunciation. No this is not necessary for communication on a primary level, but sounding more like a native can help natives feel more more comfortable around you and this will influence communication. The meaning of what you are saying is the same, but the impression it gives off to natives is different. Should you focus on perfection, only if you want to be a NHK announcer or otherwise want to. Should you know it exists and give it some attention, yes, if you want to improve your pronunciation. Is is something you need to know? No. Is is the most important thing you can do to improve your language, not unless you already have native level command of vocabulary and can basically express yourself how you want. As a side point, I totally agree that your Japanese is very good and definitely enough for communication, but the fact that you "never though about pitch accent" does show. You imitate many other areas exceptionally well, but your pronunciation does not sound Japanese. This is not fundamentally a problem, but it is apparent.
@@Thelinguist what you say is true in most cases, but i would feel pretty comfortable letting dogen or matt vs japan assess my pitch accent, wouldn't you?
“It sounds as if you don’t speak the language very well” That’s exactly the argument for pitch accent, it makes you sound better and it makes it a more pleasant experience for everyone
@@Thelinguist nope but Japanese people have said this to me and if you think about stress in English, it’s a bit jarring to hear a word stressed incorrectly and it’ll be the same for the wrong pitch pattern in Japanese
@@Thelinguist Are you? If only native speakers can judge its importance then you are in no position to judge it or the lack thereof either. Hypocrite. Makes no sense.
You know damn well that he made this video because of the recent pitch accent debate between Matt vs japan and George lol. It's nice to also hear another polyglot's opinion on this
I really think Steve is an amazing language learner and has interesting things to say, but after reading the comments, I'm kinda disappointed on how he's responding to criticism from his fans. Is he actually just gonna respond to everyone's opinion (even people who appear to have vast experience with japanese) with comments like "Only natives can have an opinion on that", "Are u japanese?", Or just getting defensive about his pronunciation when people (very respectfully) dare to mention that he sounds kind of "foreign"? Most of the criticism in the comments was quite reasonable and not agressive in any way, maybe it would be a good idea to actually listen to what people have to say...
It doesn't surprise me. Like many online polyglots, the goal is not to improve or hear constructive criticism but to constantly fudge on the definition of fluency and get praised for saying a few phrases about his favorite topics with words slapped together from two or more Romance languages.
Serbo-Croatian native speaker here. I notice right away when someone says something in a wrong pitch accent, we even used to make fun of each other if someone’s mistakes the pitch when we were kids. Anyway it’s not really important for speaking/comprehension in general because only a very small amount of words are differentiated with pitch accent. But you definitely can’t sound like a native speaker without paying attention to it because it’s easily noticeable to native ears
hi, i am wondering if i want to learn Serbo-croat. I know that now it is classified as 2 different languages. If i learn Croat will serbs understand me perfectly ?
@@joshuasamuel2122 hmm yes and no honestly. There’s some difference between Japanese pitch accent and Serbian one. I payed attention to the common ones like 雨飴、神紙、切る着る etc but ordinarily I’m not too extreme I just care more about remembering new vocab and improving my speaking ability currently
As a native Japanese speaker, I would advise Japanese learners to learn pitch accent. After watching the pitch accent videos of Mr. Kaufmann, Dogen, and Matt (from Matt vs Japan) and listening to their Japanese, I’m now fairly convinced native English speakers aren’t able to pick up Japanese accent just through imitation. It is true Mr. Kaufmann speaks very good Japanese and I certainly don’t have any problem in understanding his Japanese speech, but I would much rather listen to his English. Whether you like it or not, people judge you by your accent. That’s why Japanese native speakers also soften their regional accent when they come to Tokyo for smooth communication.
Pitch accent makes it easier to speak, especially linking phrases. It's not that hard to learn the basics and shadowing helps. Japanese without pitch accent sounds odd; it is similar but not quite as brutal as asking a question in English without the rising intonation at the end of the sentence. IMHO.
So my Japanese sounds odd? Or is my intonation in Japanese, something that I have acquired simply by listening and being with Japanese people, good enough without me having to spend any time studying pitch accent?
@@Thelinguist I think you have acquired Japanese pitch accent from living in Japan for 9 years. Your specialization in foreign language helps. For intermediate learners, I think a little bit of pitch accent study and shadowing helps, but very little time should be invested IMHO.
@@Thelinguist Yours doesn't, but many language learners do despite many years of learning their target language. Please don't forget that not everyone is like you who can achieve the same thing doing exactly what you are doing. Many students NEED that awareness to pick it up.
"especially linking phrases." the more i focus on pitch the more i'm finding this to be the case, i think because japanese has no spaces those fluctuations in pitch can be incredibly helpful to differentiate words/grammar.
Pitch accent also exists in Swedish and Norwegian. Both languages have many short words with many words that sound similar to each other. The trickiest people for me to understand as a native Swedish speaker with fluent Norwegian are people who neither manages to pronounce things currently and also have the wrong pitch. I have no clue about Japanese but I think this is a part of noticing things in a language. I'm not sure if I would recommend people to focus on it in the beginning but there are many foreigners who are tricky to understand because they never learn the melody of the language.
@@thetakeover51 Well, in theory people in Great Britain speak the same language, but they have such different accents that even if they do not use regional vocabulary, it is still tricky to understand them. Even if you learn RP, it might make it tricky in certain areas.
@@NetAndyCz I like that comparison. Sometimes it's really difficult to understand a thick scottish accent, say, but then with time and context there is barely an issue
@@thetakeover51 It is possible to understand someone who do not use the pitch accent but it makes it trickier . Also just like you said it is not used everywhere and it is not the same in all parts of where Swedish is spoke.
Pitch accent is arguably much less important in languages such as Swedish and Norwegian than it is in Japanese, because these languages have more phonemes and fewer homophones than Japanese does.
Followed you and watched all your videos for six years or more now. I love how I know exactly what you’re going to say without even watching the video 🤣
As for native Korean speaker, some learners from Korea have a hard time with Japanese pitch accent(we call it 억양 or 인토네이션) at the beginning stage. Because especially Seoul dialect tend to flatten all of accents, ups and downs in each sentence or word. I'm from Busan, and Busan dialect has very strong accent like Japanese. At any rate, I think most learners at the beginning stage, have a hard time with that. But as time has gone on, especially the people who are sensitive to accent just naturally have got the perfect accent as much as they can assimilate in Japanese society right off the bat and nobody can tell him or her from natives. I know a lot of people who works at Japanese company, have already got to the level like this. I think accent is important since that could be used as criteria as to whether we can smoothly assimilate with the whole society or not. But I've never met someone who get himself into very intensive pitch accent learning and made it to the level I said. All they have done before is to imitate as much as they can, and on top of that, the environment surrounding them was the most important thing. Human incessantly get used to environment he or she is surrounded by. And the accent is one of the things naturally acquired during the process.
Just a fun fact for you a Korean speaker (from a non-Korean speaker): Korean used to have more tones back in the day, three as a matter of fact, and I think that having two (aka pitch accent) is easier than having three I must say
I feel like everyone is misinterpreting the concept of pitch accent; every comment I see keeps saying things such as "Sounding native-like is not important, so pitch accent isn't all that important." You do know that you can have perfect pitch accent and still sound like a foreigner, right? Pitch accent is only a portion of the pronounciation process and in my opinion (as a native speaker of Tagalog, another pitch accent language), pitch accent is the MOST important part of that process. Sure, native speakers will still understand you and obviously you sound like a foreigner but that's not the problem of not acquiring decent pitch accent. The problem is that native speakers will often experience some inconvenience within your speech due to irregular pitch being used; they'll often hear you say things in a different pitch that they never heard before that it might take them a few more seconds to understand what you're trying to say. It might not be as strict as the tones used in Chinese languages but improper pitch makes it harder for the speaker to comprehend you. You might argue that the context would make it obvious, but you have no idea how sensitive pitch-accent native speakers' ears are when it comes to hearing pitch. Hearing a certain pitch gets the nuance of the word right through their brain (kind of complicated to explain) and hearing it in another pitch will often give away nuance of a different word. There were even moments where I never even realized two different words with different pitch had the same spelling that I was surprised when I heard a foreigner make that pitch-mistake off my language lol. So in my opinion based on my experience, pitch accent is VERY important for the convenience of native-speakers, although I don't think it is most important.
Is it just me, or did his edit of him multiple times when displaying his English tones, give you hyperfocus on what he was saying? That was wierd, and satisfyingly cool!!
Agree with you completely on this. I think people like Matt discourages people to learn by trying to make the importance of pitch accent more than it really is. I’m like you, currently living in Japan, (on my 3rd year) speak fluent Japanese (even teaching 70 minute lessons at cram school in complete Japanese) and have been told that my pronunciation is like a Japanese person and I have never even heard about pitch accent until just recently. Just keep listening and mimicking the Japanese you hear everyone, just like Steve said :)
But Matt has literally said that you don't have to learn pitch accent, you can still make yourself understood without doing it right. Matt is arguing that it doesn't take much time at all to learn the basics of pitch accent, and doing this along with being aware of pitch accent when listening will help you learn to speak a little more naturally. Hardcore learning pitch accent to near perfection is for those who have a hardcore goal, no one in this RUclips discussion has suggested that everyone has to learn pitch accent. In conclusion, I doubt a single person is going to be meaningfully discouraged by Matt when he, just like everyone else, has said that you don't have to learn it.
Pitch accent and intonation are not the same right? Or maybe pitch accent is a flavor of intonation? Either way pitch accent as it pertains to Japanese changes the literal meaning of many words. Imitating native speakers in this sense is not effective since you cannot imitate what you are not aware of. But what I do agree with is that in the grand scheme of things it is not as important as communication and comprehension.
Steve, with respect, you did not mention Matt nor did you watch his video. His argument is that you spend 1 hour on Dogen's course and you will learn the basics and how to listen for it in all future Japanese studies. I do not speak Japanese, but this seems like a no brainer. He also argued you cannot say something you don't understand is unimportant.
If someone's aim in learning Japanese is communication, to live and work in Japan or to be able to fully enjoy the company and culture of Japanese people, and they succeed in learning the language fluently to a level that allows them to do just that - but they have never formally studied pitch accent (and therefore don't understand it - much like native speakers often don't understand it - they aren't all linguists after all!) and therefore they retain a distinctly 'foreign' accent, then yes they are still perfectly entitled to claim that studying pitch accent is unimportant. Because it has not been a hindrance to them achieving their aims nor an important aspect of what helped them achieve those aims.
The key thing is as you said simply to imitate what you hear in the language. And the reality of languages is that they're fluid. Just because you know a language doesn't mean that you will understand all the accents that exist for that language and you won't necessarily understand natives with unique ways of speaking the language. So a focus on exposure and time with the language is more important than small details that don't impede comprehension. The only time you should focus on pronounciation is when, like you said, it is important for people to understand you.
