Japanese Intonation. I Don't Know What to Do!

Pretty surprised no one linked this: "What I Use To Study Japanese" - Dogen

This guy is pretty good at the whole ‘pitch accent thing’. He’s got a course on patreon ($10 a month for access to everything) which is pretty decent

2 Likes

There are a couple of nonsense points in this post.

Absolutely no reason? How about wanting to speak and be understood properly? I’ve had many mix-ups or been faced with momentary incomprehension due solely to pitch / intonation.

Ha! The number of gaijin I’ve met who have been living in Tokyo for years and reached a really pretty decent level of Japanese yet sound borderline ridiculous when speaking make this statement so inaccurate it’s hilarious.

There may be no ‘pay off’ for you in having a perfect accent, but for a lot of people it’s an enjoyable and interesting part of learning a language. Also, you can’t really lean pronunciation in isolation - you have to have something to pronounce - so even when you’re practicing pitch and intonation, you’re reinforcing other parts of the language.

Finally, where on earth does all that ‘hiding your identity’ rubbish come from? No one’s talking about that at all.

11 Likes

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking.

you are going to have an accent no matter what

As always, the usefulness of something depends on your goals. If you’re living in Japan, having a decent pitch accent would probably be beneficial. If all you want to do is consume Japanese media, it probably doesn’t matter that much.

In my case, while I mostly just want to consume Japanese media, I find pitch accent to be an interesting aspect of the language. So while I don’t see the value in me actively developing a good pitch accent (at least compared to learning kanji and vocabulary), I do keep an eye out for resources like the ones in this post. That way I can have a general understanding of pitch accent and learn good practices.

1 Like

Type any Japanese text in and it will generate the pitch accent graphic and audio.

1 Like

…no reason anyone should ever give their best effort…

WOW

1 Like

There are degrees of accents. And the longer you speak with bad habits, the harder they are to break.

Anyone saying there’s no reason to study pitch accent can bite me.

Why would you shove your head in the sand and just declare your intention to speak poorly forever?

3 Likes

Some people acquire the correct pitch accent only by listening but they are the exceptions, the rest of us need to be taught. Just being aware of pitch accent will improve your listening by a lot!

2 Likes

I Had no idea this was such a controversial topic! :confused:
This is like a crapstorm of differing opinions.

1 Like

Memrise helped me a bit

In a lot of language learning communities there develops an “It worked for me so it is THE ONE TRUE PATH” or “If you are not learning it for my reason, you are wrong” mentality.

When it gets heated, just think about your goals and what keeps you motivated and consider how what you want fits with what you hear.

The reality is that in language acquisition, comprehensive input is what is most important, motivation is a close second. For everything else, your mileage may vary.

2 Likes

I’m merely stating an opinion based on my personal knowledge and experience. I feel you’re confusing pronunciation and pitch/intonation. Those are completely different things. Studying a language like Japanese by overanalysing pitch and intonation is a bad learning strategy, especially considering how diverse the Japanese language is in itself. To me, focussing on those things makes as little sense as a Brazilian trying to erase their accent while speaking English, or even as asking an Australian to speak like an American. And of course accents are linked to identity. Haven’t a slightly different pitch than a native doesn’t even come close to making you not understandable when it comes to Japanese. Once again, not taking about pronunciation…

1 Like

I don’t see anything in his post that suggests he’s confusing the two.

I’m not sure if this is what you’re getting at, but I’ve heard people say that just because the different regions of Japan have different pitch accent patterns that there’s no reason to bother learning pitch accent.

While it’s true that Japanese people are used to hearing different pitch accents for individual words, there are regional patterns, not just willy-nilly switching all around, which is what non-native speakers sound like. Accepting incorrect or non-standard pitch accents isn’t maintaining your heritage, it’s just an incomplete study of Japanese.

As others have said, it depends on your objectives. I’m not going to force anyone to study anything. But don’t tell people that they shouldn’t study pitch accents because broken Japanese is part of their heritage.

