Basics of Japanese Pitch Accent
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- In this video, I will show you a better way to understand Japanese pitch accent. In most Japanese course books and schools, they explain the pitch accent (if they explain it at all) in terms of High Pitch and Low Pitch, and that's how the pitch is marked in Japanese dictionaries. But in reality pitch goes up and down smoothly, so the way they show accent in Japanese dictionaries is not only confusing but also incorrect.
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When I lived in Japan, I just tried to copy how Japanese people pronounce. It takes time but it comes with frequent exposure and practice.
Yeah I figured this kind of thing is something you'd just pick up by living in Japan or talking to Japanese people often
did you learn it by only exposure and nothing else?
@@Kekswaffel208By copying Japanese speakers...
The problem is that some people don't seem to hear the difference, probably because they are not used to that type of accent. I have seen tests on other channels made by native Japanese teachers and I saw in the comment that some people just didn't hear the difference between both examples. So while I am sure what you did will work for the majority of people, especially if they are aware of the concept, and I think it's probably the best way to learn to speak a language as close as possible to a native speaker, it's probably not going to work for everybody.
Yeah, I've heard plenty of people say they can't hear pitch differences even knowing they exist. It depends on your native language as well. Your brain will fit what it hears into the categories it expects, so you may think you're copying perfectly, but still be off.
As a japanese who always struggled to explain the pitch accent to other people (it just seemed so random, yet so natural to me), I think this is the best video on the subject I've ever seen !
I wish more tutors and teachers were like Kaname in the way he presents the information and structures it. It's so logical, easy to comprehend, and always makes absolute sense! Thank you!
Yeah, he not only understands the concepts, but is also capable of explaining them clearly and intuitively. He's just a great teacher, I guess
This is one of the best concise explanations of pitch accent, an aspect of the Japanese language that is getting increasing attention.
Using a dot as a visual representation for pitch accent is much simpler. It's like putting up a tent; the cover gradually rises to the top then gradually down. Changes in pitch flow in a similar way.
While it might seem a little overwhelming that there are several different patterns & exceptions, you are likely to naturally get used to it over time as you practice listening & using pitch accent.
I'm pretty sure this has always been paid attention to, if you look at Japanese learning material in Chinese, Korean, and probably other languages too. It's just that western educational material, e.g. Genki, etc. that don't talk about it.
Well said! I just watched and I can't wait to apply this video's way of thinking of pitch accent when watching my favorite Japanese shows and movies. I feel like it's going to help my listening comprehension a lot.
This method is so much easier to work with than the ones I've learned before. It's easier to think of sentences and phrases flowing up and down, it feels more natural. Thanks, Kaname-sensei!
This. I think many people focus a lot on pitch accent in individual words isolated from sentences, when it's more important to know how it work on sentences, along with intonation. It's less overwhelming than trying to study lots of lots of word's pitch accents. As someone who doesn't put focus a lot on pitch accent, I have to say this video is great!
that doesn't make sense, for you to know how the words work in sentences you have to know the word's pitch lol
@@aa-cx8nc Japanese sintagmas have easy to learn intonation patterns. If you know that, the pronunciation becomes better.
@@azarishiba2559 idk what a sintagma is but, if u mean the accent type that's just knowing the pitch of words
It’s so interesting how worried this made me reading this in a book, but when you hear it spoken I can hear *why* these make sense even though I don’t know the technical reason. They just sound better stressed where they are supposed to be. This video was awesome thank you!
PLEASE do more of these pitch accent videos !! you explain it so well
Bossman this helped a lot. Usually I see pitch accent explained in terms of the four patterns but that seems a lot more confusing than just identifying where the accented mora is in a word.
You might be the first person I've seen on RUclips who explained the pitch accent in a proper way. ありがとうございます! 貴方のチャネルが大好きですよ！❤❤❤❤❤
My guy is putting Dogen out of a job.
Or maybe driving people to Dogen, since Dogen's course takes this start and fills in all the gaps.
I wish they become friends. I like them both😊
At 1 video a month
What's Dogen doin
thats a criminal statement lol
I really appreciate the way you structure your explanations of any concepts, as it makes it easy to see examples & understand the general rules to really quickly internalize them.
Especially things like how the rules often sound child-like without understanding the exceptions makes it easier to know what to listen for when you hear exceptions to pronunciation and how they flavor the tone of a speech pattern.
It gets natural over time :D
Hey, don't I see you in kyouzou's streams sometimes?
only if you have the basics. A lot of people have been speaking for tens of years, living and working in Japan and still never acquire pitch accent.
