I was just wondering - recently, I started studying the tones in Japanese (pitch accent).
I noticed in an absolute majority of words, the male voice actor in WaniKani has the higher pitch on the first/second syllable and then goes lower (like is typical for other languages, especially in Europe). Which statistically should be wrong, since most Japanese words have the neutral pitch (which tends to go higher by the end of the word/last syllable).
Is he a native speaker? Is it normal for men to ignore the pitch accent? Or maybe Im just tone deaf and cant hear it properly?
However, the female voice actress does seem to respect the pitch accent in a way that in most words, she would go with the tone up by the end of the word.
Another thing I noticed, which is connected to the male voice actor - in words which end with “えい”, he tends to read this as a prolonged “え” (it sounds like Korean or Latin “ae”). Is it an accent/dialect? When I spoke with my Japanese friend, she didn’t understand me, when I explained to her she told me that she always reads it as “えい” (sounds like English “ay”) and that prolonged “え” is wrong. Example word: 失礼 (shitsurei) or 先生 (sensei). Again, the female voice actress reads this syllable always the same way as my Japanese friend.
// I just checked on Google Translate (I know the robotic voice is sometimes wrong, but I thought hey, lets see…) and its the same as the male actor - so maybe instead my friend is wrong? Lol. She is from Nagano but living in Chiba, so maybe its her accent? Should I start reading it always the same way as the guy? Whats the “proper” (neutral) accent?