Kaname’s new video must be the clearest and most down-to-earth explanation of the pitch accent I’ve seen so far.
But there’s one thing that people always mention when taking about pitch accent and I don’t think he mentioned even once, and that is the seemingly large regional variability, which some teachers say is so vast that it’s not worth focusing on accent in beginners’ studies at all because what you learn for Tokyo will be irrelevant for other regions anyway, and people from some regions don’t even have a pitch accent at all and their speech is understood by others just fine.
So, is this a major omission of the video, or are the differences really not that major and Kaname’s explanations apply to nearly everywhere in Japan?
Here in Kansai, the only region I have experience with, the pitch is pretty different from standard. To the extent that there are pitch contour patterns that aren’t even in the 4 possible categories of standard pitch.
Still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother if you are trying to learn standard Japanese. I doubt many learners want to learn regional dialects unless they already live there.
I don’t see how anyone could say learning standard Japanese is “irrelevant” for other regions.
I suppose it comes down to what people mean. You’d be hard-pressed to find comprehensive regional dialects resources, so if you’re studying Japanese you’re almost guaranteed to be exposed to standard Japanese pitch and so… Yeah, that’s what you’ll be exposed to.
I don’t know if there are much difference because I still haven’t scraped the world of japanese language. But an Anime I recently watched had a different pitch accent for the main character. I think it is Tochigi dialect.
Speaking as somebody who was always terrible with pitch accent, the impression I get is:
even if you mangle it you can generally be understood, so getting it right is not as critical as tones in Chinese. (But you can understand people who have a bad foreign accent in your native language too; “can be understood” doesn’t mean “the error isn’t noticeable”.)
yes, different regions have different pitch accents. But a speaker who is from those places will consistently have the pitch accent of that region across their whole vocabulary. They won’t randomly have Kansai pitch accent on one word and Tokyo pitch accent on another, or pronounce the same word with a different pitch accent each time.
for learners, “standard” is usually what is expected and taught, in this as in other matters, and conveniently it’s what’s most often used in media.
I think the biggest thing to understand is that no matter where you are at in Japan, you’re going to be familiar with 標準語. You may even be exposed to it literally every day depending on what you do. And we as learners are learning 標準語 for the most part. So being able to say the words right is still going to be a plus no matter where you to. Mangled stereotypical JSL pitch is going to be harder to understand than accurate 標準語 pitch even in kansai. So claiming standard pitch isn’t relevant in other regions is false.
For a semi decent example: imagine an American accent. Americans speak English with a certain accent, but Australians speak English with a different accent. Now take two Chinese people learning American English. One of them has perfect pronunciation (including stress accent of course) and the other one speaks with a thick Chinese accent and messes up stress accent ocassionally. Put them in Sydney Australia. Which one will the natives there have an easier time understanding you think? It’s like that but a lot more potent because I assume Japanese are more familiar with 標準語 than aussies are with American English (maybe I’m wrong though)
So essentially I think the question itself is a bit off. There are very big differences in some parts of pitch across regions. But pitch being different doesn’t make it less important like you might think, especially for 標準語. All Japanese people are familiar with 標準語. No Japanese person is going to be familiar with your original specialty rendition of 外人語 though which might even have it’s rules change partway through the conversation.
In short, it’s not a major omission (because it’s not too relevant to the topic of learning 標準語) but the information also doesn’t apply to everywhere. It’s kinda like asking if a grammar guide is making a major omission by not mentioning that negative verbs don’t always end in ない.