@@serafin3734 shh…
@@ganqqwerty even the people here who think theyve mastered it are dunning kruger. there is no way of knowing without feedback.
@@figgettitoh please
ありがとうございます！
Kaname back with another banger video, as usual
This was great! I’d love a supplemental video breaking down pitch accent in full sentences and dialog - sort of like how you were starting to do towards the end of this video. Thank you as always!!
Kaname-san, I was familiar with this rule and regional variance on the way some words are pronounced (and sometimes incorrect ways to pronounce words) which honestly made me very nervous with accented words as a concept. This video is the first one that was able to make me completely understand accented words. Thank you very much.
This is a super helpful explanation. Thank you for teaching us!
This channel is such an incredible knowledge resource, ありがとうございます
more videos on pitch accent please! i’ve seen an innumerable amount of videos on it before, but yours is the first one where i’ve truly *got* it. ありがとうございました ナイトウ先生！🙏🏻
It is crazy how much of this I've picked up learning Japanese without realizing. Never had it explained this well before though, Thank you!
When I bought a Japanese grammar book for beginners years ago, it tried to introduce me to pitch accent, but I didn't understand it. It said, "The "ki" in 切る is stressed, but the "ki" in 着る is unstressed." I didn't know what that meant because I never thought about how words are pronounced in my own language. For years, I pronounced 着る as "kiru," but pronounced 切る as "KHHHHHHHHHHHiru."
Then years later while watching "Naruto Shippuden," I heard Sasuke say 早く服を着ろ, then it hit me. "OH! That book was saying that the last part of the word is higher! I get it now! So with 切る, the FIRST part of the word is higher."
It's not stressing syllables, it is putting emphasis on an specific one
@@Mobik_Emphasis _is_ stress. It may be realised as a combination of a higher pitch, a higher volume and longer sounds, depending on the language.
Pitch is not stress. That's the fundamental difference@@suntorytimes1
@@matzekatze7500 It's not the same as stress in English (or in many other languages), but it's a kind of stress nonetheless.
I like saying "accent" than "stress" "emphasis". But I think that's because my native language is Spanish which involves a comma or mark above a letter. Atención, parásito, árbol.
Honestly people usually explain pitch as low or high and you did a fantastic job explaining it well. Keep up these videos they are amazing!!
i always tried to follow the "rhythm" i hear in convos i listen in both anime and Japanese media. Hearing an explanation of where the accent is pitched higher and lower helps a lot
Thanks!
Thanks, this helps a lot with understanding the general concept and having good defaults to fall back on. I think it'll make it a lot easier to pick up through hearing it.
Also it's just a lot easier to understand a high point than some weird robotic square wave thing like in dictionaries.
I've been seeing a lot of discussion about pitch accent as of late, but you're the only one who's actually taken the time to explain all the little details. Great video! Thanks!
Thank you for another amazing video, Kaname!! You're the best!
I've been studying japanese for so many years but for the first like... 5 years or more, no one ever told me about pitch accent.
I like to practice pronouncing the words and phrases as I listen to people talking (in tv shows etc). So I believe I pronounce many things correctly (but sure I pronounce many things wrong too xD) BUT I never studied the rules in language school as I see you teach here. There are other japanese teachers on youtube that I started watching before finding you that also talk about this and I was like "can't believe it took me so long so hear about this" fr...
Thanks a lot for another great video so I can keep studying and doing what I can to memorize and get used to this, haha!
Greetings from Brazil!
I'm always happy when I see you're uploading videos, the amount of information you cover and the way you break it down is truly fantastic
Thank you very much for your time and effort ❤
I really wish I had been able to watch this 2 years ago when I first really started trying to learn about pitch accent! I had thought I was starting to get a handle on it several months ago and then I realized I was totally wrong and had actually developed some really bad listening habits because I had been forcing myself to hear the accents I had been told were associated with certain verbs, when in reality the accent had been overridden by by the ます form (ie I was forcing myself to hear 見ます or 立ちます as atamadaka when in reality the stress is on ま or is omitted).
Thank you for the great video kaname-sensei! I really hope you make more pitch accent videos :)
基本の高低アクセント認識を広がせて誠にありがとうございます。視聴者向け役に立つ高低アクセントの動画だけでなく、上達に目指すと思います。
Thanks
Very good video! Maybe some advice on sentence level pitch accent would be nice too
Great explanation, please do also a video explaining how to react Japanese phrases with natural rhythms 😅!
Love the explanation. This is so helpful since I kinda struggled a lot with intonations when studying from books and even when trying shadowing, I couldn’t really see how this works systematically.
This way of showing where is the pitch accent is so much better.
