How To Learn Japanese Pitch Accent The Simple Way

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[@ThatJapaneseManYuta]

Learn Japanese with Yuta: bit.ly/46VGgEh

[@davidmontoute2074]

Thanks Yuta. Your teaching approach is unique among You Tube Japanese teachers. I learn things from you that i don't on any other forum.

[@carkawalakhatulistiwa]

Indonesian is the easy language

[@trajectoryunown]

Tone actually effects a lot with certain vocalizations. "Uh-huh", for example, can be pronounced in many different ways. - low to high, 2 syllables is a definite positive affirmation. - high to low, 2 syllables sounds out of place as a native American. Might be valid elsewhere. - high high, 2 syllables would be indicative of interest, though many wouldn't find it genuine. - low to low, 2 syllables would demonstrate a blunted affect. If it's broken into 3 or 4 syllables or you start adding minor pauses or alterations of pitch, that's when it gets more confusing as sarcasm becomes more implicit and you get concepts like "obviously pretending to be angry but actually playfully antagonizing the other speaker on to make the conversation more entertaining".

[@azubruh8787]

I think Just listening Japanese a lot helps a lot to improve your Japanese pronunciation, without having to study the actual pitch accent of the Word. Btw great video yuuta have a nice day

[@DexLuther]

Context probably also helps a lot. I think context is extremely important for most languages. Without knowing or catching the pitch, the rest of the sentence would be an indication of whether the person is talking about a car wash or a tank. Unless you happen across someone talking about a car wash for their military tank. lol

[@Minmin-sg2eu]

Yes, it does help to a certain extent, but most foreigners that live in Japan speak with foreign accent (as a result of wrong pitch accent for the most part) even if they live in Japan for a long time. And the thing is, is that they can't tell the difference between one pitch accent from the other because they don't really know what pitch accent is, and they think it's unimportant to learn it since Japanese people understand you perfectly and they never correct your wrong pitch accent. I'd say as a Japanese it is important to learn pitch accent for most foreigners if they don't want to sound foreign when speaking Japanese. 😊

[@UltimateGattai]

@@Minmin-sg2eu I've been watching anime and playing games since I was a teenager and I certainly can't hear the pitch, I'm also not musically inclined either, so it's hard AF.

[@ashtonsheranian8383]

i agree 1000%

[@JohnM...]

It’s difficult at first, when learning from apps - even Pimsleur sounds like everything is a question 😑. Plus, watching KZbin videos the Japanese is WAY too fast for my inexperienced brain to hear it.

[@pocketsk3824]

As a musician who learned music by ear, I found this aspect of speaking Japanese, and any foreign language, to be the easiest to pick up. On the few occasions where I've had the opportunity to speak Japanese to a Japanese person, they've told me I sound very natural. Rhythmic and tonal structures come very naturally to me. However, I struggle with finding the right words and phrases because I am still thinking in English and translating in my head. Also, living in a place where there are nearly no Japanese speakers, most of my experience with the language is listening; to movies, tv shows, and music. I don't get to practice speaking enough.

[@kikiseo]

I have a good ear for language and can recreate the sounds of languages well, however, I struggle with auditory processing even in English, so listening comprehension is always by far my weakest skill. I've learned some Japanese, a little Vietnamese, and quite a bit of Korean (lived there for a year and studied for 2 years before that). Even though my levels of knowledge in Japanese and Vietnamese are far lower, I feel like I have way less trouble understanding them when spoken than I do with Korean, and it's 100% because of the pitch element. Vietnamese is the easiest to understand because it's a tonal language, Japanese is in the middle with its pitch accent, and Korean is incredibly difficult for me because it's fully flat--no tones, pitch, or stress to clue my brain into which word I'm hearing or where one word ends and another begins. 😞

[@thecrackstreetboys4012]

