Alright, so apparently there’s a pitch accent to Japanese. I was completely unaware that this was a thing going in, and I have a few questions…
Am I going to be lynched if I screw it up?
Will I still be comprehensible? Do I just sound like, say, someone speaking Spanish in a very strong British accent? Is it difficult to understand, but people will figure it out? Or will people just give up and pull up Google Translate on their phone?
Can I pick it up on the fly - is it intuitive (in English if you stress a word wrong it just kinda sounds wrong) for the most part?
it’s not like chinese where you’ll say a completely different word if you screw it up, but it can really aid understanding if you get the pitches right.
i’ve seen other posters have realms and realms of talk over this so ymmv but in my experience if you do a bunch of shadowing and active listening for how native speakers are pronouncing things you’ll probably turn out alright with it
There are some cases where it will be important, such as if you say you want to meet someone again いつか —whether you’re saying “someday” or “on the fifth” depends on pitch accent. But for the most part, it’s not particularly important and the meaning can still be gotten from context. It’s more important to get vowel length correct.
After all, different dialects have different pitch accent patterns, and when two dialects aren’t mutually intelligible, it’s not because of pitch accent.
And, yes, with listening practice, you can get a sense of pitch accent and how it flows through a sentence
Japanese will understand you better and you will sound more like a native, but most of the time they will still understand you, or if they don’t they’ll ask and you repeat yourself or use a gesture and then they will understand you.
It is important in that you should try to replicate the right pronunciation of the word when speaking. It’s not so important you should be dedicating your time relearning every single word you’ve learned. Just mimic what you hear and you’ll get better over time.
It depends. If your pitch accent is completely all over the place, I think it may be hard to understand you. If you have a good flow and are generally following pitch accent rules but make some mistakes, you’ll probably be fine.
Yes and no. If you listen to a lot of Japanese, you should naturally pick up a lot of the basic rules. You will make plenty of mistakes (especially when there are exceptions to a rule), but it’s honestly not that hard to pick up the basics. However, if you want to use the right pitch accent 95-99% of the time you’ll definitely need dedicated study and practice.
I mean, it will sometimes be a different word when you screw it up, but context usually helps. If you say きげん like 期限 instead of 機嫌 but it’s clear you’re talking about someone’s mood and not a time limit, the sentence will still be comprehensible.
Other times, it will just result in a non-existent pitch accent and again context tells people what you were trying to say.
Considering that there are regions of Japan where native speakers have no pitch accent, no, it’s not a problem for intelligibility. Unlike English, where every word has stress, not every word in Japanese has a pitch accent pattern to begin with, so you don’t need to worry about it too much if your goal is simply to be understood. If your goal is to sound like a native, then it obviously matters a lot more! There are situations where pitch can distinguish between words, but context is usually enough to determine these (such as はな or はし).
English stress is very unintuitive! Mistakes only sound wrong because you’ve had a lot of exposure of listening to people talk and thus naturally acquired the rules. The good news is that you’re no longer a child so you’ll pick up patterns faster than one, so you don’t have to spend a decade listening to people. Better yet, you can train yourself on the rules behind pitch accent to progress faster, so with time and a lot of listening eventually it ought to feel significantly more intuitive.
My advice would be to spend some (short) time learning about the basics of pitch accent (especially the 4 different patterns). Try to listen to some words with different pitch patterns to understand how they sound. Realize that 食べる is spoken differently from 食べて or 食べた. Look at 日本語 vs 日本人 vs 日本.
But then I would not try to learn many rules for which type of words use which pitch pattern. (There are so many rules and so many exceptions.)
Instead, I would try to look up and listen for the different pitch patterns when learning new vocab. I would not put much effort into memorizing it. This will need to happen by immersion.
I think the most important thing is to know about the differences and actively listen for them when you come across new words.
I find that at least the atamadaka (accent on first mora) words stand out a lot and you should be able to say them like this.
From my experience, learner forums aren’t really a good place to ask about pitch accent. Seemingly more so than with other subjects, you tend to get a lot of misinformation.
Having said that, I’m certainly no authority on the subject. Here’s just two experiences I’ve had.
If you didn’t grow up having to pay attention to pitch, e.g. speaking another language with tones/pitch accent or playing an instrument, chances are good you can’t make out the difference in pitch. You might have to retrain your ears first. Can’t pick up on what you can’t hear. (This was me.)
Being able to tell what the correct pitch for a word is and being able to produce the correct pitch are two very different things. Even for words where I can clearly tell when the pitch is right/wrong, I’m having a hard time getting the pitch right myself. (Granted, I haven’t put in a lot of practice.)
(The following is just my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt:)
Personally I think pitch accent is important, but a lot of other things are even more so.
Will getting the pitch wrong make it harder for a native to understand you? Probably.
However, beginner/intermediate students tend to struggle with things like getting their moras right (e.g. short vs long vowels) and correct grammar. Fixing those will do a whole lot more for being understood than proper pitch accent would.
If you couldn’t hear it then probably not. There’s a bunch of YouTube videos on it, probably the best introduction is Kaname Naito https://youtu.be/jt04eg9T2sE well worth 20 minutes of your time.
Once you can hear it, you simply have to listen for it and repeat it. Again and again and again…