Japanese Pronunciation 101: Pitch-accent! / 日本語の高低アクセントを徹底解説！ | Dōgen

[@Dogen]

Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation lessons here! www.patreon.com/dogen

[@terminallyonline5296]

Thank you to the patron who paid for this to go public. We are all in your debt.

[@CloudFowest]

Thank you Mariano!

[@n4psters986]

shootout to mariano

[@fenix7970]

thank you mariano

[@tntkit]

based Mariano

[@ajax7590]

A true comrade , I appreciate you Mariano

[@sumbunny2009]

I'll be rewatching this video many times so I made these timestamps for myself. 0:00 Intro 2:34 Start, rule no. 1 3:05 rule no. 1 Examples 3:49 rule no. 1 4:00 rule no. 2 4:46 Examples (with particle "ga") 5:33 rule no. 2 5:48 Pitch accent patterns 6:11 頭高 explanation 6:27 頭高 examples 7:33 America is as 頭高 7:49 Dogen says 頭高 is the easiest for Native English speakers 8:27 中高 Explanation 8:45 中高 Examples 9:55 America is as 中高 Version 1 10:15 America is as 中高 Version 2 10:30 (Almost?) all 中高 words only have one correct pattern 11:22 中高 usually easy for EN natives 11:52 尾高 explanation 12:10 尾高 examples 13:13 America is as 尾高 13:28 尾高 is the hardest for native EN speakers 14:08 平板 explanation 15:01 平板 examples 16:02 America is as 平板 16:52 more important Information (idk what to call this lol) 17:15 Phonetic awareness 17:40 recap of the 4 patterns 18:33 Outro of past dogen 18:39 Present Dogen is back again

[@TheNintendude1997]

ありがとう

[@otaku_inteligente]

どうもありがとう。

[@gavincarstens6497]

this needs a pin. also writing a comment to 📌 your work. bravo

[@Anna-wv1lw]

Dude you’re a saint 😭🙏🏻 あざす

[@ohhcareinjapan4181]

ありがとう。Very useful 😉

[@DaggerKidProductions]

so what you're telling me is me being a silly simp for a japanese character in a video game and repeating what they say might actually be helping my japanese pronunciation more than i thought it was

[@XGD5layer]

Shadowing is a great technique for learning.

[@ChronicalV]

Its almost like thats what babies do when they learn their native language, like immersion

[@ree_iiinn]

y e s

[@katiewong1547]

@@ChronicalV We actually learn language like this as adults too. If you actually study effective language acquisition methods, listening comes first (usually recommended 100 hours to begin... there's an excuse for anime watching), repetition/repeating after someone comes second, and then learning reading and writing. I wish I'd known that while I was studying languages, and not when I started teaching them.

[@ChronicalV]

​@@katiewong1547 i know what immersion is, i just mentioned it. when i finally dived into japanese it was the way i went. pretty sure reading is more effective at early stages than listening tho (once youve learnt to read that is)

[@kenai1202]

「ひらがな」って書いてあるのにカタカナで書かれているのが面白いw

[@sasuke1243]

Thank you to, Mariano, the Patron who paid for us to be able to freely have this lesson. You won the internet cookie, and I hope you get that thing you've been wanting. :3

[@dj_laundry_list]

Kansai-jin are such comedians - they have to end on a high note

[@andrea_7194]

なんでやねん(笑)

[@question_chawan]

right

[@Bazilisk_AU]

*bdm~tssssss*

[@userone297]

"Watch this before you start studying." Me two years in: Well frick

[@grass4432]

Lol. This matches the vibe of your profile picture😆

[@orti1283]

10 here

[@acgm046]

Haha didn't Dōgen himself said it was never too late as well? 😁

[@joemagicstr8zzz]

I guess it's good that I'm only 3 weeks into learning Japanese 🤷‍♂️

[@elfchild9]

Thank you to you and Mariano! I'd just been debating signing up for your Patreon, and this confirmed it. This lesson was super helpful.

