A question about phonetic reading?

I often notice there’re some dots at the end of phonetic readings (?) of some words. What is the meaning of these dots ?

Also, Is the white dot different from the blue one?

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I think the white refers to the pitch of the particle that would come after the word?

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thanks. so, the white dot means to raise the pitch or lower the pitch of the following particle?

Pitch accents can be better interpreted for phrases. Indeed the white dot indicates whether the next particle starts from low or high pitch. Here it’s in the bottom row, so it means low pitch. I don’t know why there are single blue dots at the end, though.

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The last two blue dots presumably correspond to ん and ぱ in that word.

ちゅ is low, but for whatever reason they assign two dots to it, even though it’s just one sound. Guess it’s just a graphical thing.

Then the pitch rises to う, stays high on と and falls after は.

I don’t see a particular reason not to connect the dots after the fall, but I guess that’s how they decided to do it.

Was “phonetic reading” supposed to be a reference to the pitch accent diagram?

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I think the lines missing is a bug in the script.

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Also, it helps to look at the number used for the pitch accent, in this case 4. Things like ちゅ are considered one mora, so the word is broken up as follows:
ちゅ・う・と・は・ん・ぱ・(particle)

4 means that the pitch starts low for ちゅ, rises for う, then drops after the fourth mora は, making the rest low.

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There are people who really struggle to learn pitch accent, and this diagram is going to have them scratching their heads in bewilderment.

Allocating two dots to a single mora in a pitch accent diagram is potentially confusing. At first glance, this makes it appear that the word starts with two low pitches in a row, which is not a possible pitch accent pattern in standard Japanese. To interpret it correctly, you have to mentally adjust the shape of the graph by reminding yourself that the first two dots represent a single mora.

It also creates a visual mismatch with the pitch accent number [4], (which indicates that the fourth mora from the beginning is the last high mora), because the last high dot is the fifth dot rather than the fourth dot.

As for the unconnected dots at the end, I assume it’s just a bug, but I can imagine the pain of a new learner trying to attach some mysterious phonetic significance to it.

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thanks, Sean. Anyway, where is your level goin? :cowboy_hat_face:

My level is so high it can’t be quantified by a simple badge.

Actually Koichi just took it away for fun.

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It’s right next to his name, duh. :slight_smile:

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