very specific question here, but I was wondering about the pitch accent when building ないでください, as in “please don’t”.
When building the negative short form of a verb, the pitch accent stays the same. So 食べる and 食べない for example both have pitch drop on べ. Yet, when I hear japanese using the grammar ないでください, the pitch accent seems to be on the な as far as I can hear? For example, listen to this japanese speaker.
I’m wondering if I’m perhaps mishearing the accent. Sometimes I still find it hard to tell.
Do you have a source for that? I’ve never heard that before. I also see examples to the contrary, so are you just referring to ichidan verbs?
Assuming you’re talking specifically about 食べる around 3:03, I also hear the pitch drop on な. Maybe there’s some variance depending on the speaker, as they are adjacent mora. Or maybe it’s an artifact of her speaking slowly and deliberately, I don’t know.
Yes you’re right, I was just talking about ichidan verbs. It would be more correct to say that the drop falls on the mora before な for accented verbs and stays flat for heiban verbs. Yet in both cases な sounds accented to me when using ないでください.
In both that video and Suzuki-kun’s speech playback, I hear it as a drop-off that spans multiple morae. The “falling” starts with べ and continues through な before it “levels off” for the rest of the verb. But I’m partially deaf, so grain of salt and all.