This is an excellent explanation, both intuitive and informative. Bravo and thank you.
I studied Japanese for many years starting in highschool, then living in Japan and got a bachelor's degree in college back in the States. Nowadays, I don't use it much so it's rusty but I try to brush up sometimes. I love these videos because you explain SO WELL so many things that my teachers and professors ignored, briefly explained, or claimed were not possible to teach. You are my hero!
Thanks. Nice set of "rules". Generalisations of rules are so helpful when learning languages, even when there are exceptions. It actually makes the exceptions too easier to remember when you encounter them. My first German teacher in school had some general rules for noun gender that I still remember because they were so useful.
Watching this, I notice that despite tone accent never being part of what we learnt (Japanese is quite complex enough even without going into it), I actually followed many of these rules when I studied it in school 30 years ago. I just picked it up by osmosis when I listened to the lesson texts on tape.
PART 2 PLLEEASSSEEE
Also, your videos have a very pleasing color palette. Was that on purpose? lol
Kaname, I hope you plan to make more content related to this!
Thank you 🙏🏼 It will help me a lot with Ancient Greek pitch accent.
I've been waiting for this one for soooooo long. Please upload more related to pitch accent....
Really good video, Kaname!
We want more of this! :D
ピッチアクセントを教えてくれてありがとうございました。分かりやすい説明でしたよ。
高低アクセント high low accent
上から目線で草
The most useful video on pitch accent. Mind blowing 😮
Thank you so much! This video was super helpful!!!
More videos on pitch accent, please! I like it structured and ruled like this, rather than just drilling each word
This was a firehose of information. Thank you so much. Learned a lot.
I'm confused... how do I know on which mora an accent of a word exist?
What a great summery. Only one question... How do I know a word actually has an accent? I'd love to see another video.
Appreciate using this many countries. Some of them I've never heard on Japanese before
After a few decades in Japan, this is the first time I've heard about pitch accent with words that end in 語 or 的. Excellent information.
こんな動画が手伝ってくれたんですけどコンテクストがない会話で「雨」と「飴」って言葉は問題がありましたよ。ありがとございます。
This is insanely helpful. I'm gonna need to take some notes.
I picked up some of the pitch through having a good musical ear while living abroad, but had always wondered about the rhyme and reason behind it. Very appreciative of you taking the time to explain it!
お疲れ様でした！
これからも頑張ってくださいね😊
次のレッスンを楽しみにしています。
Please make a sequel! This is gold for learners like me Kaname!!
I doubt he'll make it for free ... most likely available only in Patreon later.
This was one of the best videos I have ever seen on pitch accent. Calling it “accent” makes it so much easier to understand than the usual approach of “high” and “low” pitch.
However, I have no idea how you’d approach studying it in practice?
I believe the accent for each individual word is easily available online, which can amount for good practice, but what about full sentences?
I recognize the importance of pitch accent, but I haven’t been able to find a good way to incorporate it in my learning schedule. My attempts often feel very overwhelming and frustrating.
Thanks for another great video!
You're a great Sensei! I love you! :)
ありがとうございます！ Your videos have been a great help to me!
Do you have any plans to discuss pronunciation tips? Especially for し sound which can be hard for native English speakers?
If not no worries. Thanks so much!
wow. amazing lesson. thank you.
This is very helpful! Thank you 先生!
HOW DO YOU MAKE IT SO EASY KANAME
He was born there - speaking Japanese just comes naturally to him!
@@stevezodiacXL5I don't mean speaking Japanese, I mean teaching it. If anything actually usually foreign learners are better at explaining things in ways that are easy to understand, since native speakers just know everything intuitively without any effort and most have never thought deeper about their language. Not with Kaname though
@@stevezodiacXL5 Being good (or in this case natural haha) at something is waaay different than being good at teaching something.
@@ViperOfMino
The thing is, I've been to Japan many times, and even young kids can speak it!
I'm a grown up, and I find it very hard. I just don't know how they do it - I think they are just smarter in Japan.
So useful
Thanks 😊
Excellent video! Did you imply there might be subsequent videos regarding pitch accent? I'm really looking forward to those.
These accent rules are so complicated. Hopefully i'll remember them after hearing the phrases 1000 times lol
素晴らしい説明でした。よくわかりました。ありがとうございました！
Wow I didn't even realise I was doing it until you pointed out that they're meant to be pronounced like that. Listening is very powerful after all.
That was very informative, thank you.
For everyone here asking the same question, you really don't need to worry too much about pitch accent unless you are obsessing over sounding native. when it comes to homophones, people will typically understand you fine based off of context alone. But if you want to obsess over it, I recommend NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 (NHK Japanese Pronunciation Accent Dictionary). Or there are online pitch accent dictionaries.
