Comments on: Pitch Accent in Japanese

By: ロバート

ロバート — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:18:47 +0000

Well, I’ve never claimed much authority.

In the end I feel it is best not to obsess about pitch accent. Especially getting annotations in print. Learn the accent through listening to and repeating authentic Japanese.

You’d need to ask a teacher who is current in Japanese as a second language pedagogy but I feel pitch accent is a very low priority in the scheme of things when teaching Japanese.

By: Alexandre

Alexandre — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:24:33 +0000

Nicely done indeed, but still rather superficial.

You’d think there would be ONE, just ONE, authoritative, clear and accessible website somewhere that would deal with this topic! If there is, I’ve never seen it, anyway.

By: ロバート

ロバート — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:09:47 +0000

Thanks for the comments. and googlejuice links!

Accents. I know my Japanese accent is very flat. I dislike listening to recordings of my voice at the best of times but I cringe a bit more at my Japanese intonation.
That said in terms of communication it’s not high on the list. A harder problem to overcome is mangling the basic vowel by not remembering a word properly. In english you can often managle the sounds and still be understood. In japanese I don’t think there is that extra redundancy in the language.

By: arunlikhati

arunlikhati — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:59:29 +0000

Wow, this is a great post! I think you did a great job of faithfully relaying the linguistic issues without flying off into the ravine of linguistic jargon. Especially for such an under-described topic. Well done and clearly written :)

By: Sydney

Sydney — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:39:37 +0000

It’s very nice to see someone writing on pitch in the Japanese language–it’s an issue I’ve encountered (though I was unaware at the time) both during my study of Japanese in the classroom setting (high school) and outside, yet I have never heard anything about it until now. I’ve mentioned to my friends before how I found it odd that we didn’t study what I had come to call language “ears”–the way things sound “right” or “cute” or ” masculine” in certain languages. While that’s not exactly what you’re discussing here I think it is very much related and also has brought to light why my accents gone shoddy since I’ve stopped being able to listen to a native speaker everyday. In short thanks. :)

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:45:30 +0000

Hi there,

Very nice. I put an update in my post to point to your’s as well. :)

This explanation is much clearer than what I tried to do. Great job!