I mean, maybe it depends what people mean by “worrying,” but establishing good habits on a sentence level as a beginner can make moving on to more nuanced or advanced points later on easier. You avoid some of the most distinctive aspects of a foreign accent at the very least.
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One of the key reasons that drove me to start learning Japanese was to be a total smart-ass know-it-all to my friends whenever they said stuff like “Oh my wuh moh shin deh roo, naw nee?!”. Not so much a motivator anymore, but I still like to be irritating by bringing up stuff about the language whenever possible. One of my personal idols is Adam Conover. Could you tell?
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I fully disagree. When I started, I read somewhere that Japanese is an accent-less language and that if you must put an accent on a word, it should go on the first syllable. Farther along, when I first saw something about pitch accent (and this was years into it), it was one of the biggest ‘Oh noooooo’ moments of my life. So many mis-learned words I’ve had to unlearn bad habits and relearn good ones, and I’ve still farther to go. I believe things should be learned correctly the first time if possible.
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Japanese IS an accent-less language in certain regions, do those people not know how to speak proper japanese then?
Would you tell an english language student that if he can’t fully replicate an american accent -for example- then he shouldn’t bother learning?
Pitch accent IS 100% useless, specially when people talk about actively studying it. If you’re fluent and have nothing else to do, sure, but wasting time on it when you have lots of kanji and grammar to learn? Definition of wasted time.
Completely offtopic, but curiosity killed the cat - what does that mean? 
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No one suggested telling anyone anything like that.
This might be shocking, but different people might have different goals for their language usage than you.
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They did.
Maybe tell that to the person that replied to me disagreeing with my take on pitch accent?
Also telling beginners to focus on pitch accent is bad advice, that’s just a fact.
Rather than have potential replies I have get twisted into oblivion, I’ll just step aside.
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Now, really? Where’s this fact is written/announced/fixed in cement?
I wonder how then pitching was shared with my group of zero-starters right off the bat, demonstrating that 花/鼻 and 橋/端/箸 are completely different words, that we should be aware of?
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Alright, the evermighty common sense owner - seems the only common sense owner out there.
Since you are that sure, enjoy your kanji+grammar-only Japanese, while I will enjoy mine.
ROFL
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Man, do you ever hop into a thread without stirring stuff up intentionally? Since we’re on the topic of using time wisely, I advise you to use your energy on more useful things than being a nuisance on the internet with your aggressive closed-mindedness.
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My point exactly. It’s a poor man’s rendition of 「お前はもう死んでいる。何?!」.
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People who aren’t learning Japanese naturally pronounce many words they hear in anime/songs/whatever wrong. When you don’t know the expected sounds, it’s easy to shoehorn what you thought you heard into sounds you’re familiar with from your native language.
I think most beginner learners can pronounce Japanese 90% accurately with just a little practice and listening. This is just pronunciation of course, as pitch accent is a whole 'nother beast. Regarding pronunciation issues, I never really had trouble with the Japanese r, but I have trouble with あ行 sounds following ん, such as in きんいろ. I’ve gotten a lot better I think, but I still don’t think I’ve mastered it. As for the nasal n, I just don’t bother. It’s very awkward for me, and I’ve been told that a lot of younger people don’t do that anyway, so it’s probably fine.
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Whelp, there goes your career as an NHK broadcaster. 
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I had (and still do tbh) a lot of trouble with that as well. I end up making a sort of ‘y’ sound between ん and the vowel and I’m not sure that’s entirely correct.
I kinda do that too. I think that’s right at least some of the time, but I have no idea if that’s the correct way all the time.
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I didn’t say it’s pointless to learn without perfectly replicating the accent, however being aware of pitch accent and knowing not to learn the wrong thing is different. I WANTED to work on my accent early on, so no, it wouldn’t have been useless. Getting wrong information to learn things incorrectly early on wasn’t useless either, it was outright detrimental. Contrary to your belief, it IS possible to focus on more than one thing at a time. And anyway, I said “If possible”. But go off, sis.
Happy birthday, btw.
ETA: Out of actual curiosity (and hopefully this can be considered on-topic): Which regions of Japan speak accent-less Japanese? I’d be super interested to learn more.
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This thread looks like it’s moved away from the original request for help and suggestions about pronunciation and into new territory…let’s bring it back in!
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If anyone else was interested, the regions where unaccented Japanese is spoken (along with a breakdown of other pitch accent patterns and where to hear them) can be found on Wikipedia!
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