I would learn Tokyo pitch accent since it's considered standard and can serve as a point of reference when listening to Japanese spoken with regional pitch accents. However, given that most Japanese natives speak Japanese with their native regional pitch accent, context is more important for working out meaning in a conversation.
When we really get down to it, it's really "intonation", and that has probably been known about for hundreds of years, and is in every language on Earth. Those who say that Japanese has no stress, and it's all about pitch are wrong. And those who think that English just has stress and no pitch changes are wrong as well. Both language - in fact, all, as far as I can imagine - have both pitch and stress. And pitch doesn't make a language a "tonal language". Just look at "AWEsome". "AWE" is said both at a higher pitch, as well as with more stress. In the Japanese word "oKAAsan", "KAA" has both a higher pitch and more stress. Japanese may be a bit more pitch-oriented, and English a bit more stress-oriented, but in the end, this idea that people believe they are newly discovering has fallen under "intonation" for hundreds of years already.
Japanese isn't "a bit more pitch-oriented", it's extremely pitch-oriented. The idea the Japanese has stress and isn't all about pitch isn't inaccurate, but it is disingenuous the way you're framing it. There is very little stress involved in Japanese speech, and it primarily only applies to speech with strong emotion for emphasizing purposes. Outside of that, Japanese words don't inherently have stress differences. It's pitch differences and intonation that matter.
@@jpnpod8277 It's not disingenuous at all. If you compare Japanese to English, it Japanese is a bit more pitch oriented. If you compare Japanese to Chinese, Japanese is a LOT LESS pitch oriented. In both English and Japanese pitch matters little in the grand scheme of things when it comes to being able to understand what a person is saying. And even in the "oKAAsann" example in this video (as well as all of the other words that his cohost mentioned, and many more besides that), there is also stress, not only pitch.
@@Rationalific Again, it's not "a bit more" than English, it's A LOT more than English. And no, only George added stress to the words in that video because he was trying to make a (very wrong) point about the stress in Japanese words, explaining the sound differences from the reference point of English. In reality, there is no inherent stress in Japanese words. The only time stress is involved is when there is emphasis or emotion.
@@jpnpod8277 I bet if it were scientifically studied by instruments, it would show that Japanese has stress. Do you remember the books years ago that said "Japanese doesn't have pitch changes"? People read things and believe them. No matter what side of the fence they come down on. But do your own research. Just listen, and you'll find that that's not the case.
@@Rationalific Dude, you can literally hear it when people speak Japanese. I don't know what book you're referring to, but the idea that Japanese doesn't have pitch changes is absolutely asinine. And I already said that Japanese does have stress, but only in instances of emphasis or strong emotion. What makes you so convinced that this is not the case?
He is in Japan "working" with Ken. 😉 He even deleted most recet ones that wre 8 months ago including your pitch debate. So that makes you OG even before Dogen. 😱🤯
George, I love you. I watched George and Keiko and all your other shows back in the day and you helped me learn Japanese so much. So glad to see you're still around and producing content. I do think pitch accent is important if you want to sound good in Japanese and I'm focusing on it now, but that's only after having become fluent in the language unaware of it (like you). Honestly if you're already fluent in Japanese and can easily hear and reproduce the pitches you can nail 90% of pitch accent within a relatively short period of dedicated study, with the other 10% being all the exceptions and rules for combining certain words which matter less and less as they get less and less common.
@@lordcyberlafont Really, it was almost completely ignored by the Japanese learning community for a long time even though it is a real part of the pronunciation of the language because it wasn't well understood even by native speakers. Now that we know about it, some people who want to perfect their accents can learn it. There's nothing forcing people to learn it though if they don't feel like their accent is keeping them from communicating in the language.
@@lordcyberlafont I understand that your trying to be funny, but I think it's good for me to clearly state why people talk about pitch accent in the first place so people aren't confused by the discourse around it.
Man what a truly great video. Watching george talk about pitch accent makes a lot of it make much more sense because it doesn't feel like he's just trying to sell me something
Good to see you uploading again! Speaking of which, would you be down to hop in a call and have a chat about RUclips stuff? I mainly watch your other channel and you mentioned it a few times. Personally, I think it’s kinda fun to learn about how RUclips works so thought I might ask… Btw, what a coincidence, I rewatched your debate with matt a few days ago so this timing is perfect haha
After studying Japanese for nearly two years, I still consider myself a high beginner. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how people speak from a cultural standpoint. To sound less(textbooky or like google translate) So the last thing I'm trying to do is focus on pitch accent. I will stick to mimicking Japanese people the best I can.
@@wanderlust_gaming there’s also that thing they do - I don’t know if it’s because if they said a whole point/sentence they would run out of breath - where they break sentences up into different beats, like blah blah desukeDO…blah blah BLAH….
You'd be able to understand casual language and mimic Japanese people a lot better if you payed attention to pitch. From a cultural standpoint, there are certain references to different regions in Japan that center around pitch pattern. The more you understand pitch, the better you'll be able to pick up on these references and better understand what people are saying, even if you only know Tokyo pitch. Pitch accent isn't a "textbook" thing, it's a Japanese thing.
@JohnM... I also noticed when I listen, that particles are also omitted in casual speech. Often times, I'm spend too much time trying to normalize verbs or how to use the right particles
6:40 As far as I understand pitch accent should have nothing to do with volume and should solely be done / differentiated using pitch (hence it's not stress accent like English). 9:40 Also pitch accent doesn't only help with "sounding better" (output) it can also complement your listening (input), by helping to fill in the blanks when you didn't hear a part of a word (especially with muffled audio), and helps to differentiate words with same/similar pronunciation but different pitch accent.
It’s somewhat necessary and you should try and be aware of it if your goal is to get really good at Japanese. If you don’t really care about it, then I leave it up to you! I don’t think there is any need to be a master at it either. (Just being right most of the time).
You touched on it briefly but I think an often overlooked point is that even Japanese people aren't keenly aware of pitch accent or what's right or wrong, and often don't care. In Fumi's video on pitch accent she suggests starting by only learning the pitch of your most commonly used words as a way to be more realistic about it. She also brings up a good point in that the pitch can actually change for verbs depending on the exact conjugation used.
Hi @@chezz.1 . You wrote いられた as polite and past form of いる. But it seems incorrect in that context. I think you already know a verb おる. So you should write おられた instead of いられた. As a little more advanced and polite phrase, it would be いらっしゃった. Thank you.
One thing I found I really like doing related to learning Japanese is just listening to music or audio and really trying to understand what someone is talking about but also the way they say the words it's interesting hearing the different accents from all over Japan I know there was a lot of talk about how some accents are better than others or how some are considered City versus country hick accent but to me they all sound amazing in their own way
Oh gosh. So many better aspects of Japanese you can focus on to make yourself sound native than pitch accent. Pitch can be acquired naturally, if you have a lot of exposure to Japanese.
Not unless you started learning while you were really young or you already speak a pitch/tone-focused language. George started learning when he was 12, so that might explain how he got it. But most adult learners don't have that privilege and must study it consciously to some extent if they want to pick it up.
@@jpnpod8277 My bro started when we was 23 and now he works as a co-host for a Japanese radio show. My friend started when he was 18, and now he’s working at Bandai namco as an interpreter. I started when I was 16 and I taught my friend all he knows ;) age is just a small barrier. Time spent studying pitch accent would be MUCH better spent on watching コント and learning timing for ボケ and ツッコミ lol
Really, the general debate should argue whether matching an accent matters, not only pitch accent. This goes beyond just Japanese. I think matching an accent matters. If one has the goal of talking to a group of people, then one should speak in a way that helps the group understand. But accent isn't critical! Deliberately focusing on accent results in time not spent on the far more important tasks of listening and learning vocabulary. If Krashen's input hypothesis holds true, then good accent comes from days of listening practice. So, pay some awareness to accent (in general), but not too much.
Around ten years ago, I started my Japanese language journey in a college classroom. I was instructed from the textbook Yookoso which has a note on pitch accent in the first chapter. It says this about pitch accent and my professors, both native Japanese women who learned English, graduated from American universities, and eventually became professors in America, reinforced this idea when pitch accent became a topic of discussion. "The primary function of Japanese accentuation is to show the unity of words in a phrase more than to distinguish the meaning of words. For this reason, no accent is indicated in the vocabulary lists in this textbook. Just listen to your instructor and the tape [note: this is an *old* textbook series] very carefully and try your best to mimic them. Rather than paying too much attention to the accent pattern of each word, you should accurately articulate the overall intonation of the sentence in order to communicate effectively in Japanese." Yookoso! 1 3rd edition, page 14
Hey Sensei, this goes outside the content of the video, but I need to tell you. About a week ago I flew to Los Angles with my family, I live in Chile so it was a 12 hours flight, and in the seat right next to me there was a Japanese man, I started speaking to him in japanese and this was my first time interacting with someone in real life in japanese, the day before the flight I had completed book 5, and I can safely say that I understood everything he said, except for one word 「天文学」(which I asked him in Japanese what it meant), and I was able to express myself using the grammar and words that I already knew. He was going to Japan so LA was only a connection. Once I arrived I saw plenty of japanese people in the city, however everywhere I went i only spoke in spanish, it seems like almost everyone in LA speaks spanish. I wanted to speak to some Japanese girls, one in specific is probably the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life, but I am kind of afraid women 💀, so I did not drop a single word to her, a shame since they probably have not seen many latinos speaking in japanese. Anyways, thank you so much Sensei, for all the lessons, and teaching you have given me in these books, not just for Japanese language but also for my life values.