[@playerguy2]

Man, we're being spoiled. Many thanks to both Mariano and Dogen for this wonderful gift.

[@natsukofleming]

私自身、母語が日本語なので普段は何も考えずに発音しますし、学習者に対しての説明も不十分なところが多くあると思っていました。大学院では日本語教授法を学びましたが、音韻学が専門ではないので道元さんの説明、本当にわかりやすくて助かります。アメリカの州立大学で初級日本語を教えていますが、ぜひ学生にこのビデオを紹介して普段の授業に反映させたいと思います（もうみんな知ってると思うけど）。道元さん、ありがとう！

[@lailandadumbmathematician7747]

Thank you Dogen for the video, and to whoever paid for it to be public, thank you. It finally feels like I have some idea of where to go with this.

[@Boyzby]

With a little app I downloaded a while ago, I started trying to learn just the reading and writing part of Japanese and have pretty much neglected speaking. The funny thing is that I didn't notice how the kanji is said when learning them, only what they mean, so even though I knew what a sentence said, I couldn't vocalize it. It's such a weird situation.

[@pjv9361]

Imagine working in a call center with the script just in your head and not being able to vocalize it

[@andersyu4464]

this is literally what chinese speakers feel like when reading japanese

[@nuclearcoconut3664]

i had the same experience but i wasnt working on writing instead very weird bring able to recognize kanji and speak them but not write them

[@TheManWhoDestroyedTheWorld]

@@pjv9361 and it's a suicide hotline

[@keehosgrl]

right like same, kinda

[@michaels3003]

This was VERY, VERY good. I guess, we can feel privileged by having such "insider" information...

[@anyan72]

I have a feeling this is going to help a lot and I'm going to keep coming back to it, so thanks mariano and dogen for making it public!

[@ray447]

Nice profile pic Yorozuya forever

[@sanskriti8740]

Gintama fans let's start spamming

[@metatronyt]

Splendid job as usual :D

[@makarios5946]

Nice knowing that you probably knew all of this since long before, then watched this on Patreon two times from what you've said and still came here just to compliment Dōgen.

[@kentam6891]

Woah never thought I’d see the most noble one here!

[@death_parade]

You watch this stuff!? And as I write this comment, I see "Grading Metatron's Amazing Japanese by Dogen on the recommendation panel on the right...... What next? Shadiversity and Skallagrim featuring in Dogen as well?

[@もちの花]

I've been studying Japanese for about five years, but this is quite a useful video to improve or raise one's own awareness of how words should be pronounced. Thanks to both Dogen for the amazing video and to the person who paid for us to be able to watch it!! I really apreciate it!!

[@min-bb6vh]

本当にそう思う

[@alukuhito]

I don't know a lot about pitch accent in Japanese, but it always surprised me, as a native-English speaker who has lived for years in Japan, how so many foreigners just don't get some very basic things about pronunciation. It's good to watch a video like this. I'm glad others are interested in pronunciation.

[@matthewbertrand4139]

gotta say, the pauses where you just stared at me as i listened to the voice were pretty magical

[@japam_]

Whoever that Patreon is, bless you!

[@user-kl3pl1gf7x]

Mariano Gosh why does nobody know their name when it was literally mentioned

[@brandonglasgow6371]

THANK YOU TO THE PATRON WHO DONATED TO THIS OCCURENCE! And thank you Dogen for the incredible content you put out for us to consume!!! (much love from a Texan native trying to learn in an environment without native Japanese speakers, having a native speaker for a lot of the examples helps and gives an inherent clarification)

[@teozimmer7634]

Thank you! A subtle point if you listen carefully; longer strings mora in the "same pitch" (high or low) actually tend to lower in pitch ever so slightly. You can hear it very clearly in あいさつが (the が is almost a minor third lower than the い), in おにぎりが、and 日本語が。 I wonder if there's any rule regarding this? Or if it's best to just mimic as close as possible through listening...