"Language is about communication, it's not a performance sport" Glad to see you've joined the discussion Steve! Great to hear your perspective on this (and your thoughts on the vaccine lol)
Communication means different things to different people. If by communication you mean getting your ideas across one way or another and having native speakers dumb down their messages, then sure. It's probably going to do for most work-related purposes unless you try to socialize with your coworkers. But if you plan on integrating into a foreign society or simply establishing close, intimate relationships with native speakers of your target language, prosody, phonetics and non-verbal cues are crucial. They bring down barriers and build a lot more bridges than a rich vocabulary or ideal grammar would. In many cultures, you will always be hitting a glass wall if your pronunciation is not so close to the ideal that native speakers either don't notice it at all or feel that something is off so rarely that they don't really register it as a foreign accent.
@@Limemill I think I see what you're saying but with respect, tell that to the non-native English speakers living in Ireland, the UK, Australia or Canada who don't sound like a local per se, but are good enough that people can understand them. Given enough time in the country, they get better at the language but at the beginning they'll sound like a foreigner. First time for everything. Japanese people trying to speak English will oftentimes retain their native accent even if they speak well, but if they don't care, why should anyone else? It's alarming how people lack self-respect and confidence that they take so seriously what others think of them. If you are compassionate and can be understood, who cares if your pronunciation is not quite on the dot? Some people here fail to understand or realize it doesn't matter how well you speak a language if you're boring, arrogant, or just unpleasant to be around.
@@michaelrespicio5683 Well, there is definitely a certain barrier between native speakers and immigrants who polished their accents and non-verbal communication and the rest of the immigrants. This is especially felt in the States, though. Of course you can still communicate, if you have lots of charisma you'll probably be able to even establish intimate connections, but if not you'll mostly have functional relations with people around you. No doubt, they will be helpful and nice, but something will always rub them the wrong way just a bit, and that bit makes one hell of a difference when it comes to *truly* integrating. Also, there are particular countries with hyper-centralized accents like Japan, Russia, most of the former Soviet countries, France and a bunch of others where your accent and mannerisms must be close to impeccable for people to truly accept you as an equal. I've actually witnessed a couple of German guys in Russia at an event held by Goethe Institute, where one of the guys spoke perfect Russian with ideal grammar and a massive vocabulary but had a slight but noticeable accent, whereas the other regularly made grammatical mistakes and mostly said stupid things, but had a near-native accent and could swear and gesticulate like a native. The latter was BY FAR the more popular interlocutor that night
To provide further proof to my claims on the subconscious bias of native speakers towards non-native ones: qz.com/624335/the-reason-you-discriminate-against-foreign-accents-starts-with-what-they-do-to-your-brain/ horizon-magazine.eu/article/why-do-people-discriminate-against-speakers-foreign-accents.html www.researchgate.net/publication/342160611_Foreignness_or_Processing_Fluency_On_Understanding_the_Negative_Bias_Toward_Foreign-Accented_Speakers www.researchgate.net/publication/331624304_Short_exposure_to_a_foreign_accent_impacts_subsequent_cognitive_processes www.researchgate.net/publication/330380663_Language_crossing_and_linguistic_racism_Mongolian_immigrant_women_in_Australia
Like you said (about noticing), I'd say about the pitch accent (in Japanese): just "be aware" it exist (with a couple of examples, should take five minutes or so) (which is probably better not knowing at all about it) and then keep immersing yourself with content (passive / active listening, maybe building vocabulary database like "lingquing", etc...) I suppose it will come "naturally". Anyway, in my case, I stopped trying to learn forcefully (pitch) accent because I still can't remember where is the accent for an English word like 'record' where the accent is different if I'm referring to the verb or to the noun :p
If pure communication is your goal, you don't need to pay attention to accents, grammar and word usage since people can understand you in any language. But if your goal is not to bother a native with your incomplete skills of Japanese or any other language and sound like a foreigner who will never be able to speak the language really well, you should pay attention to every aspect of a language, even pronunciation. For me as a German and for every other German I know, we usually can understand everything but even the slightest foreign accent really makes us tired after listening at it for a while. Having an accent free pronunciation is easier to listen to than a wrong grammar. As far as I know this applies to other languages as well or how do English native speakers think of Russians and Spaniards holding a speech for 2 hours with their accents compared to natives? When you start learning a language and get accustomed to pronounce words in a wrong way, you will have a hard time to relearn that. So better start with a right pronunciation if you actually want to speak.
お疲れ様でした、スティーブさん！Your insights after having learned so many languages are very valuable in this debate. Thank you for the awesome work you do! 我听过你的粤语！好棒啊！
Steve, why do you think everyone should focus merely on "communication or comprehension" as you do? Perhaps to some people, it's important to speak closer to native-like pronunciation than you do in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and other languages I have heard you speak in. You don't have to have this as a goal but you do seem to have a problem with people who want to reach a higher degree of competence in a language than you do.
@@anthony9356 They're both good, but Dogen was likely mentioned because he offers dedicated courses on pitch accent. Matt discusses it quite a bit, but doesn't offer as many resources for learning it.
@@anthony9356 how is Matt better when Matt doesn't teach it? If you're talking about how good they are with pitch accent then they're both good. It's difficult to actually compare lol
Every language has meter, accent, and regional variation. But Japanese is the only language I know where vocabulary is taught pointing out which syllable is accented. Around 80% of Japanese live in Type I accent regions and naturally accent their vocabulary about the same as announcers and all our learning dialogues. Maybe 13% live in Kansai and proudly use a variant, just as Texans do in the US. umBRÉLLa vs ÚMbrella is regional; but ameRÍCan and JaPÁNese are foreign.
If you can't hear pitch then you cannot hear how lacking your accent is. Not everyone has to care about accent, but if you do then pitch is one of the things you need to be aware of. Whether something is "important" or not should not be even a subject of debate. It's important to some and unimportant to others. People can't make that decision wisely unless they have all the information, and that's why people like Matt and Dogen talk about pitch accent, to spread information. I don't understand the wave against a couple people trying to spread awareness.
@@Thelinguist Is that relevant to the point I just made? But let's address you point anyway. You speak Chinese, Steve, but you're not a native speaking of Chinese. Does that mean you can't tell when a foreigner gets his tones wrong?
@@Thelinguist Are you? If only native speakers can judge then why are you here judging if something that you can not even perceive is important or not in a language that's not your native? I usually like your content but the way you have been carrying yourself under this video is making me lose respect for you.
As I have said before 1) tones in Chinese are not like pitch accent in Japanese, not even close 2) Only a native speaker's opinion matters on whether someone sounds native, or if someone is hard to understand. The awareness of pitch is not important in learning to speak Japanese, even to speak it well. Once you have a achieved a decent level in Japanese, good comprehension, strong ability to express yourself, large vocabulary, then at that time, if you are interested, by all means look into pitch is what I recommend. I have looked at this issue, and that is my conclusion. But those interested in pitch will go for it whenever they want, I just hope it does not' distract them from learning the language.
@@Thelinguist I grew up learning English and Chinese in school, so I speak both languages. I've also been studying Japanese for a few years, and have lived in Japan for a year. I disagree that tones in Chinese are, as you say, "not even close" to what pitch accent is in Japanese. It has often been said that if you get your tones wrong in Chinese, people will not understand you. This is NOT always true. For example, if you say "Wo xiang chi fan" (which means I want to eat) in a flat tone Chinese, you will probably be understood. The bigger reason why foreigners have so much trouble being understood is usually more because of their pronunciation rather than tones. Having said that, of course tones matter in comprehension, this is especially so when context of the words are less easily discernable. The same is true of Japanese. With poor pitch accent, you can still be understood most of the time. However, in certain circumstances, if you use a wrong pitch accent and the context does provide the listener enough clues, Japanese people WILL have trouble understanding what you say. This has happened to me quite a few times. Now the reason why I think pitch accent is not taught in Japan the way tones are taught in China is because it is a lot less structured than Chinese tones. Each word in Chinese has a fixed tone which rarely changes. Pitch accent in Japanese is a lot more fluid and can vary depending on the sentence. It doesn't mean pitch accent does not exist or is not important. Secondly, I think that Japanese speakers with POOR pitch accent are also saved by the fact that Japanese pronunciation is easy and they are at least pronouncing the word right. There is no such saving grace for Chinese learners as pronunciation is extremely difficult so if both your tones and pronunciation is wrong, it is unlikely you will be understood. Having said this, I do agree that the detail that Dougen goes into might be a bit too extreme for regular Japanese learners, but I believe that even beginners need to at least JUST BE AWARE that pitch accent exists and is something they should listen out. I don't know why people would discourage learning about it.
I don't think pitch accent is something you memorize. It's something you imitate after hearing repeatedly. I never memorized intonations in English, but I got pretty good at it anyway, just by constant input for years.
This is true, although it is important to learn to notice the pitch accent when you hear it. Otherwise it just goes over your head. That's where study can help.
If you want to sound better than an occasional tourist, then "yes". Stress accent is critical if your goal is fluency -- you can't get away with ignoring key aspects of a language for your own convenience and comfort -- your lack of skill at proper pronunciation and cadence is exhausting for the native listener as your errors cause them to have to work harder to understand you. It may not be as critical as with a tonal language but you will be saying the wrong word forcing the listener to correct your meaning by context, which gets annoying and tiresome after awhile.
Sounds like his main point here is that focusing on pitch accent isn't as important as focusing on vocabulary and general command of the language. I agree, and I haven't heard anyone claim otherwise. Thing is, even though the core of language is communication, many language learners study for fun. What's wrong with a learner being curious and going deeper into the mechanics of the language if that's something they're interested in? We know that consciously studying grammar does not directly lead to acquisition, yet some people study it regardless - out of genuine curiosity. Sounds like Steve would agree with me on this too, but I don't understand the recent negativity in the community surrounding curiosity in pitch accent.
I'm not saying people shouldn't study pitch accent if they are interested. I even directed them to Doogen's videos. I'm just saying it isn't necessary nor even important in the study of Japanese. I, and most people who have learned Japanese, have never paid it much attention. It's just a way of focusing attention a detail of the language which will usually be acquired naturally, and if it isn't acquired fully, it won't impede communication.
@@Thelinguist Definitely, I agree with you on all of this. Sorry if it sounded like I was disagreeing on that point, that wasn't my intention. You did say throughout the video that you're open to people focusing on pitch if they're interested. However, I don't think the rest of the community shares that open-mindedness. I often see this discussion turn into "I'm not curious about this, so you shouldn't be either", or on the other side, "I'm curious about this, and here's why you're wrong for not sharing my learning priorities". It's unfortunate to see gatekeeping around curiosity and interests in a community where many of us learn for fun.
This might be a stupid question but Im so curious to know if anyone else has ever thought of this when it comes to pitch accent languages in general. Im swedish and we also use a form of pitch accent and it is very important for us that you take of your shoes in the hallway before entering the house. I dont know much about japanese culture but I feel like that is also important in Japan, probably ever more so than in Sweden. To take your shoes off i mean. The same goes for south korea and other pitch language countries too, right? I find this coincidence funny but i wonder, could it mean something? Pitch accent users, european and asian = we take of our shoes?
@darkwing dook I know that taking your shoes off is etiquette and not the same as pitch accent....but i still find it a funny coinscidence that both asians and scandinavians take our shoes of as an etiquette and custom and we also have pitch accent languages. "you know how a person from kyushu was being bullied when moved to tokyo because he was speaking with his local accent? so much that he changed his accent to tokyo. " This is also true in sweden atleast, cant speak for norway. Theyve tried to erradicate our dialects for years in sweden, calling dialects ugly or barbaric as you say and pushing the stockholm accent when thats not even considered a pure accent. "kyushu was being bullied when moved to tokyo because he was speaking with his local accent?" Yup this also happens., all the time. :) Dont mean to smile about that, im just smiling about the similarities in two very different cultures.