Such a great experience. That girl will haunt you for a bit. But I’ve also been too nervous to talk to Japanese girls. There will be others. Just remember most people are just as excited about making new friends as you are and are just as nervous. Just make sure you don’t make them feel uncomfortable since there are a lot of creepy guys out there. But if you are speaking Japanese to them I think they will be pretty excited.
One thing I kept wondering about since that video back then, if the words you mispronounced are perhaps pronounced like this at the place where you initially lived (somewhere northern afair) which obviously would make a lot of sense, my fiance (native speaker) also occasionally messes up pitch accent by pronouncing the word like she'd at home (aka wrong as far as 標準語 is concerned). Overall I think you should at least learn enough pitch accent to hear it (which at least I initially couldn't at all) and then at least you can self adjust your pronunciation if you care enough
So you’ve brought up a great point. I grew up in Aomori which is far north. I wonder if my pitch accent is at times mimicking northern Japanese. Although I’ve said pitch accent is different in other areas for some reason I’ve never actually connected it to my own speaking style. Also, I should point out that that my wife is from western Japan which is Kansai dialect.
I hate the fact that I'm so late to this. I love these pitch accent discussions. From that old video you showed, it sounded like you noticed that there was a slight difference in sound between the mora of words, like the "お" and "か" in お母さん. However, because you didn't know about the concept of PA at the time, you misinterpreted that sound difference as a difference in stress rather than pitch, which is understandable since you were thinking about it from the reference point of English, a very stress-focused language. I wish people would have a more nuanced take on the importance of PA. It's really not THAT important to know, but it's also not negligible. As far as I'm concerned, it's not the scary bogeyman of Japanese that beginners often make it out to be, and it's certainly isn't "adding an extra layer" to the language. It may seem like it is when you're under the impression that you have to memorize the specific pitch pattern of every single word, but trying to do that is as foolish as trying to memorize the kun and on readings of every single kanji. The reality of studying PA is far less cumbersome, as there are smooth and streamlined ways of learning it that don't require much, if any, additional effort or time. It's not a conscious process for the most part; you mainly just have to train your ears to hear it and get used it, and let your brain do the rest. You may need to memorize a few patters at the start to get the concept of it, but once you learn to hear it and recognize it, your brain will internalized most of the pitch patterns for you automatically as you get exposure to the language. The earlier one does this in their learning, the easier it is for them in the long run. Training oneself to hear pitch definitely helps in various ways. It's not just for making your Japanese sound "perfect" or any superficial reason like that. While it does help one to sound more native-like, the true benefits come from your comprehension abilities. Knowing pitch makes it easier to hear and distinguish between words when you're not yet used to full-speed sentences. It also helps with cultural input, as there are many jokes, puns, and references all over media that are heavily based on pitch differences, which helps to amplify your immersive experience. There are other benefits to, but I think I've made this comment long enough lol.
Hey George! Quick question! When you start filming the Book 5 videos, Do you plan on doing them on stream like the past videos? I would love to be a part of those streams!
Those videos are really intense to edit and our official editor moved positions in the company. It cost a lot of money for little return unfortunately.
Yeh nah George - I think you were explaining emphasis (or de-emphasis). Forget about it 🤭 As for Matt vs Japan - hmmm, some troubling videos out there about him. I just wish Dogen would open his mouth when he speaks 🤭
I was definitely talking about an aspect of pitch accent. But I completely didn’t see the full picture. It’s like I discovered one color of the rainbow and thought I saw all the colors.
I honestly dont want to achieve "perfect japanese". If i get to the point where i can express myself and japanese people understand me i will be more than happy lol
You should still try to sound as native-like as possible within reason. I don't want perfect Japanese either, and I'm more than fine with just being able to be understood, but studying PA is about way more than any of that. I wish people would stop associating PA study with perfection, as that's not even close to the point of it for many people.
@@jpnpod8277 Bro yall even made an acronym for it lmaoo. I learn pronunciation by repeating phrases/words over and over, I dont care to do any more than that even if i still mess up. And intensely studying individual accent of words really does make someone look like more of perfectionist than someone who doesn't.
@@niftyszn9469 Bro, are you going schizo? Who are "yall"? And who said anything about "intensely studying individual accent of words"? I don't know who you think you're arguing against, but it's definitely not me. And for the record, repeating words and phrases over and over isn't gonna improve your pronunciation if you're repeating them incorrectly. If you want good pronunciation, you should be inputting more than your outputting, as that will get you to internalize what the words and phrases are suppose to sound like, which in turn will help you produce them better.
@@jpnpod8277 "y'all" as in people who preach pitch accent and criticize those that don't really care to study it. Also you're saying pitch accent doesn't study the pitch of words? Then maybe you're the one who's gone schizo lol. And who says I'm not doing more inputting that outputting? I am. In fact I'm at a point where I've done wayyy to much input as opposed to output. And you can't just assume I repeat phrases incorrectly. I listen to a native say something and repeat in the exact same way multiple times. If that's not good enough for your standard I don't really care either way, I'm not learning japanese for you
@@niftyszn9469 I neither "preach" PA, nor do I criticize those who don't study it unless they say they care about pronunciation, because that's just inconsistent. Also, what part of that is schizo? Intensely studying the pitch pattern of each individual word to learn PA is as dumb as intensely studying the kun and on readings of each individual kanji to learn how to read them. You're a fool if you think anyone literally does that. And I didn't assume anything. I said IF you're repeating the words incorrectly, then you won't improve your pronunciation. If you're repeating them correctly, then there's no issue. But if you're not paying attention to pitch, then you inevitably will be repeating them incorrectly, because you can't mimic what you're not hearing.
I love you George. But I notice that ALL guys who have been speaking Japanese for like 20 years are almost enraged by the idea of pitch accent. I REALLY don't think it's a problem to learn from the beginning. And, I'd like to say - the FIRST time I heard about it - was from YOU. You pointed out that 人 isn't HIITo, it's hiTO. Don't worry about it to the point of quitting, but, just be aware of it.
Also, learning AFTER you have learnt to speak Japanese is a terrible idea. I know people who have tried. It's like having to relearn everything. But if it's just on your radar from the beginning, it's a big help. Edit: it's definitely the least important of the skills to learn
George 先生、you liked the comment but at least take the credit for being the first person I ever heard talk about pitch accent (although, you didn't call it that).
I would say it is more like emphasis. We have that in english but it can be different based on where you are from in US. So it is not official, but you would sound weird not doing it. If all the words just were all flat syllables. Now lots of foreigners can talk that I can understand their words but they don't sound right. I think if you were learning a language you would want to sound like the people speaking it instead of a straight book. Mandarin has 4 tones plus one neutral which makes a difference in what word it is but people still learn that. Funny how the girl said word mountain...so obviously this is common thing in japanese.
I saw a short where a Japanese was pronouncing the same ‘word’ with different accents to demonstrate the differences. Although, he said same word - した- exactly the same twice. は？？… I think accent is important as a beginner, because, being on book two of JFZ, and learning new vocabulary elsewhere, I didn’t realise until I had HEARD certain words that their PRONUNCIATION is totally different, like: 美しい(utsukushi) is actually pronounced ‘ootskooshie’, and つてき is pronounced ‘steki’.
I have a theory; most Japanese learners who defend Pitch accent study are between 15-25. In that age, they are trying to form an identity, find a place in the social hierarchy, and be part of a group. Thus, they take anything, be it music, movies, anime, games, or even stuff like Japanese leaning methods to form their idea of self. As they have more free time, they end up in Matt's channel and AJATT stuff. Here is the issue; they make it part of themselves, and believe that their way is the only and best way. So when someone who just want to learn the language comes and don't do 15 hours of immersion per day, neither have an anki deck of pitch accent core20k, they find the opportunity to do some self affirmation and projection of who they are by giving reasons of their beliefs. "I will speak perfect Japanese, and so should everyone because [insert here reason to justify perfectionism], just like Matt" It is just like the teenager groups who base their identity and style by justifying the superiority of certain music genre, be it punk, rock, rap or emo. And then making it a 'cult'-ish subculture which magically disappears once they get to adulthood
I defend PA study, I follow Matt's channel, and I am not between 15-25, nor do I identify with PA or believe that my way is the only and best way and project that onto others. I condemn anyone who does so, but I think the whole PA debate needs to be discussed with more nuance. You don't have to be obsessed with it, nor do you have to denounce it all together. There's a middle ground to be had here on how one should go about dealing with PA.
@@jpnpod8277 Indeed it exists but no offence. I remember the small surge of watching comic skits on this topic back then on TV. I guessed that gocha-type cringe stuff was always created based on NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 but I even doubted its method how each individual word could be dictionarilized.
@@kingo_friver Even if you hadn't heard of pitch accent before, as a native speaker, you surely knew that there were always pitch differences in words, right? I've heard Japanese people refer to it as 「イントネーション」before.