[@Dogen]

Yes, I cover this in detail in my series!

[@skyfrostthunderrock]

literally within seconds of this lesson, my mind was blown. i could mostly hear it in individual words, but had no real clue as to how or why... literally, seconds in. thanks to you and your patron!!

[@shinkikomori7386]

Aint ever seen a language with more swag in its phonetics. Thank you for sharing this gold with us so freely. It is dearly treasured by us grammar nerds.

[@butaonogiri]

確かに日本語は英語と比べてフラットで、でも何を持ってフラットなのかというのを論理的に解説できる人は少ない。とても勉強になりました！

[@akapantsusenpai181]

This lesson really opened my eyes to pitch tone. I was aware of it to some degree, but it makes a lot more sense now. Thank you for making this video and that you to the Patreon member who paid for it.

[@totobest9649]

日本語は一文字一文字をはっきり言ったらとても聞き取りやすいだけで、その中でスピードだったり発音で感情が入れられたらネイティブになる。英語でも同じかな？

[@matsudakedo]

Thanks to Mariano and Dougen! The lesson starts at 2:33

[@ДарьяАликина-я7л]

Clear explanation and accurate examples! Thank you a lot, the video is amazingly useful for pronunciation skills improvement:)

[@mrahzzz]

"It helps even more if you watch it before developing bad habits" * Grumbles in uni class that never mentioned pitch accent, and only mentioned general intonation over an entire sentence* Suddenly, the thing said to me by an old Japanese man who visited our class for a few weeks makes sense (after being the person to begin/end class for the day: "Your pronunciation is getting better!"). Had no clue I was doing anything differently - must have just been picking up on our teacher's pronunciation. UGH. AGHHH!!!

[@azineox9633]

Thank you so much! So much! I've just started my Japanese learning journey and this is something I didn't even know I needed so freaking much.

[@figgettit]

Thanks for releasing this. It is a travesty that this information isn't in every textbook, on page 1.

[@sumbunny2009]

I'm currently not learning Japanese yet as I plan to only seriously start studying it after getting to a higher level in Korean and Spanish. I will still rewatch this video a couple of times until I get a feeling for the pitch patterns. I hope that this will help me recognize pitch more when I start studying it. :)

[@RandyAugustus]

Are you me? I’m also actively learning Spanish and Korean.

[@jinjurbreadman]

This video single handedly increased my ability to perceive and identify pitch accent from 89% to 95%. Excellent resource.

[@Mariannelexus]

DogenさんとMarianoさん､ありがとうございます‼︎

[@osmpiano9897]

私は日本語を勉強している日本人なのでありがたいです！

[@amarug]

When speaking Japanese, does anyone have this same issue: One day you are almost fluent, you find all the words and manage to string them together into grammatical sentences at a fairly rapid pace and it feels like you finally are "getting there". And then the next time all you manage to do is stringing words together separated with "は" and hope they can guess what you actually are trying to say. I don't understand this volatility and it is making me a bit depressed :(

[@unwrittenbook]

I feel you! I have good Japanese moments and bad Japanese moments. It is not necessarily a bad thing though. Usually struggling and making mistakes in language learning means your brain is processing something right now. Or maybe the brain is just tired…who knows…

[@Zades145]

It's totally natural, when it comes to learning anything there are highs and lows, it's just very noticeable with language learning. The way I think of it your brain wants to discard any unimportant information, you just have to remind it that it /is/ important and then it'll actually commit it to memory properly. The 'bad days' and volatility are just part of the process.

[@madladdie7069]

That's pretty normal. I'm sure you've had moments in your primary language where you'd struggle to form sentences.

[@gristen]

language learning is just a metronome between "i know everything" and "i know nothing" back and forth forever

[@ryukouzumaki4939]

Thank you Dogen and Mariano for making this public! It's a grand favour!

[@Adventuretimedebt]

I was Actually Finding This Just Right Now. Thank You So Much. Mariano And @Dogen

[@Lindormber]

My university used this video for their Japanese courses. Nice.