There are some words in Russian that require pitch accent, zámok and zamók. (A Castle and a lock). Chinese languages are pitch-pitch as hell! Damn tones!
I very much agree with this: my first foreign language is Swedish. However, since I'm from Finland, we tend to learn the Finnish Swedish pronunciation which doesn't have a pitch accent and sounds more like Finnish (I had no idea what pitch accent was, we just said we don't "sing" like the Swedes). I haven't had any issues in Sweden with my accent and it doesn't hinder my understanding of the Swedes either. Mainly people tend to forget that it's a foreign language for me because "I speak it so well". Also, at least in the languages I speak, this can depend who is speaking. For example no one speaks like the newscasters in real life. They tend to go down at the end of their sentences (this apparently makes them sound more convincing) than people do in everyday speech. I think the problem is that there are usually much worse errors than the pitch accent in your pronunciation if a native speaker can't understand you.
I sort of feel you get a free pass for not using pitch accent. I might be wrong but I think the version of Swedish you speak is an official dialect. So it is not wrong per se. Swedes are also similar to Japanese people in the sense that they are likely to compliment people on their Swedish even if it is not very good (I'm not referring to you here, just in general). It's more about the effort than the ability so to speak. If the pitch is flat it is not so much of a problem I feel. But if the pitch is reversed it can get a bit confusing (albeit for a very short time...). It might seem like a small difference but the words sound totally different to native speakers. That said, your last sentence I totally agree with.
Nothing is important in and of itself, if taken in isolation. But in languages like Japanese, pitch accent is a vital part of communication. Take a look at words like 橋 and 箸 or 雨 and あめ or 酒 and 鮭. All of these words have completely different meanings if the pitch accent is changed, and can lead to misunderstanding, or at the very least, confusion. I haven't delved into this debate very deeply, because I think such debates are frankly unnecessary. Everyone has different goals for learning the language. If you only want to learn it casually or for some day to day communication, then it may not matter so much. But if your goal is to achieve the fluency and sound of a native speaker, and work in a majority Japanese environment, which became mine over 10 years, then it is going to matter, especially in contexts where you have to use keigo, or formal language. And I respectfully disagree with Steve. In contexts such as that, more formal ones, it does indeed become somewhat of a performance. How your keigo sounds is just as important of a part of communicating as using the right words and being able to string them together. So at the end of the day, pitch accent will be important or not, depending on your goals. And you can indeed pick it up just by listening and immitating, that was what I did until later on when I did a bit of studying. So if the argument is that it's not necessary to spend hours and hours studying it, then I agree. But I also think it is a vital concept to be aware of.
Hello I want to speak more or less 5 to 6 languages. I'm a portuguese native speaker, I've been studying english on my own for 5 months and the languages I want to speak are Spanish, because it's close to portuguese and I think it will be easier to learn, French because I like the intonation, Japanese because I'm a great fan of the culture and I do like anime. Maybe after accomplishing the ones I mentioned I'll try another one. And I hope that this comment is correct kkk.
@@thyagosilva1973 your english is so good! i’m a native english speaker and i have been studying spanish for a while, i like to think that my spanish level is good but there is still a lot more room for improvement, some other languages i want to learn are french, mandarin chinese and norwegian. but there are definitely many more that i would like to learn
@@thyagosilva1973 man, I'm also learning english and I intend to study japanese in the future for the same reason as you, I love the culture and I love animes like Attack on titan, ONE PIECE and One punch man. I'm from brazil and my dad speaks german because he lived in Germany when he was 6. So I think I'll learn english , japanese and german
@@law1775 I'm a big fan of Attack on titan and One punch man too, I started one piece a long time ago but didn't continue watching and now I'm lazy to do that haha
Regardless of pitch accent, が／は、articles or any isolated elements being important or not, saying that Japanese doesn't have "pitch" is false information. In standardized Japanese (and many dialets), each word does have it's own "stress/pitch" pattern and so does English. It's a fact. When we use the word "intonation" in English, usually we refer to the intonation of a full sentence but not a specfic word.
Learning pitch accent is good. But I have to get to know lots of words and expressions first. Especially Japanese are bad at listening. The similar words sound the same to us. Many English learners gives up learning English. Because there are too many things we have to study. I will learn pitch accent when I became an advanced learner. Mostly non Japanese TV stars who are fluent in Japanese have wrong pitch accent. No problem.
For once I agree. Not sure about other languages but lots of people seem to make learning Japanese into some kind of childish contest to be the best non-native speaker and I find it so ridiculous it's not even funny. Like you said, it's not a performance sport, it's about communication. Anyone who fails to see that is likely a perfectionist and actually accomplishes little and wishes they themselves were a native, and so they announce their goal of wanting to sound like a native to sound impressive and compensate for their inferiority complex. They are chasing a myth. Every language has other varieties so you can't hope to sound like an entire population of natives. Everybody uses language in a slightly different manner, different accents exists, etc. yet this doesn't impede communication. Even if you DO somehow end up sounding like a native, it's only impressive for 5 seconds, after which no one cares anymore especially if you come across as arrogant and unpleasant. Most people in their right mind would much prefer to befriend the learner without a native accent yet tries to communicate and knows a lot of words than the one who "sounds like a native" yet speaks terribly. Don't think just because you learned the language it's an automatic pass of acceptance - let the natives decide. Lots of Europeans speak fantastic English yet people don't always say "you speak great English", for all you know they could have been raised in the West. Same for me, English is one of my native languages and I'm Asian. No one ever says that but even still, it's only impressive for 5 seconds.
I disagree. If you plan on integrating into a society, having a near-native accent is a massive asset. There are dozens if not hundreds of studies out there that demonstrate the subconscious bias native speakers have towards people speaking with an accent (and that in countries with significant immigrant populations; in Japan it would probably be even more pronounced). And it influences how people *actually* perceive your intellectual ability (although consciously they may not even be aware of it), how likely they are to make you part of their social entourage and a lot more sneaky little problems that arise from speaking your target language with an accent. I'd say that if you found a culture that truly speaks to you and you want to be part of it, working on your accent, non-verbal communication and understanding of cultural realities is not negotiable if you want to be accepted *truly*. Of course, for all other purposes, it's not nearly as important. If you moved somewhere just to work there but you don't associate yourself with this culture nor do you particularly care about forming close, authentic relationships with native speakers, you probably have better things to do than worry about your accent (although it may have a financial impact too, so even this is not clearcut)
It's not free, the pharma companies are for sure charging their usual fees plus A LOT of extra for insanely fast RnD, logistics, mass scaling of production, etc. And your government has paid a shit ton of money from your taxes and/or by going into debt to secure regular shipments. Many less fortunate nations don't have enough funds to pay for that even when they're the ones producing vaccines (like India). The only reason your government is giving this countries
@Beaudile They know how to use their language. They know what sounds right. But they don't necessarily know the characteristics of their language. It's all subconscious knowledge. Also you are conflating two different things. Pitch accent is not imaginary. Natives themselves speak about it. It has nothing to do with trying to sell you stuff but it's obvious where you are getting this from and that's irrelevant to what this is about. Not even going to bother responding to the comment about Wikipedia since you basically make yourself seem dumb already.
I'm fully vaccinated! Everybody do the same! I'm learning chinese so I gotta get my tones right! What materials would you recommend for someone wanting to learn how to become a better communicator?
I'm learning Japanese by myself. I watch some YT channels on Japanese language... My goal is to participate JLPT N4 this December.... 我也学习汉语从2017 到去年. 我参加过 汉语课程, 有同学们. 我获得了Hsk-3 2019年10 月. 我现在学习日语, 但目前没有语言的课程. All courses are conducted virtually, so I learn Japanese by RUclips channels...
I'm Japanese who live in England. I used to live in Tokyo, but the Japanese spoken by foreigners all have different pitch accents. In Tokyo, many people come from different parts of Japan, so we don’t care about the pitch accent. We make decisions based on the context of the sentence. And I've never met a foreigner who speaks Japanese fluently who doesn't speak perfect Japanese. I'm worried. Perfectionism has been said to be a Japanese disease in sociology, but why do people from other countries inherit this perfectionism? Language is for communication. If I were told to speak perfect English in England, I would run back to Japan. Although Japanese people sometimes judge each other's origin by pitch accent, many Japanese are aware of regional pronunciation due to the spread of the Internet. If you want to speak perfectionist Japanese, I guess everyone wants to be an announcer for a Japanese TV station. Not many Japanese people have perfect pitch accents either. I live in England. The UK encourages RP pronunciation. I have never seen a Japanese person in England who speaks RP pronunciation perfectly. Words change, and the meaning of a word is different depending on how it is received by the individual. Even the announcers on Japanese TV stations make mistakes in Japanese all the time! Don't be a perfectionist. Language is for communication.
There is a great deal of "showing off" that seems to be present in the language learning community. English speakers who have attained a very high level of Japanese ability cannot help but tell the whole internet (and make some nice money from ad revenue). The irony is that, if they really understood Japanese, they would know better than to brag about it. Japan is probably the humblest country on Earth. Now some people, like Dogen, make great content *for those interested in that content*. Nothing wrong with furthering your knowledge in a topic that interests you. But the other 99% of us want to learn how to use Japanese, and people pushing the idea that pitch accent perfection is super important don't understand how demotivating that is. It has it's importance, but they blow it out of proportion. And after reading a lot of comments on this topic it's clear that this point is missed by many people so I'll say it again: pitch accent is important, but it's blown out of proportion. And the argument that "you can't mimic what you can't hear so that's why you need to study pitch accent" is nonsense. My response to that is "you don't know what I hear".
After reading through some of the comments here, it's kind of ridiculous how people make such a big deal of small things in language. Language exist for communication, not to show-off, put on a performance nor make a contest out if it; that makes me sick, yet non-natives giving lectures in the comments section about the do's and don'ts in certain languages like they are some kind of authority figure of what's important. Let the learners decide that for themselves. These people don't realize they're not actually helping anyone - the only thing they accomplish is proving they're keyboard warrior cultists with an inferiority complex. I say this on behalf of the sane ones here: Why do you people care so much about what others think of your pronunciation that it drives you towards perfection? Nobody is perfect; if that's what you strive for then I guess you're nobodies. Look at those who try to learn English, as long as they can communicate and get by, who cares if their native accents are present? It's ridiculous how people set unattainable goals like wanting to sound like a native yet don't understand WHY they even want to achieve it. Just because you end up sounding like a local in one area doesn't mean you'll sound like one in another, hence why you can't sound like a native to everyone. If learners try to speak, can communicate just fine and are pleasant people, that matters more to natives in the right mind than if the learner was arrogant or boring despite speaking/sounding "like a native". The only validation you need is from the locals you speak to because how they react to you during the conversation is a reflection of who you are as an individual. Let the natives decide how well you know the language and whether or not they accept you.