@@jpnpod8277 Not really. I had never thought there could be such simple rules as "橋, 端, and 箸 have different pitch accents" until it became a thing even though I knew NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 existed before 2000 as a mildly nerdy dictionary collector.
Also, イントネーション was something people vaguely refer to when talking about dialects, individual speech habits, or foreign languages, but not this type of pitch accent IMAO
George, don't let that "stupid" thing bother you. In Mandarin Chinese there are 4 pitches, Cantonese 6+ pitches depending on how you view it. So.... two pitches is.... just forget it and speak naturally.
I had no idea about this drama. Cool find with the 2002 video, but I think you can just ignore dramas because they never end and they only grow in size. Please please ignore that stuff going forward, I promise you everyone who's here for JFZ agrees with that.
2 месяца назад+1
Yeah… but then anyone who knows pitch accent, including Japanese people, can notice the lack of this. Yes, it’s important.
I think there is a threshold. Even with my own unawareness of pitch accent while speaking it’s never been an issue. I’ve worked as a simultaneous interpreter, met with countless Japanese record labels, been on Japanese TV all with my “unrefined” pitch accent. I argue that 99 times out of 100 it in fact doesn’t matter.
I think this is missing nuance. The importance of PA really depends on what one is using the language for, and I don't just mean speaking it. I'd argue that being able to hear and understand pitch gives one a more immersive experience with the language and makes it easier to parse sentences, but it's not problematic for most people if they don't know it.
Japanese don't speak English with correct intonation. So it's OK not to learn Japanese pitch accent. But it's easier to understand correct pitch accent. It's better but not must.
The general concept I think is fine to learn as an intermediate+ but once it becomes an obsessive conscious study of every single word then...it's a different story.
Hello. I like your videos, thank you for making helpful content that is available for free. Appreciate it! Man I hate studying. I really hate grammar. Anyway, I can stomach your content :) Cheers.
As someone who have learned Japanese (starting with Japanese from Zero) and after that went on learning VIETNAMESE, with its SIX TONES, I think both sides agree on more things than they think and in what they agree they are WRONG. Both sides, the entire Japanese learning community, seems to have the consensus that learning pitch accent is extremely hard. It is not! Once you learn a tonal language, where you have no choice but to be basically PERFECT with tones, and it looks like it will be impossible, and everybody GETS it and no one is complaining (because they have no choice) this whole debate looks silly. Go and learn it! It's not that hard. Basically EVERYTHING ELSE about Japanese is harder than pitch accent. It may look super challenging at first but if you are at leas AWARE of pitch accent right from the start, and try, FIRST, to LISTEN to it, not reproduce it it will get easier and easier as you go along. And another thing I don't see talked around: Being conscious of pitch accent right from the get go will also make it easier to UNDERSTAND spoken Japanese faster. By a lot. Another observation. It also feels a lot like a very AMERICAN debate. Americans have more of a aversion in speaking properly in a foreign languages and end up with a very thick American accent. People that had to, first, learn ENGLISH and learn the sounds of English quite well generally are not so freaked out.
And saying Kansai don't have the same pitch accent isn't an argument. I can speak Osaka ben too. It's like saying Americans and British have different accents so it's "useless" leaning one or the other to have better English.
i believe that accent should be taught by mimicing jp people thats it, not through reading not through books not through whatever, just mimic them and act like them and u will be like them thats it if u cant be like them then THATS OK !!!!
Hi there! It's best to make the effort to learn the pitch accent of N5 and N4 vocabulary because of how frequently it's used. There's actually a lot of really well-done, detailed methods for doing this on youtube... but in Taiwanese Mandarin... like... ruclips.net/video/V7Qf7Xl9JSs/видео.html
Did you know that the Chinese version of Mina No Nihongo has pitch accent markings in the vocabulary section of every chapter? There’s just a single page explanation on how to understand them at the beginning of the book. Doesn’t look like enough material for a whole course. :-? Interesting video. I agree with your core point. That it increases difficulty, and that in turn can cause people to quit. In my opinion most self learners are motivated to be conversational as quick as possible. Pitch Accent doesn’t help with that. On the other hand, I would expect it to be taught and tested in a comprehensive course, and at universities. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is my understanding that in the US and EU that doesn’t happen. In my opinion it seems like many Japanese textbook creators think it’s too hard for westerners. It feels like those well intentioned Chinese tutors I encountered that say “Don’t worry about tones.” Sure I can make some quick distance without them, but eventually I’ll have to go back and learn them. Otherwise, I’ll have to live with the impediment that missing piece puts on my language abilities.
I think if you didn’t teach pitch accent to Chinese people, who are masters of tones, it would actually be strange. For Chinese people I would argue that not showing pitch accent to them would hurt them.
@@japanesefromzero That makes some sense, and has a more positive viewpoint than my theory. 👍Next time I go to Seoul I'll try and find a Mina no Nihongo and see which theory it supports. Hopefully yours.
My Japanese courses taught by native Japanese speakers in America do correct us when pitch is wrong and they show the correct pitch in the vocab notes. I do think the pitch adds unnecessary difficulty for non native speakers.
@@GoBeyond4Balls That's cool it's available to you. Do you think they over emphasize it's importance, or spend too much time on it? Is it a university course, a language school, or something else?
@@JeremyCarman university course they don’t spend a lot of time on it but just about everyone is getting hit with a mou ichido around 5 or so times a class.
hahahha lets go more pitch accent videos. Let the drama come, need some action again in the japanese learning community. Oh george btw if you are looking for some heat, the new meta is apperently "immersion learning" and that you shouldn't learn grammar at all and just watch japanese content 16+ hours a week without subtitles.
@@japanesefromzero rant video incoming? I mean I kinda get it I learned english with content from youtube and games and stuff, but I had a solid foundation from school here in germany many many years of grammar and vocab study, and these immersion gurus are telling everyone how you should just throw yourself into japanese content without even understand a single thing "just tolerate ambiguity bro it's that easy" no I don't want to sit there every single day watching something I understand little to nothing about for fknn 10+ hrs a day. Go get em George lol hahaha
Pitch accent is pretty much analogous to how we use syllable stress in English. Yes, someone who is learning English can speak with the wrong stress on certain syllables and most native speakers will be able to understand them. Many people will naturally pick up 80% of the correct stress patterns from hearing it a lot, but often people will never completely fix the 20% of words they say incorrectly without intentionally trying to. A lot of Spanish speakers that learn English often pronounce all the Es in every word that ends in an "ed" even though a native speaker would not. It doesn't make their speech incomprehensible, but it's just harder to understand for native speakers since most people that they hear on a daily basis don't do that. The same is true with pitch accent in Japan. They can detect when a word is said incorrectly, but can fill in the gaps with their high level knowledge of the language. It can be confusing if it happens too often though, and I have seen Japanese people talk about how they can't understand people with the wrong "intonation" as they usually call pitch accent. They often will not say anything about it to a foreigner as they expect foreigners to have an accent anyway. The reality is that no matter who you are, it can be a burden to constantly be trying to decipher a thick foreign accent. True, it's probably something that a beginner and intermediate Japanese learners don't need to worry about that much when vocabulary and grammar are more important to progress their comprehension abilities. For people just learning Japanese to watch anime or read manga, it'll never be very relevant as they'll rarely ever actually speak to a Japanese person. Although, It does matter for people who want to sound like a native speaker with as little foreign accent as possible. If someone wants to move to Japanese, work in Japan, marry a Japanese person, etc, then sounding more like a native Japanese person will make it much easier to connect with people around them. An important part of the culture is not being a burden to others, so it's only polite to take that extra time and work to speak as clearly as possible. It's kind of rude in their culture to just say, "It's just how I speak, understanding me is your problem." That's where I think there's a disconnect between people who are just learning Japanese for fun and casual conversation and people like Matt and the AJATT community who are really trying to master the language as deeply as possible. One side sees the other and is confused why they are working too hard and the other is wondering why they aren't working hard enough. The answer of, "Should I learn pitch accent?" is that it depends on how deeply you care about sounding like a native Japanese speaker. If you never plan to live in Japan or talk to Japanese people regularly, then it's probably not that useful. For people who do want to do those things then it's an extra step they'll want to take to improve their speaking ability to better fit in with a different society.
I think it's a stretch to call it a "burden" on people if you don't have a proper accent. If a Japanese person is having difficulty understanding you, the problem likely goes well beyond bad pitch. Regardless of what the die-hard AJATTers will say, most people aren't bothered by a thick foreign accent so long as the words are still comprehensible. That being said, if one is gonna study PA, it's far better to start doing so at the beginning stages, as it directly ties in to their comprehension abilities. Learning to identify changes in pitch helps one to know where one word ends and another begins when they're not yet used to full-speed spoken sentences. It also allows you to catch certain jokes relating to puns and regional dialects that come up in anime and J-dramas, which happens way more often than you'd think from what I've noticed. If anything, improving comprehension should be the *main* reason for studying PA, not to improve one's accent or sound more native-like.
