Ever since I’ve come across the Dogen videos about Pitch Accent, it became another layer of “Wow there’s still so much to learn in the Japanese language.” And also I’ve become kind of bothered by it, because it seems quite hard to approach in many ways.
Watching the videos Dogen made on the topic, it made me feel that you should start learning Pitch Accent as soon as possible. As in the early stages of learning Japanese, people tend to pick up “bad speaking habits” and learning pitch accent later on would be harder because of those said “bad habits.”
Obviously there are many other reasons on why you might want to learn Pitch Accent early on. But my main point is this, learning that Pitch Accent exists and what it is, made me feel that it’s super important to learn. However, is it really that important?
Do you think Pitch Accent should **only** be learned if it aligns with your personal goals with Japanese? Or it should be something that everyone include into their studies?
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I **strongly strongly strongly strongly strongly** recommend anyone that wants to participate in this discussion or has similar questions to [watch this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-dRbTnLmBY). It is relatively impartial and explains really well the pros and cons of studying pitch and how important (or not) it is and has some actually really good advice from someone who’s really good at pitch stuff.
Like… seriously just go watch it, it will likely answer most of the questions people have or points that people will raise in this thread.
I spend 90% of my time in Japanese reading novels – what good is studying pitch accent going to be? If I were feeling motivated enough to study, that time would be better spent on kanji, or grinding vocab, or pretty much anything else.
While it would be great to be amazing at all aspects of Japanese – time is limited, and we need to prioritise what to focus on. Unless learning Japanese is the only thing you’re doing in your life, I think for most people pitch accent is going to be pretty low down the priority list – and not there at all if you’re mostly learning to consume Japanese content rather than go and talk to people. That goes for every aspect of the language – some people think it’s critical that you be able to handwrite too, but I’m yet to see any convincing argument why I should prioritise that over anything else that would be more immediately useful.
I never even heard the term “pitch accent” in a decade of Japanese study (sure, we addressed emphasis on certain syllables, and occasions where disambiguation was important, but it certainly wasn’t this full-blown area of study).
Your speaking ability in terms of sounding more natural will improve over time. Everyone starts out sounding a bit clunky and like a foreign speaker. The idea of hyper-focussing on one fairly arbitrary aspect of speech at the outset seems fairly absurd to me.
It’s a very polarized topic here.
There is no need for you to master the pitch accent even if you want to speak Japanese.
On the one hand, because Japan has a few dozen regional accents, the pitch accent may be present, flipped or even totally absent depending on the speaker. A speaker from Okinawa and a speaker from Aomori, if they’re speaking the standard dialect (even with different pitch accents), will understand each other.
On the other hand, accents are usually one of the last things mastered in language learning. If you generally match pronunciation (not pitch), you’ll be understood without dedicating time specifically training the accent. Furthermore, as you study and immerse, you’ll start picking up on what sounds correct accent-wise. So it might be a bit silly to go out of your way.
Still, if speaking Japanese so well you sound like a native speaker is that important to you – by all means practice the accent.
Despite never really caring about pitch accent, I never had issues at making myself understood. And never got misunderstood either.
The only reason I can see myself studying pitch accent is in case, someday, I want to sound like a native, which at the moment is the least of my concerns. Just getting used to speaking fluently using native Japanese sentence structuring is already a huge effort and much more important at making your speech intelligible.
I feel some people emphasize Japanese pitch accent to be as important as tones in Chinese and Vietnamese languages, which is definitely not true.
I think my tutor (a Japanese man who is an accredited teacher) seems to think it’s not super important.
It depends what you wanna do with your life though. If you want to work with a lot of Japanese customers, you don’t want your accent to be too bad.
If you want to read books, it’s not gonna help at all.
I heard it helps with listening a bit, but some people who are good at listening don’t deal with pitch accent either, so it seems to not be required.
Overall it really comes down to why are you learning Japanese?
I’m glad pitch accent is part of the conversation, because it sure seemed like it wasn’t 15 years ago. That said, if you’re simply conscious that it exists and learn to listen for it, you’ll absorb the right way to speak in your everyday life.
In reality, you’re unlikely to have a difficult time communicating because the pitch accent is wrong. Pitch accent changes regionally, and it’s not like Chinese where pitch makes the difference between a word being intelligible. You’ll just sound like your pronouncing some words slightly wrong, not the biggest deal.
It’s very important if you want to sound as natural as you can in your speech. Dedicated study towards it is not remotely important if you simply want to speak and be understood.
I live in Japan, so my main goal is having a large vocabulary, knowledge of Kanji, and achieving fluency in speech. Pitch accent is on my radar, but it’s not remotely important to me right now.