Lexical field analysis: "ridiculous", "show-off", "makes me sick", "keyboard warrior cultists with an inferiority complex", "sane ones here", "you people", "who cares", "ridiculous" "in the (sic) right mind", "arrogant", "boring", "validation you need"... Yes, we're the ones being judgmental here...indeed...
i dunno. singaporean english really fucks up english intonation and its a REAL DRAG to listen to. its just all over the place and screws up the emphasis in a sentence considerably and there's just no flow for the ear. rhythm, and conventional rhythms, are actually extremely important. and singapore obviously its following tones from another language/s borrowed directly into english. tone might be alot more impactful than you think to native speakers (willingness to listen you for long). have you actually asked native japanese speakers how they feel about this? or were you satisfied with your own impressions of japanese of others? i think you need to consider this more. i watched a documentary that was made in singaporean english and i had to keep stopping the film just to take a break from it. i dont know if I'd date someone who spoke with this intonation 'pattern', it would drive me mad. So does it matter? depends on your goals in the situation. But probably more of a big deal than you are accounting for here though. we all hate a half american half british accent, and there is a reason for that. the musicality a person uses is better off being 'easy on the ear.' since communication is the goal of language.
Blue pill Boomer is supposed to talk about languages, goes on a tangent about how his Uber driver is incompetent and then how the Canadian government is overbearing with COVID regulations, and then says if you don't get vaccinated, you're evil. And didn't even mention Matt who has been driving the pitch accent conversation.
matt vs japan and dougen are just trying to sell people this idea that pitch accent is important in order to be understood. what a bs excuse to sell you something. steve, your accent is very american heavy, just like myself when i speak. but when we speak to japanese people, they understand us! i mean come on, context is everything. if you say はながいたい、people know you are not saying your flower hurts, but your nose hurts. all in all, learn the language and speak more. pitch accent in japanese is crap to some degree. if you want to learn in, go for it, but you should probably learn the grammar and speak a ton/listen a ton so that you are understood.
I agree that as long as you are able to communicate effectively and are understood then you will be fine without having to have a PH. D in Pitch Accent. 🙄🤷🏾♀️
Another important thing to note: there are Japanese dialects that don’t have pitch accent at all, and as you said various dialects have a different pitch accent system. I think the only thing a beginner should be doing is making sure they aren’t using an English stress accent, that sounds really wrong when applied to Japanese
Dialects are consistent. The dialects without pitch accent have a specific intonation pattern. Also in the various dialects that do have different pitch accent systems, the differences between them are mostly shifts. That is to say that an adjective like shiROi (standard) just shifts one over to make kansai-ben: SHIroi. More than just the dialects being consistent, most natives can speak something close to standard anyways. That's why we teach standard to learners. But yeah I agree. Learners should at least be able to understand not to apply stress accent and to shadow / imitate with pitch instead.
@@english-dl9vo In some parts of Japan, such as the Tohoku and Kyushu regions, there are dialects that do not have a fixed accent. The meaning can only be determined by context. Try searching for "無アクセント".
@@english-dl9vo It's not always the case that most natives speak something close to the standard, because what is Standard English? Are Australians, Irish and UK speakers outliers when most of them are actually natives too, just with their own accents, pronunciations and slang? Also dialects aren't always consistent when there are so many varieties of language. Look at Arabic. While there is the standard MSA which is mostly used in the news, there are so many versions of Arabic that most people never actually uses MSA in real life and prefers not to as it's considered too formal for everyday conversation amongst each other. Also look at Indonesia and the Philippines where hundreds of languages are spoken, some of which may not sound like the standard. There's a language spoken north of the Philippines called Ilocano that sounds almost nothing like the standard language called Tagalog. Ilocano oddly sounds more like Indonesian. Standards languages can't always encompass all the varieties spoken in a country.
@@Oxalis_acetosella Completely agree. People from these regions are likely not natives of Tokyo Japanese which I assume is the standard. In Tokyo, they probably don't sound like natives of the local language even if they look the part, but who cares? Nobody will sound like a native in all varieties of a language anyway. People always say "I want to sound like a native in Japanese" without really understanding why they want that nor realize that Tokyo Japanese isn't the only version of the language. As long as you can communicate, who cares whether you sound like a native or not?
Some people are against the experimental vaccine as they have other medical issues and taking part in an untested medical gene therapy experiment is not a good idea. Also why should I take part in this experiment when I've had covid which is no worse that a bad case of the flu. I've got better protection against having and passing on covid than you will ever have with the experimental vaccine. I spent one day in bed, the next day not exactly feeling 100% and by day three was OK to go back to work. The VAST MAJORITY of people who get covid DO NOT DIE! Like 99.6% of them. Follow the science Steve, not TV statistics.
@@G6PBS Yes, the issue is complicated. In France, they’ve said they won’t accept anyone as having the vaccine if it’s the same vaccine that’s given in Russia or China. They started giving out one type of vaccine and then the side effects were so bad that they took it off the market completely. So do they count the people that took that vaccine as having been vaccinated? This issue is not black and white, unfortunately.
Linguists like to describe and classify phenomena that occur in languages. Pitch accent is one of those details of a language that the average learner will get close to naturally, but needn't worry about. Pitch accent, or lack of it, is not important to communication or comprehension.
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@@exponentzero What elementary Japanese book is used at Columbia University? How did you like it? I referenced a good intonation text in a different comment here.
@@exponentzero For beginners, Minna no Nihongo is popular in Japan-based language schools and Genki is popular in US universities.
MNH is entirely in Japanese and at an accelerated pace. According to my teachers, some content is missing; that is highlighted in the teacher's manuals, so makes self-learning a bit challenging.
Genki seems to be well edited and a more gentle introduction to Japanese targeted to western students. I can see why it is popular; you just need to blow through a lot of pages every day to make progress.
Intermediate Japanese textbooks are more of a challenge and I did not see a favourite text in Japan. Many schools create their own materials and use JLPT materials. One school in Shin-Okubo used the Somatome JLPT book but you should know most students are Chinese or Koreans looking to enter Japanese university so are on an accelerated track to pass the JLPT exam (and get fluent enough for university). I also see students with Tobira, Integrated Approach, MNH intermediate books; Quartet is the newest intermediate text to the market so might be worth a look.
@@exponentzero My teachers in Japan said that there were some good beginner books, the intermediate books were not good enough. So to clarify, I didn't see many people with either Tobira or Integrated Approach, but have seen some complaints.
I sense MNN missing materials are more obvious for the earlier chapters of the first book, such as counters, conjugations, and some subtle grammar points slid in the chapter without explinations. Additionally, the keigo section is weak. Separate kanji book is needed. One needs more questions, reading, listening (one could buy the separate books in the series but they are expensive). You can pick up some of this with a different beginner textbook or JLPT drill books.
@@exponentzero You can look for supplemental keigo materials elsewhere when you get to the section. I have seen that other intermediate textbook before but am not sure how popular it is; publishers periodically release newer competing texts so no surprise.
BTW - your kanji comments were not edited by Steve. RUclips is buggy so you need to open the video page to see all comments, not just click on the bell.
Hi Steve, I know you couldn't remember my name, so I will introduce myself here. I am George Trombley from "Japanese From Zero!". I appreciate you taking time to let us know your thoughts on the pitch accent debate. I would love to have a conversation with you one of these days about language in general.
Nice, another debate video with George. Your video with Matt was hilarious, especially when you mentioned that you bought the full print matt shirt.
I'd watch that.
It would be so cool if that happens
That would be great.
Hi George, Eric from LingQ here. I sent you an email - please let me know if you've received it.
There is a native Japanese polyglot (English and Chinese nearly native) RUclipsr: Yudai Sensei. He creates videos mainly about Japanese pronunciation and language origin. He details how he thought to correct his pitch accent when he was younger (as a native who grew up with a heavy dialect) and why he did so and his current thoughts about doing so and the importance of pitch accent. I enjoy using LingQ and your content but I think I would suggest relying on Yudai's videos for those wishing to draw their own opinions on this instead (tailored to your learning objectives). His advice is more detailed than saying it's either A or it's B. If I get by without something that doesn't mean that it lacks importance. I think there is value in knowing about pitch accent for the purpose of improving communication. Whether you benefit from that value depends on your needs. Maybe it's that some people find your voice more appealing. Maybe without it your voice sounds more entertaining to some. Maybe I don't think it's very useful or can't find a way that it would come in handy but that doesn't mean that other people won't. Sorry, this video was too black and white for me. I think there is a gray area.
It's nice to hear different opinions of a mostly two sided debate without being rude. I think that it all comes to the needs of each person, so yeah, it could be that this isn't a matter of a black or white area.
pitch accent の違いによって、聞き手側の印象や感じ方が変わってきますからねぇ。日本のお笑い（プロ）やジョークを充分理解するには必須ですね。ただし、目的のあるコミュニケーションでは、pitch accent はほとんど必要ありません。
Thanks for the reference. That sounds interesting.
Yudai Sensei has a lot of pronunciation content!
who is here after the pitch accent discussion between goerge trombley vs matt
✋
Nothing is important in isolation.
People can get by in the English without distinguishing between the æ and ɛ, or ɛ and ei. You get by without the past tense or by speaking with the wrong stress all the time. Yeah sure, we can usually tell by the context, but it does hinder communication; all these things give your listeners a pause.
Do you go around telling people to ignore æ and ɛ just because there are many variations and they overall don't impede communication?
What about "the" and "a"? Should a teacher who doesn't fully understander the concept say "I am good in other aspects of English but don't quite get articles. Hey I get by! They have never impeded communication. It's stupid to learn it."
As a teacher, you are doing students a huge disservice if you don’t at least point out stress/pitch accent to students. Not everyone can naturally pick it up like us. Though not often, I’ve encountered many students who can not pick up the correct sounds or pitch and they are not easy to understand. My biggest beef with yours and George’s stance is you assume everyone can naturally pick it up like you guys did and ignoring the fact that not everyone can.
Nothing needs mastering but you don't get to decide what is important for a student/your viewer. If one of your viewers happens to be tone-deaf then having the awareness of pitch is a necessity.
Hey student learning American English! Your accent sounds like a combination of Scottish + Appalachian + Singaporean which are all pretty niche and not easily understandable to a regular American person, but that’s ok, right?
Wait…. I thought the goal is to learn what facilitates communicate…....?
“I put a piece of shit on the bitch” still sounds like “I put a piece of shit on the bitch” even if we know you meant to say “I put a piece of sheet on the beach.”
Likewise, 運行しているstill sounds likeウンコしている even if native speakers know what you are trying to say.
There is something distinctly artificial about Dogen's Japanese. It could just be his demeanour, but it isn't natural. Its too self-conscious, I think. Its more like he is talking at than talking to, in the end.
If communication is the only goal, why bother learning a language at all? Just point, gesture, make faces. They'll "understand" you.
It does exist, Japanese people do know about it (they don't refer to it as 高低アクセント, but as イントネーション, or just notice that it is off). Just as you say, it is not necessary for people to understand you (not like tones in Chinese). Yes it is true you need to imitate it, but there are lots of people who despite living in Japan for a long time and otherwise imitating other parts of the language, because they don't understand how it is linked to the pronunciation of the word (they use the patterns that they picked up imitating from Japanese people, but kind of just apply them randomly (my room mate is like this)). Thus, learning that pitch accent exists and paying attention to imitating it as an aspect of the pronunciation of the word (rather than just a common inflection pattern that is used for emphasis and such) goes a long way in improving pronunciation. No this is not necessary for communication on a primary level, but sounding more like a native can help natives feel more more comfortable around you and this will influence communication. The meaning of what you are saying is the same, but the impression it gives off to natives is different.