Pitch accent is just a matter of saying things the same as natives. If you ignore how you hear every other person speak, I guess you can mess it up. But ignorance is ignorance
Let's talk about the problems that American (mostly) English speakers face and why learning pitch-accent indirectly fixes (sometimes). Americans are too emotional and sounded too excited most of the time. To be fair, most Asians when speaking English are not expressive enough in how they enunciate their words. In my own words, I like to say that Asians don't know how to encode emotions into their words in the same magnitude as an American could. Let's return to the Western side of this linguistic canyon; concepts like whispered sound, unvoiced consonants, and other restrictions are really there to limit the amount of expressiveness that Americans could make so that they would sound more natural like a typical Japanese. Still, I wager that if you just adopt a more calm zen-like demeanor, you can achieve the same result. Now let's return to the other side of this linguistic canyon. Why do I even label it a linguistic problem? Well, if you master a language well enough, you become a linguist. If you master enough linguistics, you become a communicator. If you become really well-versed in human communication psychology and heuristics, you end up a humanist or just a human (as in how to just become a better human). Just what good is really the point of communicating if you do not know how to enjoy the camaraderie of others, and savor together the delights of the moment whether it be the weather, the food, or poetry? I believe that if both sides could help each other cross that canyon, they will end up building a bridge that they can use anytime they want.
You can't claim to respect someone after just having insinuated that they're snake oil salesmen... "Your content is great! Mad respect... you also make issues out of non-issues to make money but HEEEY!! we cool right? I still respect you.." Like.. if that's your opinion of them, then respecting them puts you in the same boat as them.. Much respect, great content!(I guess this makes my previous comments 100% inoffensive)
It’s weird because I’m mixing a lot of emotions into what comes out of my mouth. I respect them all despite how I ultimately feel about them pushing pitch accent. I definitely hold contradicting positions in my mind. But I don’t agree I’m in the same boat as I teach Japanese as a whole and not just one aspect of it. But there is a need for specialized teaching and one could argue my focus is grammar.
I wouldn’t get hung up on pitch accent. Able to communicate decently is more important goal (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) The same goes for JP aiming for “native level” English, it hinders communication.
Why focus so much on pitch accent when you can't even pronounce あいうえお properly? Tagalog is my mother tounge and Japanese pronunciation is easy to imitate for me. Just need to mimic how Japanese speaks. That's it.
PA isn't something to put a ton of focus into, it's just something that should be considered with regard to pronunciation. The reason it needs to be studied at least a little is because most western learners have difficulty hearing intonation when they're starting out since they're native language doesn't have pitch accent in them, like English. Japanese people are trained to hear it from birth, but speakers of most other languages aren't, so it takes a bit of conscious effort to get used it it.
It's not "stressed" at all. George was completely wrong in that video and mistook the change in pitch for a change in stress since he was thinking about it from the reference point of English. In reality, there's very little "stress" involved in Japanese. The sound changes in Japanese come from the rising and falling of pitch, not changes in stress like in English.
@@Cunningstunts23 I would recommend that you watch Dogen's videos, particularly his intro video to pitch accent. You don't need to start studying pitch accent intensely, but I think seeing a few explanation videos will help you to understand Japanese pitch a bit better and distinguish it from English stress accent.
Japanese do have that different “crisp” sound. Not sure how to explain it, but my voice is much more round. I would sound super weird trying to truly emulate Japanese people.
The funny thing is that he sounds just like a Japanese friend of mine (who unlike many of the other English speakers I know), I can only describe as super Tokyo business Japanese. It's like being that surfer dude, or western guy, but Japanese サラリーマン. He's nasal and cadence is all over the place, but he's also the one who knows every weird Kanji in a restaurant or company name (even more than other natives). I'm sure having a PhD from U Tokyo doesn't hurt.
I can't watch Dogen, and I'm not sure why. It's not about his Japanese speaking, he comes across as overly smug somehow, and unappealingly so. I'm probably just being overly critical.
@@koopanique He tried to overcharge gullible people, and an interview was released in which he mocked people who would pay that over-inflated price. He basically exposed himself as not a very good person. George on the other hand seems to be a genuinely decent dude
@@japanesefromzero What you indicated in the video really has nothing to do with pitch accent. But yeah, keep drumming up controversy to keep the weebs coming back.
@@japanesefromzero How do you keep dealing with this my-guru-is-cooler-than-yours crap? And why do you think it is seemingly exclusive to Japanese? I follow language youtubers across many different languages and only in Japanese are you pretty much guaranteed to have someone trying to start a fight in the comment section of EVERY SINGLE VIDEO...
Your position was always dumb because you have to learn it for Chinese no one ever says, "oh, this is too much to learn.". People adapt to whatever the demand made upon them is. People who are serious about a language aren't going to quit because of needing to pronounce things properly. Anyone that casual won't stick with Japanese anyway and will pick a much easier language without kanji and goofy grammar. People need to be aware of it because it does matter. It is no different than people learning to pronounce English properly. It is awful on the ears of natives in any language to hear their language being butchered and when it gets bad enough, it not worth the effort to try to interact with someone. Common courtesy demands doing your best to do it correctly, whether it is language or a tea ceremony or anything else.
Go and say that to an immigrant in Japan who is working under the table in order to obtain a better quality of living. Do you think everyone needs to be perfect at speaking the language for an idea of "courtesy"? Then you are not in contact with the reality of the average student of any language. "Courtesy" and perfectionism will prolong communication in seek of quality, but communication itself is the purpose of learning a language, not perfectionism. Not many people have the privilege to dedicate more hours of study for perfectionism when it could be dedicated to learn useful grammar and vocab. Btw Chinese is different from Japanese. What you are comparing is like me saying that you need to learn what a palabra esdrújula is in order to know where the stressed syllable is in English, just because both languages have stressed syllables. It might be essential to know how accent and stress syllables work in written Spanish, but that does not mean that we need to have a dedicated study of stressed syllables of English too. And I don't know about you, but when I hear someone speaking my native language with an accent I don't think to myself 'oh, how disrespectful it is to my culture to hear someone destroy the beauty of my language, it is not worth it'. If the accent doesn't make communication unintelligible, I don't mind it. Personally, I do pay attention to it, and when the time comes, I will ""study"" it. It fit my goal and I have the privilege of not having to use the language in my daily life
Bro… Chinese doesn’t have half the complexity of Japanese and tones are hugely important to Chinese. I’ve studied Chinese and I would never say tones are dumb. Japanese sounds are was less complex than Chinese. And they only get made complex if you overlay omidaka, nakadaka, heiban etc labels to them while trying to learn all the more important stuff.
People will adapt *only* if they have the bandwidth. People start with different abilities, and responsibilities. There's a place for beginner materials that have different goals. They don't all have to cover the same stuff, in the same order, or at the same depth. Some people don't want to, or don't have the time to learn how to read and write. Others just want to read manga and not talk at all. There's nothing wrong with these goals. If there's beginner materials for these groups, maybe in the future they'll transition to learning the parts they missed. Unless "comprehensive" is in the name I never expect a book or course to touch on everything.
@@japanesefromzero Translation: It seems that Matt has moved on to bigger and better things. He'll probably end up being one of the biggest gaijin tarento soon.
@@songandwind72He is in hiding, because he knows he can't post to RUclips any more without getting a majority of negative comments on his videos. He ruined his reputation with his bad-faith cash grab scheme.
I wouldn’t get hung up on pitch accent. Able to communicate decently is more important goal (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) The same goes for JP aiming for “native level” English, it hinders communication.
George has always been a trend setter. :D
Great revelation my friend. Now we can blame this all on you.
Live long enough to become the villain…..
I would learn Tokyo pitch accent since it's considered standard and can serve as a point of reference when listening to Japanese spoken with regional pitch accents. However, given that most Japanese natives speak Japanese with their native regional pitch accent, context is more important for working out meaning in a conversation.
When we really get down to it, it's really "intonation", and that has probably been known about for hundreds of years, and is in every language on Earth. Those who say that Japanese has no stress, and it's all about pitch are wrong. And those who think that English just has stress and no pitch changes are wrong as well. Both language - in fact, all, as far as I can imagine - have both pitch and stress. And pitch doesn't make a language a "tonal language". Just look at "AWEsome". "AWE" is said both at a higher pitch, as well as with more stress. In the Japanese word "oKAAsan", "KAA" has both a higher pitch and more stress. Japanese may be a bit more pitch-oriented, and English a bit more stress-oriented, but in the end, this idea that people believe they are newly discovering has fallen under "intonation" for hundreds of years already.
Japanese isn't "a bit more pitch-oriented", it's extremely pitch-oriented. The idea the Japanese has stress and isn't all about pitch isn't inaccurate, but it is disingenuous the way you're framing it. There is very little stress involved in Japanese speech, and it primarily only applies to speech with strong emotion for emphasizing purposes. Outside of that, Japanese words don't inherently have stress differences. It's pitch differences and intonation that matter.
@@jpnpod8277 It's not disingenuous at all. If you compare Japanese to English, it Japanese is a bit more pitch oriented. If you compare Japanese to Chinese, Japanese is a LOT LESS pitch oriented. In both English and Japanese pitch matters little in the grand scheme of things when it comes to being able to understand what a person is saying.