[@heilyfromjapan7759]

I don't know why but even though I'm Japanese, I was repeating Japanese words...😂his teaching things obviously got to the point..

[@Senor_Exotic]

Thank you Mariano and of course Dogen

[@Soitisisit]

It's amazing how much the difference in your voicing style for English vs Japanese influences how I perceive your personality. English Dogen is a lot more chipper and nerdy, but Japanese Dogen sounds like a world-weary wiseman or at very least a lot more serious and grounded. Maybe it's just my imagination or maybe it's from not being able to tell what's sups supposed to be seriousposed to be physical humour versus what's just you, but it seems like your body language changes up a bit when switching language. Of course it's hard to tell when you mostly watch the skits. To elaborate further on the personality thing, if I were listening to Japanese Dogen, I would assume a man in his 30s who had a long day at work and has a bit of a wry attitude. But with English Dogen you still sound like a teacher's assistant.

[@jacobprince146]

Ever since learning about pitch accent some months ago it has definitely helped in my understanding of the language. While I am not yet speaking much because I am working on just acquiring as much of the language as I can, learning pitch accent has accelerated the acquisition process.

[@thenotorious5463]

Though I'm Japanese, I’m learning pitch accents from Dogen.

[@ANTONWORMANN]

Thank you Dogen for being Dogen!

[@xierxu]

私はずっと自然に高低アクセントを使っています。たぶん始めから正しい発音をはっきりで聞いていました。

[@badsketch9264]

Thanks Dõgen and, of course, thanks patrons. Money has been tight, but I will join you one day. In the meantime, I will learn from this video.

[@J-W_Grimbeek]

Ngl if i ever actually start getting a good amount of money i might subscribe to the patreon series. Looks insanely helpful

[@SparkyonPC]

Thanks Dogen and Mariano! This is tremendous help!

[@NyuAkiyama]

God bless you and a million thanks to the person who paid this for all of us ❤ 😍 you have helped tons of people! ❤

[@ngocngocthuong]

I'm a few lessons in, and I have to say they are extremely important for beginners. I don't think I can become "perfect" as in "being able to say all the words in the correct pitch-accent", but being aware that there are certain patterns has already helped improve my pronunciation. Thank you so much for your hard work, and I hope more people will decide to become a patron after watching this video.

[@falsealarm348]

マリアノさん神！！ありがとう〜

[@nicolasglemot6760]

I've read that japanese pitch-accent can be described by which mora is "accented", idk which word would be more accurate to decribe it but it basically means that an accented mora cause the following one to drop to low. And of course, the two rules you mentioned still apply, so basically the "default" unaccented pattern is LHHH H but if the first mora is accented it becomes HLLL L, if the second one is accented it becomes LHLL L, if it's the third one it's LHHL L, if it's the fourth it's LHHH L, and so on if there's more morae (and if none is accented it's the default LHHH H).

[@signbear999]

Why is nobody asking why he is wearing a hoodie that says "Hiragana" in katakana??

[@MochaxMatcha]

THANK YOU MARIANO!! YOU A REAL ONE 💖

[@darklibertario5001]

That patreon is the real MVP

[@mojojojoe2996]

マリアノさん、たくさんたくさん感謝いたします。

[@BrianLamb-rocketmanblamb]

I started about 15 years ago but I'm only at about the 1 year or so of "school" learning with lots of little add-ons a bits and pieces from friends or travel or miscellaneous books. Now I know why I didn't go harder on in depth learning yet!!! I want this to ground further attempts and build better habits -- I did a brief edX course on 発音last year which also opened my eyes to all of this pitch accent stuff. Thank you!

[@kingo_friver]

"とうがらし" logo on his hoodie...Dogen is dropping a new merch? No, actually it is a "ヒラガナ"

[@omp199]

I couldn't work out for ages what it said on his top, because I was stuck on seeing the first character as と! I expressed my confusion in a KZbin comment, and luckily some kind soul set me straight on the matter. :)

[@kingo_friver]

@@omp199 Drawstrings got the perfect hang angle for converting the letters!