Same here. The very first time someone mentioned that heiban words stay at a flat high pitch after rising and I heard my first example, I was like, what are you talking about, that's dropping flat by a whole semitone per syllable. The drop after a rise, for an accented word, also doesn't always immediately land where it's going. This means it might be just flat of halfway between the high syllable before it and the low syllables after. This can make the two types of words sound extremely similar despite what the graphs look like. So the only truly hard thing about it is distinguishing the heiban "downward pitch drift," which is often anything but subtle, from a nakadaka or odaka "drop" which is often softened on the first "dropped" syllable. However, the upshot of this is that since heiban and odaka or nakadaka words are often pronounced in a pretty similar way, although it's hard to hear exactly what natives are doing, this also means the difference is subtle enough you probably won't stand out very much if you get it "wrong" either. They in fact sound highly similar. As long as you don't drop on syllable 1 instead of rising. That difference is huge. Overall, the whole thing is very easy when you pick up the two simple rules: the first two syllables always differ, and a word can only drop once. The first possibility is it's accented and drops on 1. This is VERY easy for English speakers to hear. It's almost exactly like words like DICTionary. And if it's not that, it rises off 1 and it either drops later or it doesn't. As just mentioned, you don't really need to be too neurotic about this one. Morever, many words will differ in meaning based on whether the first two mora go low-high or high-low, but not nearly as many differ based on dropping on 4 or 5 or staying high-flat as in heiban. English also has WAY more stress patterns. There are no complicated patterns in Japanese like you might find in English words like "ad-MIN-i-STRA-tion" where you have multiple peaks and valleys - 4 patterns in total, period.

[@niwa_s]

@@thecrackstreetboys4012 People way understate the parallels between "stress" and "pitch" accents as well, acting like it's a wholly new and unfamiliar concept you have to learn and train from zero. In reality, stress pretty much always involves pitch (trying to not rise on the accented syllable in English or German words feels impossible to me), and pitch can affect perceived volume, which in turn can affect perceived length. This is especially true in spontaneous, everyday speech, but you can hear traces of it even in voice samples of isolated words. So IMO, both accent types effectively consist of the same elements, and it's more about adjusting to accent patterns that are more subtle than what you're used to.

[@Verbalaesthet]

I studied Japanese for many years and I haven't been taught pitch accent at all. I did realise in Japan when speaking to Japanese people that 私 seems different from when I say it so I sort of tried to imitate how they say it. But only when Dogenさん did the video on it I started to understand it properly and paid close attention to it. And it did improve my Japanese pronunciation considerably.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

My friend was studying Japanese at the university. He told me his lectures said to him to to be too bothered with accent, since it's not that important. My eyes became truly anime eyes at that point. I understand it being said in high school but university? Language studies? Unfortunately, accent is the most neglected aspect of any language teaching and learning. :/

[@janikusu8677]

@@marikothecheetah9342 I'm currently studying Japanese at university and I don't think pitch accent has been brought up a single time. I think I'm better off learning by myself, so I'm dropping out next year lol

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@janikusu8677 good for you, with so many resources online you definitely are better off on your own. Good luck! 👍

[@JayAitchCarbon]

Thanks, as Japanese pitch accent is a pretty unique feature of the Japanese language, this video is gonna be very useful. You’re the best, Yuta ✌️

[@altermellion6984]

It's not really unique. A lot of asian languages have the same concept.

[@Wingsaber]

​@@altermellion6984I also wouldn't consider this the same time of tonal pitch that you get in most Asian languages, where the tones are built into the language structure. Japanese pitch accents are more similar to English emphasis where you really just have two pitches: high and low

[@nizaru100]

@@Wingsaber Right Sir, completely agree ! It's not like Mandarin Cantonese or Vietnamese 🙂 But It's not easy for me to keep up with 4 languages +Japanese in different topics and knowledge fields 🙂

[@altermellion6984]

@@Wingsaber , it's similar in the way that depending on the pitch, the meaning of a word can change. So whether you have 2 pitches, or 4 in mandarin, or 5 in thai, or 7 in cantonese, it's the same. Just less sofisticated or punitive.

[@gtc239]

You're* the best.

[@Dmitry_Timchenko]

If I understand correctly, the wrong pitch is perceived by the Japanese as a foreign accent. You will not sound like a Japanese, but you will be understood. And immersing into the language, communicating with the locals, you gradually learn the correct "melodies" of speech.