And even in the "oKAAsann" example in this video (as well as all of the other words that his cohost mentioned, and many more besides that), there is also stress, not only pitch.
@@Rationalific Again, it's not "a bit more" than English, it's A LOT more than English. And no, only George added stress to the words in that video because he was trying to make a (very wrong) point about the stress in Japanese words, explaining the sound differences from the reference point of English. In reality, there is no inherent stress in Japanese words. The only time stress is involved is when there is emphasis or emotion.
@@jpnpod8277 I bet if it were scientifically studied by instruments, it would show that Japanese has stress. Do you remember the books years ago that said "Japanese doesn't have pitch changes"? People read things and believe them. No matter what side of the fence they come down on. But do your own research. Just listen, and you'll find that that's not the case.
@@Rationalific Dude, you can literally hear it when people speak Japanese. I don't know what book you're referring to, but the idea that Japanese doesn't have pitch changes is absolutely asinine. And I already said that Japanese does have stress, but only in instances of emphasis or strong emotion. What makes you so convinced that this is not the case?
22 years ago is crazy
He is in Japan "working" with Ken. 😉
He even deleted most recet ones that wre 8 months ago including your pitch debate.
So that makes you OG even before Dogen. 😱🤯
George, I love you. I watched George and Keiko and all your other shows back in the day and you helped me learn Japanese so much. So glad to see you're still around and producing content. I do think pitch accent is important if you want to sound good in Japanese and I'm focusing on it now, but that's only after having become fluent in the language unaware of it (like you). Honestly if you're already fluent in Japanese and can easily hear and reproduce the pitches you can nail 90% of pitch accent within a relatively short period of dedicated study, with the other 10% being all the exceptions and rules for combining certain words which matter less and less as they get less and less common.
Pitch accent is a cult. 😁
It's not a cult. It's just a group of people who think that it shouldn't be completely ignored when learning Japanese.
@@coolbrotherf127 本当?... 🤔
@@lordcyberlafont Really, it was almost completely ignored by the Japanese learning community for a long time even though it is a real part of the pronunciation of the language because it wasn't well understood even by native speakers. Now that we know about it, some people who want to perfect their accents can learn it. There's nothing forcing people to learn it though if they don't feel like their accent is keeping them from communicating in the language.
@@coolbrotherf127 I don't think that you understand humor very well.
@@lordcyberlafont I understand that your trying to be funny, but I think it's good for me to clearly state why people talk about pitch accent in the first place so people aren't confused by the discourse around it.
Man what a truly great video. Watching george talk about pitch accent makes a lot of it make much more sense because it doesn't feel like he's just trying to sell me something
Good to see you uploading again! Speaking of which, would you be down to hop in a call and have a chat about RUclips stuff?
I mainly watch your other channel and you mentioned it a few times. Personally, I think it’s kinda fun to learn about how RUclips works so thought I might ask…
Btw, what a coincidence, I rewatched your debate with matt a few days ago so this timing is perfect haha
I don’t typically do calls like you are requesting. Especially if it’s another debate on pitch accent as I think Matt destroyed that. 😀
After studying Japanese for nearly two years, I still consider myself a high beginner. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how people speak from a cultural standpoint. To sound less(textbooky or like google translate) So the last thing I'm trying to do is focus on pitch accent. I will stick to mimicking Japanese people the best I can.
@@wanderlust_gaming there’s also that thing they do - I don’t know if it’s because if they said a whole point/sentence they would run out of breath - where they break sentences up into different beats, like blah blah desukeDO…blah blah BLAH….
You'd be able to understand casual language and mimic Japanese people a lot better if you payed attention to pitch. From a cultural standpoint, there are certain references to different regions in Japan that center around pitch pattern. The more you understand pitch, the better you'll be able to pick up on these references and better understand what people are saying, even if you only know Tokyo pitch. Pitch accent isn't a "textbook" thing, it's a Japanese thing.
@JohnM... I also noticed when I listen, that particles are also omitted in casual speech. Often times, I'm spend too much time trying to normalize verbs or how to use the right particles
@@JohnM... Isn't that the same thing we do in English sometimes when we say "but" or "however"?
This is amazing and hilarious! 😄
6:40 As far as I understand pitch accent should have nothing to do with volume and should solely be done / differentiated using pitch (hence it's not stress accent like English).
9:40 Also pitch accent doesn't only help with "sounding better" (output) it can also complement your listening (input), by helping to fill in the blanks when you didn't hear a part of a word (especially with muffled audio), and helps to differentiate words with same/similar pronunciation but different pitch accent.
To me it’s scientific Japanese. :-)
@@japanesefromzero In that respect it's not too different from explicitly studying grammar, albeit perhaps a bit less practical
Thoughts? Which side do you land on in the pitch accent debate?
Yours if it's the same as 4 years ago.
It’s somewhat necessary and you should try and be aware of it if your goal is to get really good at Japanese. If you don’t really care about it, then I leave it up to you! I don’t think there is any need to be a master at it either. (Just being right most of the time).
抑揚はカッコ良いと思うのですが、先生が二十二年前に喋っていられたのは抑揚ではなく音量のことです。
You touched on it briefly but I think an often overlooked point is that even Japanese people aren't keenly aware of pitch accent or what's right or wrong, and often don't care. In Fumi's video on pitch accent she suggests starting by only learning the pitch of your most commonly used words as a way to be more realistic about it. She also brings up a good point in that the pitch can actually change for verbs depending on the exact conjugation used.
Hi @@chezz.1 . You wrote いられた as polite and past form of いる. But it seems incorrect in that context. I think you already know a verb おる. So you should write おられた instead of いられた. As a little more advanced and polite phrase, it would be いらっしゃった. Thank you.
One thing I found I really like doing related to learning Japanese is just listening to music or audio and really trying to understand what someone is talking about but also the way they say the words it's interesting hearing the different accents from all over Japan I know there was a lot of talk about how some accents are better than others or how some are considered City versus country hick accent but to me they all sound amazing in their own way
Oh gosh. So many better aspects of Japanese you can focus on to make yourself sound native than pitch accent. Pitch can be acquired naturally, if you have a lot of exposure to Japanese.
Not unless you started learning while you were really young or you already speak a pitch/tone-focused language. George started learning when he was 12, so that might explain how he got it. But most adult learners don't have that privilege and must study it consciously to some extent if they want to pick it up.
@@jpnpod8277 My bro started when we was 23 and now he works as a co-host for a Japanese radio show. My friend started when he was 18, and now he’s working at Bandai namco as an interpreter. I started when I was 16 and I taught my friend all he knows ;) age is just a small barrier. Time spent studying pitch accent would be MUCH better spent on watching コント and learning timing for ボケ and ツッコミ lol
Dude how do you look basically the same as 22yrs ago
Really, the general debate should argue whether matching an accent matters, not only pitch accent. This goes beyond just Japanese.
I think matching an accent matters. If one has the goal of talking to a group of people, then one should speak in a way that helps the group understand.
But accent isn't critical! Deliberately focusing on accent results in time not spent on the far more important tasks of listening and learning vocabulary. If Krashen's input hypothesis holds true, then good accent comes from days of listening practice.
So, pay some awareness to accent (in general), but not too much.
Around ten years ago, I started my Japanese language journey in a college classroom. I was instructed from the textbook Yookoso which has a note on pitch accent in the first chapter. It says this about pitch accent and my professors, both native Japanese women who learned English, graduated from American universities, and eventually became professors in America, reinforced this idea when pitch accent became a topic of discussion.
"The primary function of Japanese accentuation is to show the unity of words in a phrase more than to distinguish the meaning of words. For this reason, no accent is indicated in the vocabulary lists in this textbook. Just listen to your instructor and the tape [note: this is an *old* textbook series] very carefully and try your best to mimic them. Rather than paying too much attention to the accent pattern of each word, you should accurately articulate the overall intonation of the sentence in order to communicate effectively in Japanese." Yookoso! 1 3rd edition, page 14
i have a feeling he would say that it's not the pitch (highness/lowness of the sound) that you were emphasizing in the video, but the volume
Hey Sensei, this goes outside the content of the video, but I need to tell you.
About a week ago I flew to Los Angles with my family, I live in Chile so it was a 12 hours flight, and in the seat right next to me there was a Japanese man, I started speaking to him in japanese and this was my first time interacting with someone in real life in japanese, the day before the flight I had completed book 5, and I can safely say that I understood everything he said, except for one word 「天文学」(which I asked him in Japanese what it meant), and I was able to express myself using the grammar and words that I already knew. He was going to Japan so LA was only a connection.
Once I arrived I saw plenty of japanese people in the city, however everywhere I went i only spoke in spanish, it seems like almost everyone in LA speaks spanish.
I wanted to speak to some Japanese girls, one in specific is probably the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life, but I am kind of afraid women 💀, so I did not drop a single word to her, a shame since they probably have not seen many latinos speaking in japanese.
Anyways, thank you so much Sensei, for all the lessons, and teaching you have given me in these books, not just for Japanese language but also for my life values.
Such a great experience. That girl will haunt you for a bit. But I’ve also been too nervous to talk to Japanese girls. There will be others. Just remember most people are just as excited about making new friends as you are and are just as nervous. Just make sure you don’t make them feel uncomfortable since there are a lot of creepy guys out there. But if you are speaking Japanese to them I think they will be pretty excited.