Should you focus on perfection, only if you want to be a NHK announcer or otherwise want to. Should you know it exists and give it some attention, yes, if you want to improve your pronunciation. Is is something you need to know? No. Is is the most important thing you can do to improve your language, not unless you already have native level command of vocabulary and can basically express yourself how you want.
As a side point, I totally agree that your Japanese is very good and definitely enough for communication, but the fact that you "never though about pitch accent" does show. You imitate many other areas exceptionally well, but your pronunciation does not sound Japanese. This is not fundamentally a problem, but it is apparent.
The only people in a position to evaluate a person's pronunciation in a language, are native speakers of that language.
Peter lives in Japan for many years, so he is like a native...
I'm Japanese and now wondering how good your Japanese level is?
@@user-nz5fn9cv3i
Who do you talk to...???
Peter or Steve....???
Don't look at me, because I just start to learn Japanese.....
@@Thelinguist what you say is true in most cases, but i would feel pretty comfortable letting dogen or matt vs japan assess my pitch accent, wouldn't you?
“It sounds as if you don’t speak the language very well”
That’s exactly the argument for pitch accent, it makes you sound better and it makes it a more pleasant experience for everyone
Are you a native speaker of Japanese
@@Thelinguist nope but Japanese people have said this to me and if you think about stress in English, it’s a bit jarring to hear a word stressed incorrectly and it’ll be the same for the wrong pitch pattern in Japanese
I've never had a Japanese person say this to me.
@@Thelinguist well we clearly had different experiences
@@Thelinguist Are you? If only native speakers can judge its importance then you are in no position to judge it or the lack thereof either. Hypocrite. Makes no sense.
You know damn well that he made this video because of the recent pitch accent debate between Matt vs japan and George lol. It's nice to also hear another polyglot's opinion on this
Yeah haha
they don't like each other
@@Eduardo-ko2mw they said multiple times they are friends and often help/support each other
@@nexus0129 I dont think so
Who is george?
I really think Steve is an amazing language learner and has interesting things to say, but after reading the comments, I'm kinda disappointed on how he's responding to criticism from his fans. Is he actually just gonna respond to everyone's opinion (even people who appear to have vast experience with japanese) with comments like "Only natives can have an opinion on that", "Are u japanese?", Or just getting defensive about his pronunciation when people (very respectfully) dare to mention that he sounds kind of "foreign"?
Most of the criticism in the comments was quite reasonable and not agressive in any way, maybe it would be a good idea to actually listen to what people have to say...
It doesn't surprise me. Like many online polyglots, the goal is not to improve or hear constructive criticism but to constantly fudge on the definition of fluency and get praised for saying a few phrases about his favorite topics with words slapped together from two or more Romance languages.
Serbo-Croatian native speaker here. I notice right away when someone says something in a wrong pitch accent, we even used to make fun of each other if someone’s mistakes the pitch when we were kids. Anyway it’s not really important for speaking/comprehension in general because only a very small amount of words are differentiated with pitch accent.
But you definitely can’t sound like a native speaker without paying attention to it because it’s easily noticeable to native ears
hi, i am wondering if i want to learn Serbo-croat. I know that now it is classified as 2 different languages. If i learn Croat will serbs understand me perfectly ?
Do you pay attention to it in your Japanese studies?
@@Sosui2 yes they’ll understand you perfectly I’d say it’s 99% mutually intelligible. So don’t worry about that
@@joshuasamuel2122 hmm yes and no honestly. There’s some difference between Japanese pitch accent and Serbian one.
I payed attention to the common ones like 雨飴、神紙、切る着る etc but ordinarily I’m not too extreme I just care more about remembering new vocab and improving my speaking ability currently
@@FilipP88 I see
As a native Japanese speaker, I would advise Japanese learners to learn pitch accent.
After watching the pitch accent videos of Mr. Kaufmann, Dogen, and Matt (from Matt vs Japan) and listening to their Japanese, I’m now fairly convinced native English speakers aren’t able to pick up Japanese accent just through imitation.
It is true Mr. Kaufmann speaks very good Japanese and I certainly don’t have any problem in understanding his Japanese speech, but I would much rather listen to his English. Whether you like it or not, people judge you by your accent. That’s why Japanese native speakers also soften their regional accent when they come to Tokyo for smooth communication.
Pitch accent makes it easier to speak, especially linking phrases. It's not that hard to learn the basics and shadowing helps. Japanese without pitch accent sounds odd; it is similar but not quite as brutal as asking a question in English without the rising intonation at the end of the sentence. IMHO.
So my Japanese sounds odd? Or is my intonation in Japanese, something that I have acquired simply by listening and being with Japanese people, good enough without me having to spend any time studying pitch accent?
@@Thelinguist I think you have acquired Japanese pitch accent from living in Japan for 9 years. Your specialization in foreign language helps. For intermediate learners, I think a little bit of pitch accent study and shadowing helps, but very little time should be invested IMHO.
@@Thelinguist Yours doesn't, but many language learners do despite many years of learning their target language.
Please don't forget that not everyone is like you who can achieve the same thing doing exactly what you are doing. Many students NEED that awareness to pick it up.
"especially linking phrases."
the more i focus on pitch the more i'm finding this to be the case, i think because japanese has no spaces those fluctuations in pitch can be incredibly helpful to differentiate words/grammar.
Saying a tongue twister is easier with pitch accent :)
Pitch accent also exists in Swedish and Norwegian. Both languages have many short words with many words that sound similar to each other. The trickiest people for me to understand as a native Swedish speaker with fluent Norwegian are people who neither manages to pronounce things currently and also have the wrong pitch. I have no clue about Japanese but I think this is a part of noticing things in a language. I'm not sure if I would recommend people to focus on it in the beginning but there are many foreigners who are tricky to understand because they never learn the melody of the language.
But then there are places where Swedish speakers speak without any pitch accent whatsosever, so it's interesting how they make it work
@@thetakeover51 Well, in theory people in Great Britain speak the same language, but they have such different accents that even if they do not use regional vocabulary, it is still tricky to understand them. Even if you learn RP, it might make it tricky in certain areas.
@@NetAndyCz I like that comparison. Sometimes it's really difficult to understand a thick scottish accent, say, but then with time and context there is barely an issue
@@thetakeover51 It is possible to understand someone who do not use the pitch accent but it makes it trickier . Also just like you said it is not used everywhere and it is not the same in all parts of where Swedish is spoke.
Pitch accent is arguably much less important in languages such as Swedish and Norwegian than it is in Japanese, because these languages have more phonemes and fewer homophones than Japanese does.
Followed you and watched all your videos for six years or more now. I love how I know exactly what you’re going to say without even watching the video 🤣
As for native Korean speaker, some learners from Korea have a hard time with Japanese pitch accent(we call it 억양 or 인토네이션) at the beginning stage. Because especially Seoul dialect tend to flatten all of accents, ups and downs in each sentence or word. I'm from Busan, and Busan dialect has very strong accent like Japanese. At any rate, I think most learners at the beginning stage, have a hard time with that. But as time has gone on, especially the people who are sensitive to accent just naturally have got the perfect accent as much as they can assimilate in Japanese society right off the bat and nobody can tell him or her from natives. I know a lot of people who works at Japanese company, have already got to the level like this. I think accent is important since that could be used as criteria as to whether we can smoothly assimilate with the whole society or not. But I've never met someone who get himself into very intensive pitch accent learning and made it to the level I said. All they have done before is to imitate as much as they can, and on top of that, the environment surrounding them was the most important thing. Human incessantly get used to environment he or she is surrounded by. And the accent is one of the things naturally acquired during the process.
Just a fun fact for you a Korean speaker (from a non-Korean speaker): Korean used to have more tones back in the day, three as a matter of fact, and I think that having two (aka pitch accent) is easier than having three I must say
Imo, the important takeaway from this comment is that Koreans normally attempt to learn pitch accent. Westerners don't.
I feel like everyone is misinterpreting the concept of pitch accent; every comment I see keeps saying things such as "Sounding native-like is not important, so pitch accent isn't all that important." You do know that you can have perfect pitch accent and still sound like a foreigner, right? Pitch accent is only a portion of the pronounciation process and in my opinion (as a native speaker of Tagalog, another pitch accent language), pitch accent is the MOST important part of that process. Sure, native speakers will still understand you and obviously you sound like a foreigner but that's not the problem of not acquiring decent pitch accent. The problem is that native speakers will often experience some inconvenience within your speech due to irregular pitch being used; they'll often hear you say things in a different pitch that they never heard before that it might take them a few more seconds to understand what you're trying to say. It might not be as strict as the tones used in Chinese languages but improper pitch makes it harder for the speaker to comprehend you. You might argue that the context would make it obvious, but you have no idea how sensitive pitch-accent native speakers' ears are when it comes to hearing pitch. Hearing a certain pitch gets the nuance of the word right through their brain (kind of complicated to explain) and hearing it in another pitch will often give away nuance of a different word. There were even moments where I never even realized two different words with different pitch had the same spelling that I was surprised when I heard a foreigner make that pitch-mistake off my language lol. So in my opinion based on my experience, pitch accent is VERY important for the convenience of native-speakers, although I don't think it is most important.
I find pitch accent in Japanese interesting, but my main focus for the time being is reading.
Same! It’s really like you’re starting as a child reading for the first time.😭
Same. I feel like it's a bonus and a subject you should study only when you're confortable with the language
Loving the video editing these days 😂. Adds more character to the experience!
Is it just me, or did his edit of him multiple times when displaying his English tones, give you hyperfocus on what he was saying? That was wierd, and satisfyingly cool!!
Agree with you completely on this. I think people like Matt discourages people to learn by trying to make the importance of pitch accent more than it really is.
I’m like you, currently living in Japan, (on my 3rd year) speak fluent Japanese (even teaching 70 minute lessons at cram school in complete Japanese) and have been told that my pronunciation is like a Japanese person and I have never even heard about pitch accent until just recently.
Just keep listening and mimicking the Japanese you hear everyone, just like Steve said :)
Well said!
But Matt has literally said that you don't have to learn pitch accent, you can still make yourself understood without doing it right. Matt is arguing that it doesn't take much time at all to learn the basics of pitch accent, and doing this along with being aware of pitch accent when listening will help you learn to speak a little more naturally. Hardcore learning pitch accent to near perfection is for those who have a hardcore goal, no one in this RUclips discussion has suggested that everyone has to learn pitch accent. In conclusion, I doubt a single person is going to be meaningfully discouraged by Matt when he, just like everyone else, has said that you don't have to learn it.
Pitch accent and intonation are not the same right? Or maybe pitch accent is a flavor of intonation? Either way pitch accent as it pertains to Japanese changes the literal meaning of many words.
Imitating native speakers in this sense is not effective since you cannot imitate what you are not aware of.
