So, either way I study pitch accent anyways because I want to sound natural when speaking Japanese, but out of curiosity, is it actually required to be understood when speaking? I get there’s words like “bridge” and “chopsticks” that the pitch tells the meaning, but I don’t know about you, I’m pretty sure context will tell you if the word means bridge or chopsticks. And another thing, just from listening to Japanese being spoken, you can learn a lot of it naturally. So, is pitch accent required to be understood?
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No it’s not. It’s noticeable but you also understand other people with english accents right?
No, a broken pitch accent is like a broken stress on words in English.
Though since Japanese has a lot of omophones, you might get more misunderstandings, but still rarely.
i dunno man, i wouldnt wanna be the guy asking for someone to bring them a bridge in a restaurant
no. just try not to use an all over the place up and down pitch pattern like i hear some folks do, keep it mostly flat, and pay attention to how a lot more sentences in japanese start low and go up on the second mora, whereas in english we have a tendency to stress the first syllable instead. the rest will fill itself in and you can polish it over time. the words that differ entirely by pitch are not all that common and even in those cases it’s pretty clear you’re not walking across the chopsticks or eating with a bridge or blowing your flower.
Not necessary at all, but I personally do want to sound as close to native as possible. It’s also not that hard as long as you start paying attention to it from the beginning of your studies, but depending on your objectives your time might be better spent on grammar/vocabulary/immersion.
I think making sure to prolong long vowels and consonants is more important (Ojisan: uncle. Ojiisan: grandad) and (Kite: come. Kitte: stamp)
I personally feel that it’s better to pick up pitch accent through listening practice rather than by studying it. The sheer amount of information you’d have to memorize to learn to speak with correct pitch accent makes it impractical. If you just focus on it a little more when you do listening/speaking practice, you’ll get better.
Absolutely not required, some will even argue it’s a waste of time.
Also you should never say chopsticks without the o- at the beginning (お箸) or its seen as being rude and an easy way of telling someone is not native, whereas with bridge it’s just 橋 so thats really the easiest way to tell the difference. Same with money, you should never say money without the o at the beginning (お金)
I think it would be important to learn pitch action execpt I’d say it’s good to learn some of it and let the studying do the rest
The problem is that each dialect, including that of Tokyo, has a different accent and no one speaks what is called Standard Japanese strictly speaking. How do you look up ‘correct’ accent becomes a problem.
On the list of things you should get right to sound good its probably not the most important thing. Pronouncing long vowels correctly, using grammar and words correctly and general pronunciation is probably more important. There are cases where you might me misunderstood when using a wrong pitch, but that is rather rare as context makes the meaning clear.
That being said, I don’t think ‘studying’ pitch is something you have to A wait long to start, and B has to take up a lot of your time. Just practicing a bit of [pitch awareness](https://pitch-demo.migaku.io/) every day for a few minutes and paying attention to what pitch words have while you are reading (browser extension that colors words according to pitch, coloring your Anki cards, or just paying attention to the dictionary when you look up words for example) or listening in Japanese is enough over the long run. If you want to go deeper into rules etc, that can still be done later down the line. Just learning to perceive pitch is plenty and will get you pretty far.
One thing I might mention is that it can be useful going over at least a few listening exercises to train yourself to hear it. You can’t pick it up naturally if you can’t even hear the difference! And if you’re shadowing or even just repeating a single word back from a flashcard with audio, try to make sure you’re mimicking the right pattern. Whether you study them or not is up to you, but you have no hope of magically acquiring them if you can’t hear them and you actively practice the wrong ones when learning new words or sentences.