One thing I kept wondering about since that video back then, if the words you mispronounced are perhaps pronounced like this at the place where you initially lived (somewhere northern afair) which obviously would make a lot of sense, my fiance (native speaker) also occasionally messes up pitch accent by pronouncing the word like she'd at home (aka wrong as far as 標準語 is concerned). Overall I think you should at least learn enough pitch accent to hear it (which at least I initially couldn't at all) and then at least you can self adjust your pronunciation if you care enough
So you’ve brought up a great point. I grew up in Aomori which is far north. I wonder if my pitch accent is at times mimicking northern Japanese. Although I’ve said pitch accent is different in other areas for some reason I’ve never actually connected it to my own speaking style. Also, I should point out that that my wife is from western Japan which is Kansai dialect.
I hate the fact that I'm so late to this. I love these pitch accent discussions.
From that old video you showed, it sounded like you noticed that there was a slight difference in sound between the mora of words, like the "お" and "か" in お母さん. However, because you didn't know about the concept of PA at the time, you misinterpreted that sound difference as a difference in stress rather than pitch, which is understandable since you were thinking about it from the reference point of English, a very stress-focused language.
I wish people would have a more nuanced take on the importance of PA. It's really not THAT important to know, but it's also not negligible. As far as I'm concerned, it's not the scary bogeyman of Japanese that beginners often make it out to be, and it's certainly isn't "adding an extra layer" to the language. It may seem like it is when you're under the impression that you have to memorize the specific pitch pattern of every single word, but trying to do that is as foolish as trying to memorize the kun and on readings of every single kanji. The reality of studying PA is far less cumbersome, as there are smooth and streamlined ways of learning it that don't require much, if any, additional effort or time. It's not a conscious process for the most part; you mainly just have to train your ears to hear it and get used it, and let your brain do the rest. You may need to memorize a few patters at the start to get the concept of it, but once you learn to hear it and recognize it, your brain will internalized most of the pitch patterns for you automatically as you get exposure to the language. The earlier one does this in their learning, the easier it is for them in the long run.
Training oneself to hear pitch definitely helps in various ways. It's not just for making your Japanese sound "perfect" or any superficial reason like that. While it does help one to sound more native-like, the true benefits come from your comprehension abilities. Knowing pitch makes it easier to hear and distinguish between words when you're not yet used to full-speed sentences. It also helps with cultural input, as there are many jokes, puns, and references all over media that are heavily based on pitch differences, which helps to amplify your immersive experience. There are other benefits to, but I think I've made this comment long enough lol.
I think this is a very well stated comment.
Hey George! Quick question! When you start filming the Book 5 videos, Do you plan on doing them on stream like the past videos? I would love to be a part of those streams!
What happened with "Adventures in Asia" channel? It was so cool and cozy, why u stopped uploading videos?
Those videos are really intense to edit and our official editor moved positions in the company. It cost a lot of money for little return unfortunately.
Ah, that's sad.Thanks for answer anyways!
Yeh nah George - I think you were explaining emphasis (or de-emphasis). Forget about it 🤭 As for Matt vs Japan - hmmm, some troubling videos out there about him. I just wish Dogen would open his mouth when he speaks 🤭
I was definitely talking about an aspect of pitch accent. But I completely didn’t see the full picture. It’s like I discovered one color of the rainbow and thought I saw all the colors.
I honestly dont want to achieve "perfect japanese". If i get to the point where i can express myself and japanese people understand me i will be more than happy lol
You should still try to sound as native-like as possible within reason. I don't want perfect Japanese either, and I'm more than fine with just being able to be understood, but studying PA is about way more than any of that. I wish people would stop associating PA study with perfection, as that's not even close to the point of it for many people.
@@jpnpod8277 Bro yall even made an acronym for it lmaoo. I learn pronunciation by repeating phrases/words over and over, I dont care to do any more than that even if i still mess up. And intensely studying individual accent of words really does make someone look like more of perfectionist than someone who doesn't.
@@niftyszn9469 Bro, are you going schizo? Who are "yall"? And who said anything about "intensely studying individual accent of words"? I don't know who you think you're arguing against, but it's definitely not me.
And for the record, repeating words and phrases over and over isn't gonna improve your pronunciation if you're repeating them incorrectly. If you want good pronunciation, you should be inputting more than your outputting, as that will get you to internalize what the words and phrases are suppose to sound like, which in turn will help you produce them better.
@@jpnpod8277 "y'all" as in people who preach pitch accent and criticize those that don't really care to study it. Also you're saying pitch accent doesn't study the pitch of words? Then maybe you're the one who's gone schizo lol.
And who says I'm not doing more inputting that outputting? I am. In fact I'm at a point where I've done wayyy to much input as opposed to output.
And you can't just assume I repeat phrases incorrectly. I listen to a native say something and repeat in the exact same way multiple times. If that's not good enough for your standard I don't really care either way, I'm not learning japanese for you
@@niftyszn9469 I neither "preach" PA, nor do I criticize those who don't study it unless they say they care about pronunciation, because that's just inconsistent. Also, what part of that is schizo? Intensely studying the pitch pattern of each individual word to learn PA is as dumb as intensely studying the kun and on readings of each individual kanji to learn how to read them. You're a fool if you think anyone literally does that.
And I didn't assume anything. I said IF you're repeating the words incorrectly, then you won't improve your pronunciation. If you're repeating them correctly, then there's no issue. But if you're not paying attention to pitch, then you inevitably will be repeating them incorrectly, because you can't mimic what you're not hearing.
I love you George. But I notice that ALL guys who have been speaking Japanese for like 20 years are almost enraged by the idea of pitch accent. I REALLY don't think it's a problem to learn from the beginning. And, I'd like to say - the FIRST time I heard about it - was from YOU. You pointed out that 人 isn't HIITo, it's hiTO.
Don't worry about it to the point of quitting, but, just be aware of it.
Also, learning AFTER you have learnt to speak Japanese is a terrible idea. I know people who have tried. It's like having to relearn everything. But if it's just on your radar from the beginning, it's a big help.
Edit: it's definitely the least important of the skills to learn
George 先生、you liked the comment but at least take the credit for being the first person I ever heard talk about pitch accent (although, you didn't call it that).
I would say it is more like emphasis. We have that in english but it can be different based on where you are from in US. So it is not official, but you would sound weird not doing it. If all the words just were all flat syllables.
Now lots of foreigners can talk that I can understand their words but they don't sound right. I think if you were learning a language you would want to sound like the people speaking it instead of a straight book. Mandarin has 4 tones plus one neutral which makes a difference in what word it is but people still learn that.
Funny how the girl said word mountain...so obviously this is common thing in japanese.
I saw a short where a Japanese was pronouncing the same ‘word’ with different accents to demonstrate the differences.
Although, he said same word - した- exactly the same twice.
は？？…
I think accent is important as a beginner, because, being on book two of JFZ, and learning new vocabulary elsewhere, I didn’t realise until I had HEARD certain words that their PRONUNCIATION is totally different, like: 美しい(utsukushi) is actually pronounced ‘ootskooshie’, and つてき is pronounced ‘steki’.
you mean すてき an not つてき I guess
@@tangente00 oops, yeah
I read this twice to see if I was misunderstanding. Do you know there is a word すてき?
@@japanesefromzero yep. That’s what I meant - my bad. ‘Great/lovely’ isn’t it?
But pitch accent is different from that.
So just try to mimic sounds people of the foreing language make. If you don't perfectly nail it, it's ok.
7:38 Literally just stressed syllable. You can do it incorrectly in English too
I have a theory; most Japanese learners who defend Pitch accent study are between 15-25. In that age, they are trying to form an identity, find a place in the social hierarchy, and be part of a group. Thus, they take anything, be it music, movies, anime, games, or even stuff like Japanese leaning methods to form their idea of self.
As they have more free time, they end up in Matt's channel and AJATT stuff. Here is the issue; they make it part of themselves, and believe that their way is the only and best way. So when someone who just want to learn the language comes and don't do 15 hours of immersion per day, neither have an anki deck of pitch accent core20k, they find the opportunity to do some self affirmation and projection of who they are by giving reasons of their beliefs. "I will speak perfect Japanese, and so should everyone because [insert here reason to justify perfectionism], just like Matt"
It is just like the teenager groups who base their identity and style by justifying the superiority of certain music genre, be it punk, rock, rap or emo. And then making it a 'cult'-ish subculture which magically disappears once they get to adulthood
I defend PA study, I follow Matt's channel, and I am not between 15-25, nor do I identify with PA or believe that my way is the only and best way and project that onto others. I condemn anyone who does so, but I think the whole PA debate needs to be discussed with more nuance. You don't have to be obsessed with it, nor do you have to denounce it all together. There's a middle ground to be had here on how one should go about dealing with PA.
So you were the culprit for this hoax. As a native speaker, I've never heard of pitch accent until 2000s.
What "hoax"? The existence of pitch accent?
@@jpnpod8277 Indeed it exists but no offence. I remember the small surge of watching comic skits on this topic back then on TV. I guessed that gocha-type cringe stuff was always created based on NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 but I even doubted its method how each individual word could be dictionarilized.