But what I do agree with is that in the grand scheme of things it is not as important as communication and comprehension.
Steve, with respect, you did not mention Matt nor did you watch his video. His argument is that you spend 1 hour on Dogen's course and you will learn the basics and how to listen for it in all future Japanese studies. I do not speak Japanese, but this seems like a no brainer. He also argued you cannot say something you don't understand is unimportant.
If someone's aim in learning Japanese is communication, to live and work in Japan or to be able to fully enjoy the company and culture of Japanese people, and they succeed in learning the language fluently to a level that allows them to do just that - but they have never formally studied pitch accent (and therefore don't understand it - much like native speakers often don't understand it - they aren't all linguists after all!) and therefore they retain a distinctly 'foreign' accent, then yes they are still perfectly entitled to claim that studying pitch accent is unimportant. Because it has not been a hindrance to them achieving their aims nor an important aspect of what helped them achieve those aims.
@@chrstopherblighton-sande2981 I think everyone agrees with that, but that is not what Matt was saying. Watch his video.
lol i like the editing on this one. hope you and your wife are well and happy
The key thing is as you said simply to imitate what you hear in the language. And the reality of languages is that they're fluid. Just because you know a language doesn't mean that you will understand all the accents that exist for that language and you won't necessarily understand natives with unique ways of speaking the language. So a focus on exposure and time with the language is more important than small details that don't impede comprehension.
The only time you should focus on pronounciation is when, like you said, it is important for people to understand you.
"Language is about communication, it's not a performance sport"
Glad to see you've joined the discussion Steve! Great to hear your perspective on this (and your thoughts on the vaccine lol)
"It's not a performance, it's communication". 👍
Communication means different things to different people. If by communication you mean getting your ideas across one way or another and having native speakers dumb down their messages, then sure. It's probably going to do for most work-related purposes unless you try to socialize with your coworkers. But if you plan on integrating into a foreign society or simply establishing close, intimate relationships with native speakers of your target language, prosody, phonetics and non-verbal cues are crucial. They bring down barriers and build a lot more bridges than a rich vocabulary or ideal grammar would. In many cultures, you will always be hitting a glass wall if your pronunciation is not so close to the ideal that native speakers either don't notice it at all or feel that something is off so rarely that they don't really register it as a foreign accent.
@@Limemill I think I see what you're saying but with respect, tell that to the non-native English speakers living in Ireland, the UK, Australia or Canada who don't sound like a local per se, but are good enough that people can understand them. Given enough time in the country, they get better at the language but at the beginning they'll sound like a foreigner. First time for everything. Japanese people trying to speak English will oftentimes retain their native accent even if they speak well, but if they don't care, why should anyone else? It's alarming how people lack self-respect and confidence that they take so seriously what others think of them. If you are compassionate and can be understood, who cares if your pronunciation is not quite on the dot? Some people here fail to understand or realize it doesn't matter how well you speak a language if you're boring, arrogant, or just unpleasant to be around.
@@michaelrespicio5683 Well, there is definitely a certain barrier between native speakers and immigrants who polished their accents and non-verbal communication and the rest of the immigrants. This is especially felt in the States, though. Of course you can still communicate, if you have lots of charisma you'll probably be able to even establish intimate connections, but if not you'll mostly have functional relations with people around you. No doubt, they will be helpful and nice, but something will always rub them the wrong way just a bit, and that bit makes one hell of a difference when it comes to *truly* integrating. Also, there are particular countries with hyper-centralized accents like Japan, Russia, most of the former Soviet countries, France and a bunch of others where your accent and mannerisms must be close to impeccable for people to truly accept you as an equal. I've actually witnessed a couple of German guys in Russia at an event held by Goethe Institute, where one of the guys spoke perfect Russian with ideal grammar and a massive vocabulary but had a slight but noticeable accent, whereas the other regularly made grammatical mistakes and mostly said stupid things, but had a near-native accent and could swear and gesticulate like a native. The latter was BY FAR the more popular interlocutor that night
Goddamn right! Language is not a fking exam!
To provide further proof to my claims on the subconscious bias of native speakers towards non-native ones:
qz.com/624335/the-reason-you-discriminate-against-foreign-accents-starts-with-what-they-do-to-your-brain/
horizon-magazine.eu/article/why-do-people-discriminate-against-speakers-foreign-accents.html
www.researchgate.net/publication/342160611_Foreignness_or_Processing_Fluency_On_Understanding_the_Negative_Bias_Toward_Foreign-Accented_Speakers
www.researchgate.net/publication/331624304_Short_exposure_to_a_foreign_accent_impacts_subsequent_cognitive_processes
www.researchgate.net/publication/330380663_Language_crossing_and_linguistic_racism_Mongolian_immigrant_women_in_Australia
日本語教師であると同時に英語学習者です。スティーヴさんに100%同意します。正直ピッチアクセントが真逆であったとしても、私達日本人は文脈で普通に理解できます。言葉によっては希に混乱することがあるかもしれませんが、そんなのは大した問題ではありません。理解できない人は、日本にはいろいろな方言があることを知らないか標準語しか日本語じゃないと思っている人かもしれません(笑)
完璧な標準語が話したい人はそうすればいいですし、気にしない人はそのままでいいと思います。あの博士のようなDogenさんでさえも完璧ではありません。ピッチアクセントを間違えても、意味がわからない人なんかいないということを彼自身がきちんと証明しているのです。（念のため…私は彼を尊敬しています。）
Like you said (about noticing), I'd say about the pitch accent (in Japanese): just "be aware" it exist (with a couple of examples, should take five minutes or so) (which is probably better not knowing at all about it) and then keep immersing yourself with content (passive / active listening, maybe building vocabulary database like "lingquing", etc...) I suppose it will come "naturally".
Anyway, in my case, I stopped trying to learn forcefully (pitch) accent because I still can't remember where is the accent for an English word like 'record' where the accent is different if I'm referring to the verb or to the noun :p
Thanks Steve. Your videos have a lot of useful tips. Some I know and some I use going forward.
If pure communication is your goal, you don't need to pay attention to accents, grammar and word usage since people can understand you in any language. But if your goal is not to bother a native with your incomplete skills of Japanese or any other language and sound like a foreigner who will never be able to speak the language really well, you should pay attention to every aspect of a language, even pronunciation. For me as a German and for every other German I know, we usually can understand everything but even the slightest foreign accent really makes us tired after listening at it for a while. Having an accent free pronunciation is easier to listen to than a wrong grammar. As far as I know this applies to other languages as well or how do English native speakers think of Russians and Spaniards holding a speech for 2 hours with their accents compared to natives? When you start learning a language and get accustomed to pronounce words in a wrong way, you will have a hard time to relearn that. So better start with a right pronunciation if you actually want to speak.
お疲れ様でした、スティーブさん！Your insights after having learned so many languages are very valuable in this debate. Thank you for the awesome work you do! 我听过你的粤语！好棒啊！
Steve, why do you think everyone should focus merely on "communication or comprehension" as you do? Perhaps to some people, it's important to speak closer to native-like pronunciation than you do in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and other languages I have heard you speak in. You don't have to have this as a goal but you do seem to have a problem with people who want to reach a higher degree of competence in a language than you do.
nice, though imho, Matt should've been mentioned too.
Agreed, Matt is better then Dogen
@@anthony9356 than*
@@sabbe_satta_bhavantu_sukhi7226 Ronny*
@@anthony9356 They're both good, but Dogen was likely mentioned because he offers dedicated courses on pitch accent. Matt discusses it quite a bit, but doesn't offer as many resources for learning it.
@@anthony9356 how is Matt better when Matt doesn't teach it? If you're talking about how good they are with pitch accent then they're both good. It's difficult to actually compare lol
Every language has meter, accent, and regional variation. But Japanese is the only language I know where vocabulary is taught pointing out which syllable is accented.
Around 80% of Japanese live in Type I accent regions and naturally accent their vocabulary about the same as announcers and all our learning dialogues. Maybe 13% live in Kansai and proudly use a variant, just as Texans do in the US. umBRÉLLa vs ÚMbrella is regional; but ameRÍCan and JaPÁNese are foreign.
If you can't hear pitch then you cannot hear how lacking your accent is. Not everyone has to care about accent, but if you do then pitch is one of the things you need to be aware of. Whether something is "important" or not should not be even a subject of debate. It's important to some and unimportant to others. People can't make that decision wisely unless they have all the information, and that's why people like Matt and Dogen talk about pitch accent, to spread information. I don't understand the wave against a couple people trying to spread awareness.
Are you a native speaker of Japanese?
@@Thelinguist Is that relevant to the point I just made?
But let's address you point anyway. You speak Chinese, Steve, but you're not a native speaking of Chinese. Does that mean you can't tell when a foreigner gets his tones wrong?
@@Thelinguist Are you? If only native speakers can judge then why are you here judging if something that you can not even perceive is important or not in a language that's not your native?
I usually like your content but the way you have been carrying yourself under this video is making me lose respect for you.
As I have said before 1) tones in Chinese are not like pitch accent in Japanese, not even close 2) Only a native speaker's opinion matters on whether someone sounds native, or if someone is hard to understand. The awareness of pitch is not important in learning to speak Japanese, even to speak it well. Once you have a achieved a decent level in Japanese, good comprehension, strong ability to express yourself, large vocabulary, then at that time, if you are interested, by all means look into pitch is what I recommend. I have looked at this issue, and that is my conclusion. But those interested in pitch will go for it whenever they want, I just hope it does not' distract them from learning the language.
@@Thelinguist I grew up learning English and Chinese in school, so I speak both languages. I've also been studying Japanese for a few years, and have lived in Japan for a year. I disagree that tones in Chinese are, as you say, "not even close" to what pitch accent is in Japanese.
It has often been said that if you get your tones wrong in Chinese, people will not understand you. This is NOT always true. For example, if you say "Wo xiang chi fan" (which means I want to eat) in a flat tone Chinese, you will probably be understood. The bigger reason why foreigners have so much trouble being understood is usually more because of their pronunciation rather than tones. Having said that, of course tones matter in comprehension, this is especially so when context of the words are less easily discernable.
The same is true of Japanese. With poor pitch accent, you can still be understood most of the time. However, in certain circumstances, if you use a wrong pitch accent and the context does provide the listener enough clues, Japanese people WILL have trouble understanding what you say. This has happened to me quite a few times.
Now the reason why I think pitch accent is not taught in Japan the way tones are taught in China is because it is a lot less structured than Chinese tones. Each word in Chinese has a fixed tone which rarely changes. Pitch accent in Japanese is a lot more fluid and can vary depending on the sentence. It doesn't mean pitch accent does not exist or is not important. Secondly, I think that Japanese speakers with POOR pitch accent are also saved by the fact that Japanese pronunciation is easy and they are at least pronouncing the word right. There is no such saving grace for Chinese learners as pronunciation is extremely difficult so if both your tones and pronunciation is wrong, it is unlikely you will be understood.
Having said this, I do agree that the detail that Dougen goes into might be a bit too extreme for regular Japanese learners, but I believe that even beginners need to at least JUST BE AWARE that pitch accent exists and is something they should listen out. I don't know why people would discourage learning about it.
I don't think pitch accent is something you memorize. It's something you imitate after hearing repeatedly.