大変勉強になりました！ありがとう！
Hi Kaname! I watched some of your videos and I'm amazed by how well do you explain certain topics in Japanese 🤩
Do you know if there is an official Japanese grammar used in Japan for Japanese students? I want to study Japanese with a linguistic approach 😄
Wow! Thank you so much!
Kaname Sensei rocks my world! 😊
What i like so much about Kaname-sensei is that he doesn’t try to intimidate people who are trying to learn Japanese with “Oh yeah Pitch accent is REALLY hard so do hard” He really gives such easy to comprehend explanations to harder concepts in Japanese.
This is so much easier to learn being Brazilian, because the concept exists here as well.
Very good video, with some very useful information in it. As a former teacher of English myself (in Japan), I couldn't help noticing the way you pronounced the final syllable of the word "example" - to my (British) ears, it sounded much more like a "po" sound - I couldn't hear the "l" there at all. A native English speaker would insert the weak "schwa" vowel after the "p" and then the "l", albeit a soft one, but it's definitely audible. If you wanted to improve your English pronunciation (which is pretty good, by the way), you could start by working on the way you pronounce the word "example", so that it doesn't end up sounding like "exampo", which is how a lot of Japanese speakers say it (presumably because the "l" sound is tricky for Japanese speakers to replicate).
So helpful, thank you!!
Thanks for the video, and the tips. It's really useful, as the Japanese pitch accent is quite difficult for me. I have a hard time to correctly pronounce words, in any languages.
Have a good day and one, Kaname sensei. The same to everyone.
どうもありがとうございました、かなめ先生。お元気でお大事に。いってらっしゃい。皆さんも。
This is better than that scammer Matt vs. Japan
Kaname I think you should make a video on muri, muda, and dame, all 3 are very interesting words and are difficult for new learners to understand due to their wide variety of nuances!
I didn't understand pitch Accent at all until now. This video has helped me understand alot and I will now be listening out for pitch accent. I'd love to see you do a part 2 to fully understand all the concepts.
One question, how am I supposed to know when a word is flat and when I'm supposed to pronounce mora higher or lower?
What do you mean with your question?
Check the pitch with a dictionary that shows it or learn to be able to hear it. "kotu minimal pairs" is a good place to practice. Do like 50 a day until you're 100% accurate. Don't worry if you suck at first. When I started my score was bad enough that you could beat it by guessing without listening to the audio.
@@matzekatze7500 I mean, How can I tell when to pronounce a word with a flat tone or when to use a higher or lower pitch
@@Tedisdeaad Thank you!👍
I learnt pitch accent from just watching loads of anime, I never knew any of this. Yet now, I've gotten good enough at japanese that I just know the pitch accents just by reading the words. This video still fascinated me though
dunning kruger
I've been listening to a lot of children's stories over the past year, as a way to learn Japanese, and I do indeed notice that sometimes a "child-like, playful tone" will be used where the tone on the end of the word is raised up higher than normal, and it kind of has a short and quick cutoff.
Like the word for "goodnight...."
oyasumi (normal)
oyaasuuMI (a playful, child-like way of speaking, I think)
(sorry, it's kind of hard to show what I mean through text, but hopefully this makes sense.)
It's always right-o to watch kaname naito.
The most useful part of the accent lines over the words is that it separates strings of kana much more legibly 😂
Thanks for your videos
Even Kaname couldn't resist!
I think pitch accent might be the first thing I learned about Japanese. I didn't have any vocabulary at the time yet, but always noticed the semi-consistent and somewhat predictable shifts in tone.
Another very clearly explained video, thank you. if a person already has a fairly good vocabulary but didn’t learn the pitch accent rule for each word, would it be better to just acquire it through osmosis and then buy a pitch accent dictionary for new words only?
Kaname!!!!!!
Great video! How about something on how you physically produce the tone change?
Great video. ありがとうございました！
Nice, a new 仮名目 video
it's actually 可奈女
True, 無い糖 可奈女
Isn't it 要 or is there an inside joke?
いや金目さんじゃね？
I think this is a great video, but I also think the thumbnail is misleading. After watching this video, I'm even more convinced that improper pitch accent makes speech sound strange and often incomprehensible. With that in mind, one would not want to ignore the pitch accent of 果物 like the thumbnail suggests.
YAYYY KANAME VIDEO (edit: some of you are dorks for using this video to shit on dogen imagine just celebrating good Japanese learning content creators and leaving it at that 🤔)
it's pretty intuitive