@@kingo_friver Even if you hadn't heard of pitch accent before, as a native speaker, you surely knew that there were always pitch differences in words, right? I've heard Japanese people refer to it as 「イントネーション」before.
@@jpnpod8277 Not really. I had never thought there could be such simple rules as "橋, 端, and 箸 have different pitch accents" until it became a thing even though I knew NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 existed before 2000 as a mildly nerdy dictionary collector.
Also, イントネーション was something people vaguely refer to when talking about dialects, individual speech habits, or foreign languages, but not this type of pitch accent IMAO
George, don't let that "stupid" thing bother you. In Mandarin Chinese there are 4 pitches, Cantonese 6+ pitches depending on how you view it. So.... two pitches is.... just forget it and speak naturally.
I had no idea about this drama. Cool find with the 2002 video, but I think you can just ignore dramas because they never end and they only grow in size. Please please ignore that stuff going forward, I promise you everyone who's here for JFZ agrees with that.
Yeah… but then anyone who knows pitch accent, including Japanese people, can notice the lack of this. Yes, it’s important.
I think there is a threshold. Even with my own unawareness of pitch accent while speaking it’s never been an issue. I’ve worked as a simultaneous interpreter, met with countless Japanese record labels, been on Japanese TV all with my “unrefined” pitch accent. I argue that 99 times out of 100 it in fact doesn’t matter.
I think this is missing nuance. The importance of PA really depends on what one is using the language for, and I don't just mean speaking it. I'd argue that being able to hear and understand pitch gives one a more immersive experience with the language and makes it easier to parse sentences, but it's not problematic for most people if they don't know it.
Japanese don't speak English with correct intonation. So it's OK not to learn Japanese pitch accent. But it's easier to understand correct pitch accent. It's better but not must.
The general concept I think is fine to learn as an intermediate+ but once it becomes an obsessive conscious study of every single word then...it's a different story.
Hello. I like your videos, thank you for making helpful content that is available for free. Appreciate it! Man I hate studying. I really hate grammar. Anyway, I can stomach your content :) Cheers.
what happened to Throwback thursdays george?! we want more george and keiko show!
I will edit them for you
As someone who have learned Japanese (starting with Japanese from Zero) and after that went on learning VIETNAMESE, with its SIX TONES, I think both sides agree on more things than they think and in what they agree they are WRONG.
Both sides, the entire Japanese learning community, seems to have the consensus that learning pitch accent is extremely hard. It is not! Once you learn a tonal language, where you have no choice but to be basically PERFECT with tones, and it looks like it will be impossible, and everybody GETS it and no one is complaining (because they have no choice) this whole debate looks silly.
Go and learn it! It's not that hard. Basically EVERYTHING ELSE about Japanese is harder than pitch accent. It may look super challenging at first but if you are at leas AWARE of pitch accent right from the start, and try, FIRST, to LISTEN to it, not reproduce it it will get easier and easier as you go along.
And another thing I don't see talked around: Being conscious of pitch accent right from the get go will also make it easier to UNDERSTAND spoken Japanese faster. By a lot.
Another observation. It also feels a lot like a very AMERICAN debate. Americans have more of a aversion in speaking properly in a foreign languages and end up with a very thick American accent. People that had to, first, learn ENGLISH and learn the sounds of English quite well generally are not so freaked out.
And saying Kansai don't have the same pitch accent isn't an argument. I can speak Osaka ben too. It's like saying Americans and British have different accents so it's "useless" leaning one or the other to have better English.
Why doesn’t anyone teach the Osaka dialect?
I have an entire video course called Kansai Dialect From Zero! included on FromZero.com
i believe that accent should be taught by mimicing jp people thats it, not through reading not through books not through whatever, just mimic them and act like them and u will be like them thats it
if u cant be like them then THATS OK !!!!
Hi there! It's best to make the effort to learn the pitch accent of N5 and N4 vocabulary because of how frequently it's used. There's actually a lot of really well-done, detailed methods for doing this on youtube... but in Taiwanese Mandarin... like... ruclips.net/video/V7Qf7Xl9JSs/видео.html
Did you know that the Chinese version of Mina No Nihongo has pitch accent markings in the vocabulary section of every chapter? There’s just a single page explanation on how to understand them at the beginning of the book. Doesn’t look like enough material for a whole course. :-?
Interesting video. I agree with your core point. That it increases difficulty, and that in turn can cause people to quit. In my opinion most self learners are motivated to be conversational as quick as possible. Pitch Accent doesn’t help with that. On the other hand, I would expect it to be taught and tested in a comprehensive course, and at universities. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is my understanding that in the US and EU that doesn’t happen.
In my opinion it seems like many Japanese textbook creators think it’s too hard for westerners. It feels like those well intentioned Chinese tutors I encountered that say “Don’t worry about tones.” Sure I can make some quick distance without them, but eventually I’ll have to go back and learn them. Otherwise, I’ll have to live with the impediment that missing piece puts on my language abilities.
I think if you didn’t teach pitch accent to Chinese people, who are masters of tones, it would actually be strange. For Chinese people I would argue that not showing pitch accent to them would hurt them.
@@japanesefromzero That makes some sense, and has a more positive viewpoint than my theory. 👍Next time I go to Seoul I'll try and find a Mina no Nihongo and see which theory it supports. Hopefully yours.
My Japanese courses taught by native Japanese speakers in America do correct us when pitch is wrong and they show the correct pitch in the vocab notes. I do think the pitch adds unnecessary difficulty for non native speakers.
@@GoBeyond4Balls That's cool it's available to you. Do you think they over emphasize it's importance, or spend too much time on it? Is it a university course, a language school, or something else?
@@JeremyCarman university course they don’t spend a lot of time on it but just about everyone is getting hit with a mou ichido around 5 or so times a class.
8:43 isn't it the scam thing? I heard he left youtube after getting exposed
Who left RUclips?
@@ricosuave7102Matt Vs Japan
id rather have tones of vocabulary than have a perfect pitch accent
tons*
(or tonnes* I suppose)
“tones” is about the best typo you could make on a video about pitch accent.
hahahha lets go more pitch accent videos. Let the drama come, need some action again in the japanese learning community. Oh george btw if you are looking for some heat, the new meta is apperently "immersion learning" and that you shouldn't learn grammar at all and just watch japanese content 16+ hours a week without subtitles.
LOL. Yeah I’ve seen it.
@@japanesefromzero rant video incoming? I mean I kinda get it I learned english with content from youtube and games and stuff, but I had a solid foundation from school here in germany many many years of grammar and vocab study, and these immersion gurus are telling everyone how you should just throw yourself into japanese content without even understand a single thing "just tolerate ambiguity bro it's that easy" no I don't want to sit there every single day watching something I understand little to nothing about for fknn 10+ hrs a day. Go get em George lol hahaha
Pitch accent is pretty much analogous to how we use syllable stress in English. Yes, someone who is learning English can speak with the wrong stress on certain syllables and most native speakers will be able to understand them. Many people will naturally pick up 80% of the correct stress patterns from hearing it a lot, but often people will never completely fix the 20% of words they say incorrectly without intentionally trying to. A lot of Spanish speakers that learn English often pronounce all the Es in every word that ends in an "ed" even though a native speaker would not. It doesn't make their speech incomprehensible, but it's just harder to understand for native speakers since most people that they hear on a daily basis don't do that.
The same is true with pitch accent in Japan. They can detect when a word is said incorrectly, but can fill in the gaps with their high level knowledge of the language. It can be confusing if it happens too often though, and I have seen Japanese people talk about how they can't understand people with the wrong "intonation" as they usually call pitch accent. They often will not say anything about it to a foreigner as they expect foreigners to have an accent anyway. The reality is that no matter who you are, it can be a burden to constantly be trying to decipher a thick foreign accent.
True, it's probably something that a beginner and intermediate Japanese learners don't need to worry about that much when vocabulary and grammar are more important to progress their comprehension abilities. For people just learning Japanese to watch anime or read manga, it'll never be very relevant as they'll rarely ever actually speak to a Japanese person.
Although, It does matter for people who want to sound like a native speaker with as little foreign accent as possible. If someone wants to move to Japanese, work in Japan, marry a Japanese person, etc, then sounding more like a native Japanese person will make it much easier to connect with people around them. An important part of the culture is not being a burden to others, so it's only polite to take that extra time and work to speak as clearly as possible. It's kind of rude in their culture to just say, "It's just how I speak, understanding me is your problem."
That's where I think there's a disconnect between people who are just learning Japanese for fun and casual conversation and people like Matt and the AJATT community who are really trying to master the language as deeply as possible. One side sees the other and is confused why they are working too hard and the other is wondering why they aren't working hard enough.
The answer of, "Should I learn pitch accent?" is that it depends on how deeply you care about sounding like a native Japanese speaker. If you never plan to live in Japan or talk to Japanese people regularly, then it's probably not that useful. For people who do want to do those things then it's an extra step they'll want to take to improve their speaking ability to better fit in with a different society.