[@psxndc]

@@omp199 care to share the knowledge? This has been bothering/confusing me. Do the drawstrings form the dakuten?

[@dogemasta4907]

@@psxndc I wouldn't say the drawstrings are forming dakuten. With the combination of the font, angle, and the drawstrings blocking the letters, it made the katakana on his sweatshirt look like it was hiragana, that's all it is. The sweatshirt actually says ヒラガナ but because of the factors I mentioned previously, it looks like it says とうが (I'm not seeing a ら or a し, and I'm not sure where he's getting a whole extra letter from either, but I definitely agree that the top 3 letters look like it says とうが).

[@psxndc]

@@dogemasta4907 Thanks. Can you explain why his name is "Dogen," but the first letter is To? I've been so confused by this but have been too embarrassed to ask.

[@user-wt5if6rx8m]

Looking forward to finally becoming a Patreon very soon! Local currency was being a bit of a pain unfortunately 🤣 You’re such an inspiration for me Dogen, thank you so much!

[@MackerelCat]

This is a great video. I’m fortunate enough to be early on in my studies so I can really pay attention to this! Thanks!

[@aylin5161]

Was looking forward to this video since you announced it in the stream! Thanks for your efforts!

[@yona9798]

This might just be me being a musician, but I noticed something weird noticed about the 平板 pattern (and all the other ones as well, for that matter...) There are clearly more than two distinct pitches used. In the examples even in the 平板 pattern the pitch noticeably dropped off at the end. Is that just what it actually sounds like? It would make sense to me, since the human voice is usually a bit all over the place anyways...

[@yona9798]

@V O thanks 😊

[@ykknc]

I’m a Japanese native speaker and can guarantee you that all the audio in this video sound correct, so yes, I think there’s a drop in pitch at the end of 平板 (realized after I found your comment). I think that’s why Dogen mentioned the binary pitch pattern used in this video... in reality pitches must be more than just “high” and “ low”.

[@zenguro]

I think this might be similar to how pitch accent behaves in a sentence www.kanshudo.com/howto/pitch (see 6. #2) "After a downstep, the next rise in pitch is not as high as the downstep" When using the OJAD tool from Tokyo University and looking at the sound graph (or just listen to Japanese naturally), you might notice that consecutive high pitch become lower and lower.

[@logosimian]

It sounds similar (but I don't have perfect pitch or even great pitch) to going up a whole step, and then coming down a half step. Or managing to hold a note until the last syllable, when you go a little flat.

[@doggybag71]

Im glad other notice this too. I cant help thinking that some syllablse like い and あ naturally have different pitch and making them hit the same pitch is quite hard to do. Idk... I mean when produced by vocal cords at least... Perhaps its different with a synthasized voice.

[@sykmchannel4081]

的確な着眼点と解説でびっくりしました！

[@SpyroTheEternalNight]

8:56 Dogen, i think you made a mistake. this word means "jelly-filled donuts". i learned it from Pokemon. thank you very much, Mariano, for making this lesson public for us!

[@AryaStark47]

This is my thanks to the generous person who paid it for us. Thank you man💙

[@sara_sara1987-g1i]

Dogenさんのチェンネル今日知りました！早速チェンネル登録しました！日本人からしたら全く意識する事もないですが興味深いですね！ というか、Dogenさんの日本語が素晴らしすぎて尊敬します😊

[@HaroldtheNihongoStudent]

You know this is the beauty of the Japanese language. Unlike in Chinese, Japanese words have flexible pronunciation and still you can be understood. The tricky part in Japanese is the small っ and the long vowels.

[@tyleri.4219]

Thank you so much to the person who paid for this

[@betobeto4066]

この録画ありがとうございます！ どげん先生は最良です

[@kingofpapaya]

Thanks Dogen, and thanks Mariano!

