Should I be learning the tones/pitch accent of words along with learning the words itself? How important is it to get the tone/pitch accents right when speaking, and compared with say, Chinese tones?
Pretty sure it’s not important at all unless you don’t want to sound like a foreigner.
It is vital to get pitch accent right.
When speaking, there are words entirely indistinguishable without pitch accent.
Chopsticks/bridge Sweets/rain
These are the 2 most common examples but there are so so many more.
It will make your life in Japanese easier if you take the time to do some listen and repeat of most nouns.
Note, there is a lot more to pitch accent than nouns, sentence flow, verb structure all play in but these are much more about sounding natural and easily understood.
A noun pitch accent mistake can make you unintelligible
2 comments
Pretty sure it’s not important at all unless you don’t want to sound like a foreigner.
It is vital to get pitch accent right.
When speaking, there are words entirely indistinguishable without pitch accent.
Chopsticks/bridge
Sweets/rain
These are the 2 most common examples but there are so so many more.
It will make your life in Japanese easier if you take the time to do some listen and repeat of most nouns.
Note, there is a lot more to pitch accent than nouns, sentence flow, verb structure all play in but these are much more about sounding natural and easily understood.
A noun pitch accent mistake can make you unintelligible