4 Likes

We’ll have to agree to disagree. For a language where pitch has pretty much no bearing on meaning, I just don’t see the point of actively learning it. The biggest part of the work will get done by itself during study and immersion (if that happens). Should immersion not happen then why would someone bother with actively learning it anyway? I’m not saying people should purposely use different intonations, but simply that actively focussing on it seems like bad prioritizing. I feel a lot of people treat Japanese as this pure immuable thing that can only be done one way. I’d like people to see how stupid that would sound if we thought about English, French or Spanish in that way too, The expression “broken Japanese” itself sounds so condescending. I speak English with a French accent. Does that make me less fluent? Does that make my English “broken”? Absolutely not, but it does make me less native-sounding. How is that a problem? I just don’t understand where this obsession of sounding like natives comes from. Once again, I’m talking about a language where pitch has pretty much no bearing on meaning, not about one where it makes all the difference between being understood or not, between communicating or not, which is the point of learning a language. Studying Japanese pitch and intonation is definetely interesting, but suggesting to the OP to actually focus on it is bad advice I think.

Has anyone suggested that anyone make it the focus on their studies? Not sure how you would even do that, since basically vocab and speaking would be the things you practiced the most, and most people would say that’s what you’re focusing on.

And yes, if you use words of the wrong intonation such that it changes the meaning of what you were saying, that is broken language. Even if someone can manage to understand you.

Using your own language’s vowel sounds in Japanese when those sounds don’t exist in Japanese isn’t really the same thing, since you can’t change the meaning of words that way.

Why is trying to correct your pitch accent “obsession with sounding like a native” any more than any other improvement toward correct Japanese?

We’re disagreeing with your assertion that 1) there is no reason to study it, and 2) that it’ll just come naturally if you immerse yourself.

No… if you don’t actually think about pitch accent, the odds of it improving on its own are slim.

2 Likes

I am going to have to disagree with this as well. I don’t know if anyone here is saying that you have to sound exactly like a native. I don’t think that’s the point and that goal, while worthwhile for someone if that is what they want, is probably very difficult to obtain and not necessarily essential for most people (probably). The point that I think @riccyjay and @Leebo are trying to make is that it is totally worthwhile to try and improve the way that you sound so that you can communicate better and be understood better.

For me, I don’t need to sound like I was born in Japan or something, but I would like to be able to have a minimal accent. I don’t feel like it is erasing my identify. I feel like it will help me communicate better, which at the end of the day, is the whole reason I want to study Japanese. To communicate with other Japanese speakers. So, I will try my best to improve my language skill as much as I can, and if improving my pitch accent will help that, then that is a valuable goal for me. In your case, if you speak English with a French accent, that is fine as long as you are clearly understood. However, if your accent was so strong that it made the listener have to really focus harder to make sure they understood you, you should probably work on improving it. This doesn’t erase your identity.

The bottom line is that you shouldn’t discourage people from learning that if it aligns with their goals. I also don’t think you can make a blanket statement that it’s not that important. If your sole purpose of learning Japanese is to read manga, then yeah, it’s probably not important. But if you want to communicate as clearly as possible then it is important.

4 Likes

Also, not saying that you personally hold this position, but the French have a reputation for disapproving of efforts to speak their language by foreigners.

Japanese seems to lie on the opposite end of the spectrum, where you can be effusively praised for even terrible Japanese. This doesn’t mean I am willing to accept or believe that praise. I know better.

I just found it amusing that a French speaker is saying I might be too concerned about how my Japanese is perceived.

As far as French accents in English are perceived, there’s a generally positive perception of French accents, as long as you’re understandable, as was noted.

I can’t imagine a French person praising an American accent.

1 Like

Not that it should matter here, but I’m actually French Canadian. We have a strong history of having to defend the value of our language as it’s own thing (versus the perceived “pure” French from France). My observations came partly from that, but mostly from my background in linguistics, translation and socioterminology. I feel like we’ve run full circle here anyway. I’ll just step out of this conversation since it went from what I perceived as an interesting linguistics and didactic debate to actual stereotyping.

Literally said I wasn’t accusing you of having that position, but surely you’d be aware of it and understand that people might want to make efforts to sound more native to avoid being criticized for not giving their best effort to learn the language.

It’s something that makes me less interested in learning French.