I never memorized intonations in English, but I got pretty good at it anyway, just by constant input for years.
This is true, although it is important to learn to notice the pitch accent when you hear it. Otherwise it just goes over your head. That's where study can help.
If you want to sound better than an occasional tourist, then "yes".
Stress accent is critical if your goal is fluency -- you can't get away with ignoring key aspects of a language for your own convenience and comfort -- your lack of skill at proper pronunciation and cadence is exhausting for the native listener as your errors cause them to have to work harder to understand you.
It may not be as critical as with a tonal language but you will be saying the wrong word forcing the listener to correct your meaning by context, which gets annoying and tiresome after awhile.
Here's a video of a Native Japanese Speaker's opinion on if you should study pitch accent: ruclips.net/video/9oETbe8k7CY/видео.html
Sounds like his main point here is that focusing on pitch accent isn't as important as focusing on vocabulary and general command of the language. I agree, and I haven't heard anyone claim otherwise.
Thing is, even though the core of language is communication, many language learners study for fun. What's wrong with a learner being curious and going deeper into the mechanics of the language if that's something they're interested in? We know that consciously studying grammar does not directly lead to acquisition, yet some people study it regardless - out of genuine curiosity.
Sounds like Steve would agree with me on this too, but I don't understand the recent negativity in the community surrounding curiosity in pitch accent.
I'm not saying people shouldn't study pitch accent if they are interested. I even directed them to Doogen's videos. I'm just saying it isn't necessary nor even important in the study of Japanese. I, and most people who have learned Japanese, have never paid it much attention. It's just a way of focusing attention a detail of the language which will usually be acquired naturally, and if it isn't acquired fully, it won't impede communication.
@@Thelinguist Definitely, I agree with you on all of this. Sorry if it sounded like I was disagreeing on that point, that wasn't my intention. You did say throughout the video that you're open to people focusing on pitch if they're interested.
However, I don't think the rest of the community shares that open-mindedness. I often see this discussion turn into "I'm not curious about this, so you shouldn't be either", or on the other side, "I'm curious about this, and here's why you're wrong for not sharing my learning priorities". It's unfortunate to see gatekeeping around curiosity and interests in a community where many of us learn for fun.
This might be a stupid question but Im so curious to know if anyone else has ever thought of this when it comes to pitch accent languages in general.
Im swedish and we also use a form of pitch accent and it is very important for us that you take of your shoes in the hallway before entering the house.
I dont know much about japanese culture but I feel like that is also important in Japan, probably ever more so than in Sweden. To take your shoes off i mean.
The same goes for south korea and other pitch language countries too, right? I find this coincidence funny but i wonder, could it mean something? Pitch accent users, european and asian = we take of our shoes?
@darkwing dook I know that taking your shoes off is etiquette and not the same as pitch accent....but i still find it a funny coinscidence that both asians and scandinavians take our shoes of as an etiquette and custom and we also have pitch accent languages.
"you know how a person from kyushu was being bullied when moved to tokyo because he was speaking with his local accent? so much that he changed his accent to tokyo. "
This is also true in sweden atleast, cant speak for norway.
Theyve tried to erradicate our dialects for years in sweden, calling dialects ugly or barbaric as you say and pushing the stockholm accent when thats not even considered a pure accent.
"kyushu was being bullied when moved to tokyo because he was speaking with his local accent?" Yup this also happens., all the time. :) Dont mean to smile about that, im just smiling about the similarities in two very different cultures.
There are some words in Russian that require pitch accent, zámok and zamók. (A Castle and a lock). Chinese languages are pitch-pitch as hell! Damn tones!
I very much agree with this: my first foreign language is Swedish. However, since I'm from Finland, we tend to learn the Finnish Swedish pronunciation which doesn't have a pitch accent and sounds more like Finnish (I had no idea what pitch accent was, we just said we don't "sing" like the Swedes). I haven't had any issues in Sweden with my accent and it doesn't hinder my understanding of the Swedes either. Mainly people tend to forget that it's a foreign language for me because "I speak it so well".
Also, at least in the languages I speak, this can depend who is speaking. For example no one speaks like the newscasters in real life. They tend to go down at the end of their sentences (this apparently makes them sound more convincing) than people do in everyday speech. I think the problem is that there are usually much worse errors than the pitch accent in your pronunciation if a native speaker can't understand you.
I sort of feel you get a free pass for not using pitch accent. I might be wrong but I think the version of Swedish you speak is an official dialect. So it is not wrong per se. Swedes are also similar to Japanese people in the sense that they are likely to compliment people on their Swedish even if it is not very good (I'm not referring to you here, just in general). It's more about the effort than the ability so to speak.
If the pitch is flat it is not so much of a problem I feel. But if the pitch is reversed it can get a bit confusing (albeit for a very short time...). It might seem like a small difference but the words sound totally different to native speakers. That said, your last sentence I totally agree with.
Wait... we've got pitch accent in Swedish? I've never thought about it, but maybe we do.
Edit: Oh yea, we definitely do, hah!
@V O I could be wrong, but I strongly doubt that's the case.
@@MyLittleMagneton I delar av Norrland och i de svensktalande delarna av Finland så har de ingen tonaccent/ ordaccent.
Nothing is important in and of itself, if taken in isolation. But in languages like Japanese, pitch accent is a vital part of communication. Take a look at words like 橋 and 箸 or 雨 and あめ or 酒 and 鮭. All of these words have completely different meanings if the pitch accent is changed, and can lead to misunderstanding, or at the very least, confusion. I haven't delved into this debate very deeply, because I think such debates are frankly unnecessary. Everyone has different goals for learning the language. If you only want to learn it casually or for some day to day communication, then it may not matter so much. But if your goal is to achieve the fluency and sound of a native speaker, and work in a majority Japanese environment, which became mine over 10 years, then it is going to matter, especially in contexts where you have to use keigo, or formal language. And I respectfully disagree with Steve. In contexts such as that, more formal ones, it does indeed become somewhat of a performance. How your keigo sounds is just as important of a part of communicating as using the right words and being able to string them together. So at the end of the day, pitch accent will be important or not, depending on your goals. And you can indeed pick it up just by listening and immitating, that was what I did until later on when I did a bit of studying. So if the argument is that it's not necessary to spend hours and hours studying it, then I agree. But I also think it is a vital concept to be aware of.
Maybe if you can’t hear pitch accent, maybe you should have made this video after learning it for a year or so.
how many languages do you guys want to speak? and which ones?
Hello
I want to speak more or less 5 to 6 languages. I'm a portuguese native speaker, I've been studying english on my own for 5 months and the languages I want to speak are Spanish, because it's close to portuguese and I think it will be easier to learn, French because I like the intonation, Japanese because I'm a great fan of the culture and I do like anime.
Maybe after accomplishing the ones I mentioned I'll try another one. And I hope that this comment is correct kkk.
@@thyagosilva1973 your english is so good! i’m a native english speaker and i have been studying spanish for a while, i like to think that my spanish level is good but there is still a lot more room for improvement, some other languages i want to learn are french, mandarin chinese and norwegian. but there are definitely many more that i would like to learn
@@thyagosilva1973 man, I'm also learning english and I intend to study japanese in the future for the same reason as you, I love the culture and I love animes like Attack on titan, ONE PIECE and One punch man. I'm from brazil and my dad speaks german because he lived in Germany when he was 6. So I think I'll learn english , japanese and german
@@lukepotkay1732 thank you so much and I'm sure your level in spanish is pretty good man, just keep doing what you like and you will reach your goals.
@@law1775 I'm a big fan of Attack on titan and One punch man too, I started one piece a long time ago but didn't continue watching and now I'm lazy to do that haha
Im not going to worry about until i reach a level where it might bring me to a closer level of fluency.
Regardless of pitch accent, が／は、articles or any isolated elements being important or not, saying that Japanese doesn't have "pitch" is false information.
In standardized Japanese (and many dialets), each word does have it's own "stress/pitch" pattern and so does English. It's a fact.
When we use the word "intonation" in English, usually we refer to the intonation of a full sentence but not a specfic word.
I really love your videos. Your approach and explanations are really helpful. Thanks for this.
I bet Steve was handsome when he was younger.
Gay.
@Trevor F I agree. 😳😳😳 But he's like 55 years older than me so... 😅 So this is how I socially acceptably say it.
Thank you Mr Kaufmann, I was concerned about this stuff in last week, but this video helped me to focus on only one thing.
Learning pitch accent is good. But I have to get to know lots of words and expressions first. Especially Japanese are bad at listening. The similar words sound the same to us.
Many English learners gives up learning English. Because there are too many things we have to study.
I will learn pitch accent when I became an advanced learner. Mostly non Japanese TV stars who are fluent in Japanese have wrong pitch accent. No problem.
Agree!
Thank you
¿Por favor Podrías hacer este video también en español?
Hmm... Comments censored on this video; interesting! Who’d have thought! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🥶🤪
Please explain. Some comments are suppressed by YT but I don't remember censoring anything. Can you be specific?
For once I agree. Not sure about other languages but lots of people seem to make learning Japanese into some kind of childish contest to be the best non-native speaker and I find it so ridiculous it's not even funny. Like you said, it's not a performance sport, it's about communication. Anyone who fails to see that is likely a perfectionist and actually accomplishes little and wishes they themselves were a native, and so they announce their goal of wanting to sound like a native to sound impressive and compensate for their inferiority complex. They are chasing a myth.
Every language has other varieties so you can't hope to sound like an entire population of natives. Everybody uses language in a slightly different manner, different accents exists, etc. yet this doesn't impede communication. Even if you DO somehow end up sounding like a native, it's only impressive for 5 seconds, after which no one cares anymore especially if you come across as arrogant and unpleasant.
Most people in their right mind would much prefer to befriend the learner without a native accent yet tries to communicate and knows a lot of words than the one who "sounds like a native" yet speaks terribly. Don't think just because you learned the language it's an automatic pass of acceptance - let the natives decide. Lots of Europeans speak fantastic English yet people don't always say "you speak great English", for all you know they could have been raised in the West. Same for me, English is one of my native languages and I'm Asian. No one ever says that but even still, it's only impressive for 5 seconds.
I disagree. If you plan on integrating into a society, having a near-native accent is a massive asset. There are dozens if not hundreds of studies out there that demonstrate the subconscious bias native speakers have towards people speaking with an accent (and that in countries with significant immigrant populations; in Japan it would probably be even more pronounced). And it influences how people *actually* perceive your intellectual ability (although consciously they may not even be aware of it), how likely they are to make you part of their social entourage and a lot more sneaky little problems that arise from speaking your target language with an accent. I'd say that if you found a culture that truly speaks to you and you want to be part of it, working on your accent, non-verbal communication and understanding of cultural realities is not negotiable if you want to be accepted *truly*. Of course, for all other purposes, it's not nearly as important. If you moved somewhere just to work there but you don't associate yourself with this culture nor do you particularly care about forming close, authentic relationships with native speakers, you probably have better things to do than worry about your accent (although it may have a financial impact too, so even this is not clearcut)
So I was right about Canada.
2:07 Western Basque? I'm a native Basque speaker and never heard of "Western Basque". You mean Bizkaian dialect?
