Why don’t we put an end to Pitch Accent being controversial?

#or, *”Pitch Does (Not) Matter”*

**Context:** [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1aewi28/why_is_pitch_accent_so_controversial/).

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#Prerequisite knowledge:

(I’m going to be relatively unrigorous here; linguistics-savvy people, bear with me.)

– **accent**

– definition (the purposes of this post): The “inherent shape” of a word in a given language (beyond the “sounds of its letters”). Not all languages employ accent (that is, not all languages require their words to have a specific “shape” *on top* of the “sounds of its letters”).

– **pitch accent**

– definition: The use of pitch (tone) to outline the “inherent shape” of a word.

– english analogue: Stress accent. The use of stress (loudness/volume, length/duration, pitch/tone) to outline the “inherent shape” of a word. Each word in English has one primary stressed (or “emphasised”) syllable, while any remaining ones are unstressed (or, potentially, secondarily stressed). Examples: **milk**, **sa**-lad, ba-**na**-na.

– Will often refer to it as just “pitch” for short.

– **accent-distinguished minimal pair**

– definition: A pair of distinct words whose pronunciation differs only in accent. English example: “**in**-sight” vs. “in-**cite**”.

– **intonation**

– definition: The use of pitch (tone) to convey such things as the speaker’s intent, attitude, or emotions, or to regulate emphasis (highlight specific parts within a sentence).

– examples:

– Declarative intonation. Indicates the speaker is making a statement.
– “Her name is Alice. ⤵”

– Interrogative intonation. Indicates the speaker is asking a question.
– “Her name is Alice? ⤴”

– Emphasis. “He didn’t eat the cake.” vs. “He *didn’t* eat the cake (I’m telling you)!” vs. “He didn’t *eat* the cake (…he threw it away).” vs. “He didn’t eat the *cake* (…he ate the pizza).”, etc.

#Notes

– Pitch accent conveys “**lexical**” information (it tells you **which** words are being used). Intonation conveys “**post-lexical**” information (it tells you **how** said words are being used).

– Pitch in English is not strictly lexical. That is, while word stress does, to some degree, dictate what pitch contour a given word will have, that contour can change completely depending on the context (i.e., it gets swayed by intonation). For example, a neutral, isolated ” ^(Al)-ice ” will have higher pitch on the 1st syllable, and lower on the 2nd. However, if we say that like a question — ” Al-^(ice)? ” — the positions get reversed. Note how the stress still falls on “Al” regardless. Thus, one can see that stress is independent from pitch (though it correlates with it in some capacity).

– By contrast, in most dialects of Japanese (including the standard Tokyo dialect), pitch is much more strictly lexical. That is, the “inherent shape” of a word is strongly outlined specifically by its pitch contour (as opposed to other factors, like loudness, or duration), and therefore said contour gets “respected” to a much greater degree (there are fundamental restrictions on how much you can alter it). Hence, Japanese is said to be a pitch accent language. If you get the pitch wrong in JP, it’s the equivalent of getting the stress wrong in EN. Best-case scenario, the word comes out “misshaped”; worst case scenario, you end up saying a completely different word by accident (see “minimal pair” above).

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#Premises

(Will not source most of my claims because I’m lazy; if I lost you here, that’s very very valid.)

1. **There’s nothing special about this.** Pitch accent’s a normal, real thing. It’s just another facet of the language, just part of how you say the words, just as stress is to English. A complete and well-rounded understanding of standard Japanese includes pitch accent. This isn’t anything new; it wasn’t made up by internet personalities a couple of years ago to sell you their product. I’ve found forum discussions on the topic of PA (whether named as such or not) dating back to 2013 ([StackExchange](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11194/how-does-pitch-accent-work-in-japanese), [reddit](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1qgz9w/japanese_accent_good_vs_bad/)). Licensed teachers of Japanese in Japan [are required to explicitly know about PA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzFBLeU1Dns), and it’s included in textbooks like An Integrated Approach (pitch markings on vocab). It was elaborately taught in textbooks in the 80s ([JSL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese%3A_The_Spoken_Language); used to be big in university courses). Fucking [Portuguese sailors wrote about it at length](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arte_da_Lingoa_de_Iapam) in the early 1600s ([JP-translated sample](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/932319674471968868/1194874740456837120/for_uber_to_post_2_crop_needed_1-1.png); link to the whole thing in the Wiki page). If you choose to ignore this, you’re deliberately putting a hole in your studies, and removing a dimension from the language. And it’s not just second-language education; Japanese people talk about it all the time! [Observations](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KWh8d87PGcg) and [jokes](https://youtu.be/8zIajtpgosA?t=1337) about weird pitch, [wordplay](https://youtu.be/LlVIZ5OMIvo?t=74) with minimal pairs, [corrections](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7hzuLu1F0o&t=410s) and [discussions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu6tLYQw9h8&t=652s) on right vs. wrong pitch, [polls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBNox0Kc4pY) for made up-words — the works! Some of the more subtle ones might be going over your head if you don’t have an ear for it (they won’t always explicitly mention so-called イントネーション), but, oh, it happens. Part of the language means part of the culture. Not an essential one, but one nonetheless.

