Does anyone here study the pitch accent as well?

[Borx]

I hear Leebo collects the tears of crying newbs.

[Leebo]

True, I have like 5 mini figures of the queen from Alice in Wonderland that you get from those chocolate eggs at 7/11 because my girlfriend wants the other characters and my luck has been terrible.

[Arban]

Actually I haven’t encountered those yet, is it a local thing or…?

[Leebo]

I have no idea… They’re at the one near her house… I haven’t checked other 7/11s

[Arban]

In Japan? Because if so that makes a LOT more sense XD

[Leebo]

Yes, in Japan.

[Arban]

R.I.P., I am still in America.

[EiriMatsu]

Nah, I’ve only been here for around a year and a half, but I’ve made vast efforts to stay out of my house as much as I can and really get to know my area. That would be my biggest recommendation. It can be tempting to retreat home away from having to dissect every sign and sentence around you, especially during winter, but getting out and showing your face really gets you out there, especially if you’re white or black (no political offense intended; 白人 and 黒人 I have both heard used frequently).

Going to smaller food shops, especially ramen shops, is great for meeting older Japanese guys to my experience. If you have enough Japanese to even generally understand the newspaper, mentioning a recent article can spark a conversation in the whole place. For takingng younger people, Tinder is a fast way to go if you know what to put in your profile. I’ve had varying results as I’ve messed around with what I put in.

[Rowena]

Pitch-Accent Awareness Corner

As evidenced by a couple recent posts, many Japanese learners make it surprisingly far into their studies prior to the shocking discovery that pitch accent exists in Japanese, and that understanding how to acquire it correctly it is essential for speaking Japanese without an obvious accent. Whether or not to dive into this subject (and when) is apparently slightly controversial, but for those who have decided to take the plunge, here’s a place to share resources, strategies, and questions. I’ll…

[finnra]

I don’t particularly try to learn pitch accents on WK, but when I do speaking practice (in forms of drills), I do practice it. I also have my tutor on italki correct me (actually had to teach some of them how to, but now they’re getting good at it).

Oh and I usually make sure all my learning happens with native speaker audio. That means no doing WK without audio, and no anki without audio.