[@rpnehee9749]

Thank you Mariano

[@armandovillamizar9052]

Well, thank you Mariano! my sensei sent me this video!

[@livedandletdie]

I'm so lucky to be Swedish... sure Swedish is a stress language, but we also have pitch accent. So this is somewhat easier.

[@kevinscales]

For those wondering about how pitch accent is indicated in Japanese dictionaries: In スーパー大辞林 and 新明解国語辞典 it's a number like this: にほん-じん [4] 【日本人】 In NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 it's indicated with an arrow in the word and a number like this: 【日本人】 ニッポンジ↓ン [5] ニホンジ↓ン [4] Basically if you know where the drop is you know everything you need to know. [0] indicates no drop (heiban). [1] Is atamadaka so only these words start high-low everything else that isn't [1] starts low-high

[@benjiusofficial]

Use regular daijirin instead of super-duper. Super has dirty english words in it.

[@fonzothebeast]

Marino, a true scholar who understands the importance of sharing knowledge., I thank you deeply, and of course Dogen for making the content.

[@skritterjake]

Is there also male audio is in the Patreon series? Would be nice for another reference point and a variation in pitch range for shadowing and mimicking. Most of my Chinese teachers were female, in Uni and it took a very long time to find my natural range and a good native speaker to model after.

[@KramRemin]

Pitchaboo! Pitchaboo! Thanks for all the tips, DOGEN!!!

[@hannehanna7831]

Thank you so much Mariano! Thank you so much Dogen!

[@TwoHumans]

すげぇ！

[@dmanden1242]

Wow this lesson applies to all the languages. The America is a great examples.

[@KramRemin]

As a first break-down in reverse-engineering Japanese Prosody, I'd call these patterns, in increasing order of "strength," if it be "strength" to keep the pitch up. WEAKEST: EARLY collapse; MID-word collapse PARTICLE collapse (I.e., not collapsing until the final particle) and NO COLLAPSE, NOT EVEN AT PARTICLE. STRONGEST The downstep seems to be what the Japanese ear is really listening for, and, thanks to the second rule, one may indeed say "THE downstep."

[@hipsterjustice]

this is certainly late, but if there's anything dogen's lessons have taught me that have helped immensely in my japanese learning, it's careful listening and recognition. getting an ear for comprehension and understanding rather than getting the gist of speech through context clues and such.

[@skyrin_]

マリアノさん、ありがとうございます！！！

[@noxiousdow]

That "America is" in heiban sounds amazing. Would love to hear a whole English text read out in the Japanese pitch accent of the equivalent words!

[@hannehanna7831]

Thank you so much Mariano!

[@theocamargo4036]

Thank you Mariano for doing such a generous thing! And thank you dogen for the awesome lesson!

[@greyorno4648]

God bless the patrons who paid for us

[@tiagorochagoncalves9140]

03:13 - 03:46 the tempo is so clear someone could even make a remix out of these recordings!!! 😂😂😂

[@natorsi]

I started learning really young so I feel like I was doing these things like 80% of the time and now I’m trying to catch myself in the other 20% where I accidentally American it 😅 Thank you for the information! I’ll try to work on fixing my broken mouth now

[@Sojichan]

Thank you very much, its super interesting

[@daniroig]

Thank you Mariano!

[@humanbean3]

it also works as an advertisement for the patreon. getting paid to advertisement: large brain move

[@cobaltninjas]

Well, I'm sold, signing up for the patreon.

[@davirochaaulasonline8224]

どうもありがとうございます。

[@Radeo]

7:21 when you have been speaking Japanese so long you no longer can pronounce consonant+r/l blends in your native language

[@michaels3003]

I am not an expert, but the lady's pronunciation was perfect. "Much obliged."

[@c0nfl1ck71]

Good morning!

[@Hooked13G]

A huge thanks to Mariano for allowing us to be able to watch this lesson.