2. **Natural acquisition (A).** As a stress-accent native, you will, by overwhelming odds, fail to naturally pick Japanese pitch accent up to a high degree. Coming from another PA language helps a little. Coming from a tonal language (Chinese) helps a good deal. Still, without any sort of direct/explicit work on it (or regular feedback from others), proper acquisition is nowhere near guaranteed. This has been demonstrated time and again. You practically need to be aware of the fundamental mechanisms of Japanese PA (for Tokyo-style that’d be the “downstep”), as well train your ears and teach your brain to be aware of and process pitch lexically w.r.t that framework, so as to pick it up from careful listening.

3. **Natural acquisition (B).** You can still “fake” okay-ish pitch accent just by getting really fucking good at Japanese. If you’ve been exposed to a fuckton of spoken Japanese, and have reached legitimate proficiency/fluency with the spoken language, then your pitch is also gonna get dragged along with that. Especially if you also generally care about, pay attention to, and work on pronunciation (even if you don’t target PA specifically), you’re going develop a somewhat half-decent model of pitch (fundamentally flawed — i.e. it’ll require largely tearing down and building anew if you want to go even further beyond — but produces correct results like >80% of the time), and overall sound fairly natural and be reasonably easy to comprehend.

4. **Comprehensibility (A).** Yes, you will still be comprehensible even your pitch accent is pretty bad, as long as other aspects of your pronunciation are good (phoneme articulation, mora timing, prosody). In fact, it’s much more important to work on those aspects than to work on pitch, initially at least (after you get to a “pretty good” level with them, it’ll have more of an impact on your speech to work on and play catchup with your PA than to perfect the other stuff).

5. **Comprehensibility (B).** Yes, pitch does matter in comprehension. To reiterate, it’s not the end-all-be-all — in fact the problems it causes might be so minor that you’d never know any better (though that obviously depends on how wrong you’re getting it exactly) — but bad pitch is *a* factor that works against you, one that you (and the listener) need to actively make up for, and one whose effects can rear their head and become noticeable if the situation gets low-context and/or high-complexity enough [with rare vocab and long sentences] (e.g. reading some sort of technical passage aloud to someone, or novel narration — or, for simple little examples, see [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/11jp94x/a/jb4qxe8/) and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/11jp94x/a/jb47fyf/) comment). So, something to keep in mind if you’re aiming for “very easy to understand even when talking about complex things”.

6. **Fossilisation & opportunity cost.** The more you delay pitch study, the more time and effort you’ll have to pour into going back and undoing any mistaken understanding/assumptions or bad habits that may have formed. Or, relatedly, the later you start, the more time you will have in a sense “wasted” listening to Japanese and picking up “only” grammar, vocab, and ‘general’ pronunciation, when you could’ve *also* been acquiring pitch accent (to a higher-than-otherwise degree) at the same time. That said, it’s never too late. Where there’s a will there’s away.

7. **A world of options.** Contrary to popular belief, you’re not stuck between a three-way choice of **(a)** do nothing lol, **(b)** vaguely “pay attention” and/or copy native speech so as to “naturally” pick it up [does not properly work], or **(c)** hardcore, balls-to-the-wall, utmost-priority, sacrifice-progress-in-grammar-and-vocab-for-it study. There does, in fact, exist an infinity of options for how much pitch to study (it’s not all or nothing), in what way, and how to distribute that study along your learning journey, ranging from (a) to (c), each yielding different results.

8. **The other side of the coin: benefits to your own comprehension.** I feel like this one is hugely understated. Pitch is often viewed in this detached manner, that if you get it right nothing will really change for you, and you’ll just magically start sounding better to natives. Not so. Proper acquisition of PA will change the way you hear- the way you *experience* Japanese. It unlocks an entire new dimension of the language. Pitch becomes *part of the word*, just as stress is in English. First, you get the obvious boon of being able to tell minimal pairs apart without context — pretty nifty if you ask me. This means you’ve got extra clues as to what someone’s saying (it disambiguates people’s speech). But the real kicker for me comes with the benefits to your *intonation*. Intonation and pitch accent ultimately factor into the same equation: variation in pitch during one’s speech. Properly understanding one of the two means you can remove it from the equation, and isolate the other component, which will in turn allow you to get a better grasp of *that*. This means you can perceive tone of voice and sentence flow more accurately, *plus*, of course, get a more accurate handle on your own.

