This is a weird question, but do Japanese people change their tone when posing a question like in English? We tend to raise the pitch of our voice when posing a question without a question word, like “You are a fish?” You would raise the pitch towards the end to signal a question. Do Japanese people do anything similar?
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Yes there is a rising intonation when asking a question.
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Here’s a good video about intonation contours on all types of sentences. Interogative sentences begin at 5:00
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In fact, casual speech often doesn’t use the か question particle at all, relying entirely on the rising inflection to mark a question.
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Rather than offer a conventional answer, I’ll just say this: don’t pay any attention to those details because the explanation doesn’t help you speak the language. Just listen and imitate what you hear. You don’t have to know that the intonation changes in order to copy it in your speech.
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This is one of the first things I noticed when I started getting the gist of spoken Japanese. Rising intonation and a whole lot of indirect questions like 暑いですよね
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