I think it's a stretch to call it a "burden" on people if you don't have a proper accent. If a Japanese person is having difficulty understanding you, the problem likely goes well beyond bad pitch. Regardless of what the die-hard AJATTers will say, most people aren't bothered by a thick foreign accent so long as the words are still comprehensible.
That being said, if one is gonna study PA, it's far better to start doing so at the beginning stages, as it directly ties in to their comprehension abilities. Learning to identify changes in pitch helps one to know where one word ends and another begins when they're not yet used to full-speed spoken sentences. It also allows you to catch certain jokes relating to puns and regional dialects that come up in anime and J-dramas, which happens way more often than you'd think from what I've noticed. If anything, improving comprehension should be the *main* reason for studying PA, not to improve one's accent or sound more native-like.
Pitch accent is just a matter of saying things the same as natives. If you ignore how you hear every other person speak, I guess you can mess it up. But ignorance is ignorance
Let's talk about the problems that American (mostly) English speakers face and why learning pitch-accent indirectly fixes (sometimes). Americans are too emotional and sounded too excited most of the time. To be fair, most Asians when speaking English are not expressive enough in how they enunciate their words. In my own words, I like to say that Asians don't know how to encode emotions into their words in the same magnitude as an American could.
Let's return to the Western side of this linguistic canyon; concepts like whispered sound, unvoiced consonants, and other restrictions are really there to limit the amount of expressiveness that Americans could make so that they would sound more natural like a typical Japanese. Still, I wager that if you just adopt a more calm zen-like demeanor, you can achieve the same result.
Now let's return to the other side of this linguistic canyon. Why do I even label it a linguistic problem? Well, if you master a language well enough, you become a linguist. If you master enough linguistics, you become a communicator. If you become really well-versed in human communication psychology and heuristics, you end up a humanist or just a human (as in how to just become a better human). Just what good is really the point of communicating if you do not know how to enjoy the camaraderie of others, and savor together the delights of the moment whether it be the weather, the food, or poetry? I believe that if both sides could help each other cross that canyon, they will end up building a bridge that they can use anytime they want.
You can't claim to respect someone after just having insinuated that they're snake oil salesmen...
"Your content is great! Mad respect... you also make issues out of non-issues to make money but HEEEY!! we cool right? I still respect you.."
Like.. if that's your opinion of them, then respecting them puts you in the same boat as them..
Much respect, great content!(I guess this makes my previous comments 100% inoffensive)
It’s weird because I’m mixing a lot of emotions into what comes out of my mouth. I respect them all despite how I ultimately feel about them pushing pitch accent. I definitely hold contradicting positions in my mind. But I don’t agree I’m in the same boat as I teach Japanese as a whole and not just one aspect of it. But there is a need for specialized teaching and one could argue my focus is grammar.
I wouldn’t get hung up on pitch accent. Able to communicate decently is more important goal (reading, writing, speaking, and listening)
The same goes for JP aiming for “native level” English, it hinders communication.
Why focus so much on pitch accent when you can't even pronounce あいうえお properly? Tagalog is my mother tounge and Japanese pronunciation is easy to imitate for me. Just need to mimic how Japanese speaks. That's it.
Salamat po
PA isn't something to put a ton of focus into, it's just something that should be considered with regard to pronunciation. The reason it needs to be studied at least a little is because most western learners have difficulty hearing intonation when they're starting out since they're native language doesn't have pitch accent in them, like English. Japanese people are trained to hear it from birth, but speakers of most other languages aren't, so it takes a bit of conscious effort to get used it it.
Why does it sound like a stressed syllable to me, just like in English
It's not "stressed" at all. George was completely wrong in that video and mistook the change in pitch for a change in stress since he was thinking about it from the reference point of English. In reality, there's very little "stress" involved in Japanese. The sound changes in Japanese come from the rising and falling of pitch, not changes in stress like in English.
@@jpnpod8277 I know that is true in theory but my ears hear stress, it drives me crazy :(
@@Cunningstunts23 I would recommend that you watch Dogen's videos, particularly his intro video to pitch accent. You don't need to start studying pitch accent intensely, but I think seeing a few explanation videos will help you to understand Japanese pitch a bit better and distinguish it from English stress accent.
@@jpnpod8277 I’ll check those out. Thank you
Dougen definitely sounds robotic. And there's this nasality in his voice (done on purpose btw, to sound "native") which is really annoying too
Japanese do have that different “crisp” sound. Not sure how to explain it, but my voice is much more round. I would sound super weird trying to truly emulate Japanese people.
The funny thing is that he sounds just like a Japanese friend of mine (who unlike many of the other English speakers I know), I can only describe as super Tokyo business Japanese. It's like being that surfer dude, or western guy, but Japanese サラリーマン. He's nasal and cadence is all over the place, but he's also the one who knows every weird Kanji in a restaurant or company name (even more than other natives). I'm sure having a PhD from U Tokyo doesn't hurt.
I can't watch Dogen, and I'm not sure why. It's not about his Japanese speaking, he comes across as overly smug somehow, and unappealingly so. I'm probably just being overly critical.
Bros I miss Matt...
You might be the only one.
Oh wow.
Nah I miss him too. I hope nothing wrong happened to him.
@@koopanique He tried to overcharge gullible people, and an interview was released in which he mocked people who would pay that over-inflated price. He basically exposed himself as not a very good person. George on the other hand seems to be a genuinely decent dude
@@japanesefromzero Did I say something wrong lol
Cool story, bro. Matt destroys you regardless.
LOL. I literally showed him destroying me. Nothing to hide. But yeah, I’m the first guy to talk about pitch accent. The facts are clear. 😉
@@japanesefromzero What you indicated in the video really has nothing to do with pitch accent. But yeah, keep drumming up controversy to keep the weebs coming back.
@@japanesefromzero How do you keep dealing with this my-guru-is-cooler-than-yours crap? And why do you think it is seemingly exclusive to Japanese? I follow language youtubers across many different languages and only in Japanese are you pretty much guaranteed to have someone trying to start a fight in the comment section of EVERY SINGLE VIDEO...
Your position was always dumb because you have to learn it for Chinese no one ever says, "oh, this is too much to learn.". People adapt to whatever the demand made upon them is. People who are serious about a language aren't going to quit because of needing to pronounce things properly. Anyone that casual won't stick with Japanese anyway and will pick a much easier language without kanji and goofy grammar. People need to be aware of it because it does matter.
It is no different than people learning to pronounce English properly. It is awful on the ears of natives in any language to hear their language being butchered and when it gets bad enough, it not worth the effort to try to interact with someone. Common courtesy demands doing your best to do it correctly, whether it is language or a tea ceremony or anything else.
Go and say that to an immigrant in Japan who is working under the table in order to obtain a better quality of living. Do you think everyone needs to be perfect at speaking the language for an idea of "courtesy"? Then you are not in contact with the reality of the average student of any language. "Courtesy" and perfectionism will prolong communication in seek of quality, but communication itself is the purpose of learning a language, not perfectionism. Not many people have the privilege to dedicate more hours of study for perfectionism when it could be dedicated to learn useful grammar and vocab.
Btw Chinese is different from Japanese. What you are comparing is like me saying that you need to learn what a palabra esdrújula is in order to know where the stressed syllable is in English, just because both languages have stressed syllables. It might be essential to know how accent and stress syllables work in written Spanish, but that does not mean that we need to have a dedicated study of stressed syllables of English too.
And I don't know about you, but when I hear someone speaking my native language with an accent I don't think to myself 'oh, how disrespectful it is to my culture to hear someone destroy the beauty of my language, it is not worth it'. If the accent doesn't make communication unintelligible, I don't mind it.
Personally, I do pay attention to it, and when the time comes, I will ""study"" it. It fit my goal and I have the privilege of not having to use the language in my daily life
Don't add insults in your comments unnecessarily. That's very disrespectful
Bro… Chinese doesn’t have half the complexity of Japanese and tones are hugely important to Chinese. I’ve studied Chinese and I would never say tones are dumb. Japanese sounds are was less complex than Chinese. And they only get made complex if you overlay omidaka, nakadaka, heiban etc labels to them while trying to learn all the more important stuff.
@@saeedbarari2207 No insults were said. What are you talking about?
People will adapt *only* if they have the bandwidth. People start with different abilities, and responsibilities. There's a place for beginner materials that have different goals. They don't all have to cover the same stuff, in the same order, or at the same depth. Some people don't want to, or don't have the time to learn how to read and write. Others just want to read manga and not talk at all. There's nothing wrong with these goals. If there's beginner materials for these groups, maybe in the future they'll transition to learning the parts they missed. Unless "comprehensive" is in the name I never expect a book or course to touch on everything.
Having a "conference" with Matt about it was just cope. Didn't change a thing.
A cope? What am I coping with? Also where is Matt? He is MIA.
@@japanesefromzero Translation: It seems that Matt has moved on to bigger and better things. He'll probably end up being one of the biggest gaijin tarento soon.
@@songandwind72He is in hiding, because he knows he can't post to RUclips any more without getting a majority of negative comments on his videos. He ruined his reputation with his bad-faith cash grab scheme.
I wouldn’t get hung up on pitch accent. Able to communicate decently is more important goal (reading, writing, speaking, and listening)
The same goes for JP aiming for “native level” English, it hinders communication.