9. **The price.** This is the currency that you can pay in: learning the fundies (highs-and-lows/downstep system), ear training (e.g. pitch pattern recognition tests), attentive listening, production practice (speak and get feedback, either from others or, if you’re good enough, from your own self), per-word lookup/memorisation of accent (from the dictionary), study of rules and trends for how pitch behaves (where downsteps tend to be placed). Hours for each vary based on your circumstances and target level.

#Conclusion

Okay, here’s where it all comes together: it’s time to assess! You’ve been briefed on the (non-)importance of pitch, the perks of acquiring it, the drawbacks of foregoing it, and the cost of learning it (to varying degrees). Now we take all this and perform a cost-benefit analysis.

Consider: what are your goals with the language? Do this sound like something you care about? Would it be worth it to invest into this and get results in return?

No? Great! Yes? Super! Not sure? It might be wise, then, to cover your bases by laying a basic foundation early on (see premise #6), just in case you develop an interest later.

**There’s no universally right answer**, no objective stakes. It all depends on what each person’s looking for. Some people will wanna pitch. Some will not. Good for them, and good for them. It’s, like, fine to have this split in demographic. As long as each decision was made in an informed manner, and will not lead to future regrets or missed opportunities, then all’s good.

And that’s what I’m trying to achieve here, ultimately. Give you the tools to decide for yourself, and make the best decision possible. So let me leave you with my final recommendation to find out for yourself, once and for all, if pitch matters to you. All I need is 20 (more) minutes of your time.

#Flowchart: to Pitch nor not to Pitch?

1. Watch this [10-minute intro to standard Japanese PA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6AoilGEers&list=PLxMXdmBM9wPvsySiMoBzgh8d68xqKz1YP&index=1). The important thing to take away here is that every word in standard Japanese has either 1 or 0 downsteps. *Basically*, everything before the downstep (which you will later see notated as ＼) is high, and everything after it is low (e.g. HHH＼LL). No downstep means the pitch is roughly, relatively even (or “flat”). *Basically.*

2. [Strategies for Acquiring Pitch Accent in Japanese](https://youtu.be/I-dRbTnLmBY?t=230). This whole vid is golden, so do get around to the whole of it if you feel like it, but the bit we care about right now is from 3:50 to 12:05.

3. Take [this test](https://kotu.io/tests/pitchAccent/perception/minimalPairs) that was mentioned in #2. Registration is lightning-quick; it’s just a username and a pass (make sure to remember because it doesn’t ask for your email as backup) and you’re done. You saw the video, you know what to do.

This is step 1. Play with the test for a bit and see how fare, or if you’re interested to keep going and raise your score. If not, then that was it. You’re done (unless you’re curious to explore other options).

If you felt intimidated by all this, maybe come back to it at a later point. Or, again, just don’t bother. Your choice.

If, on the other hand, you get to a level where you can consistently score close to 100%, then congrats, you finished the bare minimum! You’ve got a wide array of paths in front of you from this point forward, including just leaving it at that. Even something as little as this can go a surprisingly long way. And if it doesn’t, you didn’t lose much anyway. In any case, look around, experiment, and find your sweet spot for how much you should invest into this. Good luck, traveler.

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#Preemptive Defense

**Q:** bro, pitch varies by region, it’s not even real, some dialects don’t even have pitch, it just doesn’t matterrrrr

**A:** That wasn’t a question. Anyway, yes, pitch varies by region, and even by age a little. Now let me ask you this: would you rather precisely understand the pitch accent system of 1 dialect/demographic (and, by extension, approximately understand all the closely related dialects), or 0? That’s still tens of millions of people for the standard dialect — including usage in media and many work/academic settings — even if it doesn’t cover all 120+ mil that make up Japan’s population. Or, do away with the numbers and focus on your local pitch that’s immediately relevant to you, if you live in Japan! Or do nothing at all (if your answer was “0” before)!! You’re free to choose. The world is your oyster.

And for the record, cross-dialectal differences in pitch (as well as any other respect) pose a problem to interactions among natives as well. Not necessarily an insurmountable one, but it does hinder communication on some level (as it would for any two significantly different dialects in any language, incl. English). Personally, I like to hold myself to a higher standard than partially inhibited communication/understanding, and aim to understand my target dialect (standard) *the same way a native of that very dialect does* (rather than a native of a *different*, say accentless dialect). But you do you. That’s kinda been my whole point.

 

^([**edit:** typo])