I believe having a proper accent is important, especially to be understood, but pitch accent is going above and beyond imo. I speak Spanish, a language where intonation is actually vital to the language, so I can hear pitch accent in Japanese but I’ve never had a problem being understood as a result of it.
If what the typical American sounds like when speaking Spanish is what Japanese people hear when we speak Japanese, I understand the importance of it but I still believe basic pronunciation should come first. People are simply happy you are speaking their language, they don’t need you to be perfect at it.
you can learn the correct pitch – but you STILL will have an accent (of your own native lang whatever it may be)
if you are a super perfectionist, and have lots of time – you may as well spend it on pitch
if not, focusing on such ‘metaphysical’ things may not be the wisest investment of time and effort (better concentrate on passing n1, if you have not yet)
I mean it doesn’t hurt to learn pitch accent along the way. For example, if your doing you anki reps, its good to always say the correct pitch accent outload so you know how it should sound and this can help you get out of the trap of “bad habits” while speaking Japanese.
>Do you think Pitch Accent should only be learned if it aligns with your personal goals with Japanese? Or it should be something that everyone include into their studies?
Yes, but it should be opt-out. (It should be included in everyone’s studies by default, and then skipped when appropriate.)
Just like kanji, katakana, keigo, etc. The expectation should be you learn it, and learn it well.
The pitch thing kinda pisses me off, because it’s being made into this super important thing and it almost comes off as a fad in learning Japanese, as if this is now something that we all need to pay attention to.
However, pronunciation as a concept, usually gets tackled within the first few chapters of any Japanese text book, and then never gets mentioned again, because it is not integral to the Japanese language. In fact; this is what Listening Comprehension is for, and used within the greater learning experience.
It is important to learn but not everyone can hear or imitate pitches. While you can communicate effectively without it because of context, you will certainly sound off. The best analogy is stress in English. Stress on first syllable is a noun and stress on the second syllable is a verb and of course we also have subjective-verb-object structures in English to assist. So if someone bungles the pronunciation between RECord and reCORD we will understand them but it will certainly sound off.
ABout as imporTANT as learnING CORrect STRESS acCENT. At worst, you’ll sound a bit odd, but understandable. You’ll also naturally pick it up just from taking and listening.
Funny thing is the pitch accent is different in every dialect. Even Tokyo News anchors have a little pitch accent dictionary that they need to use.
I’m one of the (apparently rare) people who picked up pitch naturally while I was living in Japan — except I was in Nagasaki, and our pitches are pretty opposite to standard pitches.
I then, over the next few years back home in Aus, slowly picked up standard pitches.
I found the pitch accent important for listening – it was easier to understand people speaking with the accents I was used to, and it took a few years to understand Tokyo people as easily as Kyushu people if I wasn’t paying attention (even when we all used the same words). But overall, there are lots of people who speak Japanese and never actively learnt pitch accents — you either pick it up, or you develop a series of intonations that let yourself be understood easily, IMO.
I’ve also taken Japanese classes in Taiwan where they *really* focus on the pitch accents — and the resulting Taiwanese accent sounds pretty terrible IMO, almost as grating as that ‘just started learning’ American accent (or worse because even most advanced students retain it).
Balance lies in the middle, I’d say go for that. Take note of the pitch accents. Try to actively hear and reproduce when doing speaking/listening. But don’t push it too hard.
Do you need to study all the pitch accent rules and structures and understand exactly how it works after spending hours a day reading textbooks? No.
Should you be aware of pitch in the language and strive to implement it as you study to avoid bad habits and improve your overall Japanese? Yes.
I mean it depends if you wanna study it or not. I think certain aspects of pitch is important.
But pitch accents change depending on where you go in Japan, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Best thing to do rn is do shadowing practice and try to mimic natives. I think pitch will come along with that naturally.
Just fyi the question was posted (and answered around 24 hours ago).
My experience – coming from a language (Danish) with zero pitch at all, is that a lot of people underestimate the importance of it, because they hear and produce it much easier or naturally, because they are either just good at it, or already have some of it in their mother toungue.
I am married to a Japanese woman, who *very* frequently corrects my pitch. It has happened to me on many occasions that I get misunderstood, both because I am not fluent at all, so my communication is not great, and because I pronounce the words incorrectly. Particularly in terms of the pitch accent – the more familiar parts of the language (the phonemes I guess?) I pronounce accurately. But still it can be almost unintelligible, if it is combined with poor grammar and slightly incorrect words – i.e. in stead of saying the bag, saying “that thing that your things are in”, and at the same time mispronouncing the words..