By the way... George changed part of his opinion about this after discussing it with Matt (from Matt vs Japan).
Not taking the poke, I've seen too many people pass or get awful ailments. If something is free, then you're probably the product.
It's not free, the pharma companies are for sure charging their usual fees plus A LOT of extra for insanely fast RnD, logistics, mass scaling of production, etc. And your government has paid a shit ton of money from your taxes and/or by going into debt to secure regular shipments. Many less fortunate nations don't have enough funds to pay for that even when they're the ones producing vaccines (like India). The only reason your government is giving this countries
Wikipedia says persian has pitch accent? I'm persian and i've never heard such a thing
most natives don't know features of their own language
@Beaudile They know how to use their language. They know what sounds right. But they don't necessarily know the characteristics of their language. It's all subconscious knowledge. Also you are conflating two different things. Pitch accent is not imaginary. Natives themselves speak about it. It has nothing to do with trying to sell you stuff but it's obvious where you are getting this from and that's irrelevant to what this is about. Not even going to bother responding to the comment about Wikipedia since you basically make yourself seem dumb already.
This video below is for all of you who are oblivious of pitch-accent by own choice: ruclips.net/video/9oETbe8k7CY/видео.html
Are you a native speaker?
I'm fully vaccinated! Everybody do the same! I'm learning chinese so I gotta get my tones right! What materials would you recommend for someone wanting to learn how to become a better communicator?
Shut up
I'm learning Japanese by myself.
I watch some YT channels on Japanese language...
My goal is to participate JLPT N4 this December....
我也学习汉语从2017 到去年.
我参加过 汉语课程, 有同学们.
我获得了Hsk-3 2019年10 月.
我现在学习日语, 但目前没有语言的课程.
All courses are conducted virtually, so I learn Japanese by RUclips channels...
Is there someone interested in talking in English with me? 😊
My English level is B2
I’m from Brazil 🇧🇷
I'm Japanese who live in England.
I used to live in Tokyo, but the Japanese spoken by foreigners all have different pitch accents. In Tokyo, many people come from different parts of Japan, so we don’t care about the pitch accent. We make decisions based on the context of the sentence. And I've never met a foreigner who speaks Japanese fluently who doesn't speak perfect Japanese.
I'm worried. Perfectionism has been said to be a Japanese disease in sociology, but why do people from other countries inherit this perfectionism? Language is for communication. If I were told to speak perfect English in England, I would run back to Japan.
Although Japanese people sometimes judge each other's origin by pitch accent, many Japanese are aware of regional pronunciation due to the spread of the Internet.
If you want to speak perfectionist Japanese, I guess everyone wants to be an announcer for a Japanese TV station. Not many Japanese people have perfect pitch accents either. I live in England. The UK encourages RP pronunciation. I have never seen a Japanese person in England who speaks RP pronunciation perfectly. Words change, and the meaning of a word is different depending on how it is received by the individual.
Even the announcers on Japanese TV stations make mistakes in Japanese all the time!
Don't be a perfectionist. Language is for communication.
There is a great deal of "showing off" that seems to be present in the language learning community. English speakers who have attained a very high level of Japanese ability cannot help but tell the whole internet (and make some nice money from ad revenue). The irony is that, if they really understood Japanese, they would know better than to brag about it. Japan is probably the humblest country on Earth.
Now some people, like Dogen, make great content *for those interested in that content*. Nothing wrong with furthering your knowledge in a topic that interests you. But the other 99% of us want to learn how to use Japanese, and people pushing the idea that pitch accent perfection is super important don't understand how demotivating that is. It has it's importance, but they blow it out of proportion. And after reading a lot of comments on this topic it's clear that this point is missed by many people so I'll say it again: pitch accent is important, but it's blown out of proportion.
And the argument that "you can't mimic what you can't hear so that's why you need to study pitch accent" is nonsense. My response to that is "you don't know what I hear".
What do you mean by pitch accent sir? Hmm...🤔
Could you please tell me sir? Or guys, could you tell me please?😊
👍
I think French people has a higher voice
French teachers say that the french language tones are flatter than for say, english.
After reading through some of the comments here, it's kind of ridiculous how people make such a big deal of small things in language. Language exist for communication, not to show-off, put on a performance nor make a contest out if it; that makes me sick, yet non-natives giving lectures in the comments section about the do's and don'ts in certain languages like they are some kind of authority figure of what's important. Let the learners decide that for themselves. These people don't realize they're not actually helping anyone - the only thing they accomplish is proving they're keyboard warrior cultists with an inferiority complex. I say this on behalf of the sane ones here: Why do you people care so much about what others think of your pronunciation that it drives you towards perfection? Nobody is perfect; if that's what you strive for then I guess you're nobodies. Look at those who try to learn English, as long as they can communicate and get by, who cares if their native accents are present? It's ridiculous how people set unattainable goals like wanting to sound like a native yet don't understand WHY they even want to achieve it. Just because you end up sounding like a local in one area doesn't mean you'll sound like one in another, hence why you can't sound like a native to everyone. If learners try to speak, can communicate just fine and are pleasant people, that matters more to natives in the right mind than if the learner was arrogant or boring despite speaking/sounding "like a native". The only validation you need is from the locals you speak to because how they react to you during the conversation is a reflection of who you are as an individual. Let the natives decide how well you know the language and whether or not they accept you.
Lexical field analysis: "ridiculous", "show-off", "makes me sick", "keyboard warrior cultists with an inferiority complex", "sane ones here", "you people", "who cares", "ridiculous" "in the (sic) right mind", "arrogant", "boring", "validation you need"... Yes, we're the ones being judgmental here...indeed...
Yes pitch accent is important. Learn the language as it is spoken.
The shorter expression for “pitch accent” is “accent”. No need to use any newfangled word being thrown out there by people longing for recognition.
Why isn't here Matt vs Japan with Dogen :(
i dunno. singaporean english really fucks up english intonation and its a REAL DRAG to listen to. its just all over the place and screws up the emphasis in a sentence considerably and there's just no flow for the ear. rhythm, and conventional rhythms, are actually extremely important. and singapore obviously its following tones from another language/s borrowed directly into english. tone might be alot more impactful than you think to native speakers (willingness to listen you for long). have you actually asked native japanese speakers how they feel about this? or were you satisfied with your own impressions of japanese of others? i think you need to consider this more. i watched a documentary that was made in singaporean english and i had to keep stopping the film just to take a break from it. i dont know if I'd date someone who spoke with this intonation 'pattern', it would drive me mad. So does it matter? depends on your goals in the situation. But probably more of a big deal than you are accounting for here though. we all hate a half american half british accent, and there is a reason for that. the musicality a person uses is better off being 'easy on the ear.' since communication is the goal of language.
hola
Até o Steve tá falando disso hahaha
Tem alguem mais?
@@elnoruego6854 Matt VS Japan, ele tava discutindo com outro cara sobre isso
Blue pill Boomer is supposed to talk about languages, goes on a tangent about how his Uber driver is incompetent and then how the Canadian government is overbearing with COVID regulations, and then says if you don't get vaccinated, you're evil. And didn't even mention Matt who has been driving the pitch accent conversation.
Repent
matt vs japan and dougen are just trying to sell people this idea that pitch accent is important in order to be understood. what a bs excuse to sell you something.
steve, your accent is very american heavy, just like myself when i speak. but when we speak to japanese people, they understand us! i mean come on, context is everything. if you say はながいたい、people know you are not saying your flower hurts, but your nose hurts.
all in all, learn the language and speak more. pitch accent in japanese is crap to some degree. if you want to learn in, go for it, but you should probably learn the grammar and speak a ton/listen a ton so that you are understood.
I agree that as long as you are able to communicate effectively and are understood then you will be fine without having to have a PH. D in Pitch Accent. 🙄🤷🏾♀️
2:40 Probably is exist? It does exist. What do you mean?
ㅇ
when you have all kind of gfs to hangout with, the one who judges(evaluate) you must only have one wife.
Another important thing to note: there are Japanese dialects that don’t have pitch accent at all, and as you said various dialects have a different pitch accent system.
I think the only thing a beginner should be doing is making sure they aren’t using an English stress accent, that sounds really wrong when applied to Japanese
Dialects are consistent. The dialects without pitch accent have a specific intonation pattern. Also in the various dialects that do have different pitch accent systems, the differences between them are mostly shifts. That is to say that an adjective like shiROi (standard) just shifts one over to make kansai-ben: SHIroi.
More than just the dialects being consistent, most natives can speak something close to standard anyways. That's why we teach standard to learners. But yeah I agree. Learners should at least be able to understand not to apply stress accent and to shadow / imitate with pitch instead.
@@english-dl9vo In some parts of Japan, such as the Tohoku and Kyushu regions, there are dialects that do not have a fixed accent. The meaning can only be determined by context. Try searching for "無アクセント".
@@english-dl9vo It's not always the case that most natives speak something close to the standard, because what is Standard English? Are Australians, Irish and UK speakers outliers when most of them are actually natives too, just with their own accents, pronunciations and slang?
Also dialects aren't always consistent when there are so many varieties of language. Look at Arabic. While there is the standard MSA which is mostly used in the news, there are so many versions of Arabic that most people never actually uses MSA in real life and prefers not to as it's considered too formal for everyday conversation amongst each other. Also look at Indonesia and the Philippines where hundreds of languages are spoken, some of which may not sound like the standard. There's a language spoken north of the Philippines called Ilocano that sounds almost nothing like the standard language called Tagalog. Ilocano oddly sounds more like Indonesian. Standards languages can't always encompass all the varieties spoken in a country.
@@Oxalis_acetosella Completely agree. People from these regions are likely not natives of Tokyo Japanese which I assume is the standard. In Tokyo, they probably don't sound like natives of the local language even if they look the part, but who cares? Nobody will sound like a native in all varieties of a language anyway. People always say "I want to sound like a native in Japanese" without really understanding why they want that nor realize that Tokyo Japanese isn't the only version of the language. As long as you can communicate, who cares whether you sound like a native or not?
:)
Also some people choose against the vaccine because of high risk of blood clots, including many cancer patients ☺
No, the risk of blood clots is low, very low, much lower than risks of COVID health issues. Those are just statistical facts.
@@Thelinguist I meant for those who are already at high risk of blood clots due to medications, including some chemotherapy.
Some people are against the experimental vaccine as they have other medical issues and taking part in an untested medical gene therapy experiment is not a good idea. Also why should I take part in this experiment when I've had covid which is no worse that a bad case of the flu. I've got better protection against having and passing on covid than you will ever have with the experimental vaccine.
I spent one day in bed, the next day not exactly feeling 100% and by day three was OK to go back to work. The VAST MAJORITY of people who get covid DO NOT DIE! Like 99.6% of them.
Follow the science Steve, not TV statistics.
@@G6PBS Yes, the issue is complicated. In France, they’ve said they won’t accept anyone as having the vaccine if it’s the same vaccine that’s given in Russia or China. They started giving out one type of vaccine and then the side effects were so bad that they took it off the market completely. So do they count the people that took that vaccine as having been vaccinated? This issue is not black and white, unfortunately.
@@G6PBS it's different if you're not healthy already and not young, I understand why most people feel the way he does.
Those socialists are so controlling. It must be depressing.