So yeah if you are already speaking a language with some degree of tonality / pitch, it will be easier for you. If not I think at least paying attention to it is important – if you are really dedicated then study it a bit.
I have tried this website a few times, it will at least show you if you can hear it or not. I think most Japanese natives get 100% correct on this. You have to create an account, but it doesn’t matter – you never need to use an email or sign in… [https://kotu.io/tests/pitchAccent/perception/minimalPairs](https://kotu.io/tests/pitchAccent/perception/minimalPairs)
As someone who has lived in Japan for a year now, context is everything. Learning pitch accent is important, yes, but awareness leads to learning when you are hearing and speaking Japanese everyday. You don’t
spend an hour a day drilling pitch accent, but you do need to be aware of it.
It’s kind of important, but honestly you shouldn’t dwell on it. You should be consuming copious amounts of native material and you should be trying to shadow how natives talk and I think if you do this you will mostly pick it up naturally.
That said, I was doing my reviews in wanikani, and I can’t remember what the word was (yeah, SRS is doing a great job huh…) but I remember checking out the native sound samples they had for this particular word and the male and female samples, both marked Tokyo accent, had completely opposite pitch accents. It was a two mora word and one was high-low while the other was low-high. The way I figure it is if natives can’t even agree then how the fuck am I supposed to get it? Not to mention that the pitch accents change between regions. I figure I’m not trying to get a job as a broadcaster on NHK so meh, I’ll pick it up where I can.
Finally, my Japanese linguistics course can be put to use: I wrote an essay on this exact subject! Long story short, there are not very many cases in which two words can be distinguished *only* by pitch accent, and even so, the effect of using incorrect pitch accent is more than compensated for by the context given in the rest of the sentence. Japanese speakers will be able to understand you regardless, but how they perceive your fluency is affected. So yes, I would indeed only give it much thought if I wanted to speak native-like Japanese (and I wonder if that’s even a realistic goal). Other factors in speech seem to be much more important, such as speech rate (number of pauses and tempo) and lexical variation (using appropriate and varied vocabulary). Lastly, it seems that simply pronouncing everything with the flat pitch accent is a decent strategy for comprehensibility (though I’m not sure I would use it myself). I hope this gives you some clarity on the matter. After all, I chose this subject precisely because of my own confusion about pitch accent!
To me pitch accent is similar to the tones in Chinese. Do you HAVE to use it? No, people can still understand of you. But would you ever be considered a decent speaker of Chinese? No, you’ll just be yet another laowai who can’t do proper enunciation. If your goal is learn Japanese for your personal use and not caring what other think of you as long as you get your point across, then sure don’t learn it. But if you actually try to speak the language well for the benefit of the native speakers who are listening to your speech, then you should. It’s up to you.
Depends. How crucial do you find it for english learners to correctly say the words they learn?
“WannA go surFING with me?” vs “WAnna go SURfing with me?”
If youre fine with a learner talking to you stressing the wrong syllables in most words, then you know what youll sound like to japanese speakers, make of that what you will.
People see pitch accent as if it was this big separate thing when in reality, its literally just saying the words correctly, the way you should have memorized them in the first place.
It depends on what you are learning for.
Even if the English is grammatically perfect, it will be difficult to understand it if it is Japanese pronounced English.
For English speakers who are not used to hearing it.
It is the same in the opposite situation.
I’ve had people get upset when they speak to someone in Japanese and they get a response in English.
I think that is a result of the other person guessing their Japanese level from their pronunciation and accent.
So these are important if you want to have a problem-free conversation with Japanese people.
But pitch accent is at a much higher level.
It varies from region to region and is often guessed from the flow of conversation.
Unless you are going to be an announcer, call center, or Japanese language teacher in Japan.
I don’t think this is essential.
I’ve never given it more than a moment’s thought. I know what it is but can barely detect it never mind attemp to consciously use it. It’s very rarely affected a conversation I was having – even then the matter was resolved quickly and there are far bigger obstacles to a flowing conversation ie vocab, grammar, local dialects etc
Learning how it works and how to pronounce the different patterns is something you can do with fairly little effort that will have pretty big returns. Obsessing over it will have increasingly diminishing returns.
I’m currently doing the Pimsleur audio series. You’re constantly repeating what the native speakers on the cd are saying, so it feels like a good way to practice pronunciation and absorb pitch accent naturally.
It’s probably the same as learning to roll your Rs for spanish. You won’t sound like a native if you can’t do it, but it doesn’t really hinder communication.