[@bassmaiasa1312]

But how would you ever know if you are producing the correct melodies? Will any Japanese person ever tell you what you actually sound like? I know when white people try to sound black, it doesn't sound good. It really doesn't. It's actually a low grade nauseating sound. But I'd never say to a white person "Please stop trying to sound black, it sounds fake."

[@ezraho8449]

From what I understand it doesn’t exactly work that way. From the research I’ve seen most people don’t pick up the pitch patterns naturally. That isn’t to say you can’t but you likely have to be more proactive with it.

[@Dmitry_Timchenko]

@@ezraho8449 A, sokka...

[@bric3187]

@@ezraho8449I don’t think “pick it up naturally” might be the best way to put it but if you’re surrounded by the language 24/7 you will start mimic it without having to study or teach yourself the pitch of each word. For instance, I picked up the pitches of わかる and 帰る before even knowing pitch accent was a thing simply because I heard the words enough. It’s similar to acquiring a local dialect; since pitch accents can vary within Japan based on dialect a foreigner is going to automatically begin to mimic what’s around them vs whatever they studied in school.

[@jame254]

I would say you can intuitively learn it. If you know the basics of how the four pitch patterns would be a start, But after that, I would not go over bored on it. Though I still get it wrong from time to time

[@latimixes]

I think pitch accent is an interesting topic as someone who is a muscian. To me, I can actually pick it up much more naturally because I feel like it's a similar function to say, remixing an existing song by ear. If you liken it to music pitch, I think it will help you a lot.

[@jame254]

Same I just read some rules on it. But I still get it wrong haha

[@foogod4237]

This is a great video, and I agree with pretty much everything you've said here, but I also wanted to point out something I realized a while back which I think most people completely ignore when talking about this topic: Because in English, pitch is not generally an important part of understanding, for many native English speakers, the portion of their brain that processes language has often developed such that it *does not actually recognize pitch* as such, at all. The reason you can't hear the difference in pitch is literally because _your brain cannot hear it._ But that doesn't mean all hope is lost, because the truth is that your brain does still actually detect the difference, it just registers as something else. For many English-speakers, pitch differences _don't register as pitch, but instead as different emphasis._ Because English does typically vary pitch depending on the emphasis of different syllables, when Japanese people speak with different pitches, English speakers hear it as different _emphasis_ in the words instead. For example, the difference in Japanese between 戦車 and 洗車 is actually a difference in pitch accent, but for English speakers, it is quite likely that they will instead hear 戦車 (tank) as "*sen* sha" (emphasis on the first syllable) and 洗車 (car washing) as "sen *sha*" (emphasis on the second syllable), without actually realizing that the reason it sounds that way is actually because it's the pitch that's different. But still, if they focus on the difference and attempt to replicate the different emphasis, they will likely end up with the correct pitch accent as well, as a natural consequence. So if you can't hear the different pitch accents, try not focusing on pitch so much and try to just replicate the different _emphasis_ of the words you hear, and it will likely get you a good way towards where you need to be.

[@Supporter283]

Hey! You're the Duolingo guy! At least I think so? I see some of your tips and opinions in the comments from time to time. They're so helpful! ❤ So I just wanted to thank you, thank you very much! 🤭

[@lemon.cupcake]

This was the best thing I figured out, I can't believe I haven't seen anyone else say it

[@thecrackstreetboys4012]

@@lemon.cupcake Because if you follow this advice, you really will be incapable of properly saying either "uncle" or "grandfather" from day 1. In a stress accent like in the English word DICTionary, what you're really doing is making the syllable louder and holding it for longer and maybe pausing slightly before resuming. But this is the key: it's *fundamental* to the sound of Japanese that all syllables are given equal time. This is even more fundamental than pitch accent. If your syllables aren't set to tempo, you have no way to distinguish おじさん from おじいさん, among the billion other words where doubling the length of a vowel defines the word's meaning. What does doubling the duration of a sound mean if your sounds have no set duration? People don't advise this to newcomers because it's so much more important for them to understand that Japanese has no stress accents period. Why is this so important? Because stress accents drag out a sound but in Japanese syllables must be set to a consistent rhythm, like in a song. Otherwise you get much more fundamental problems. Continuing that example, おじさん uncle versus おじいさん grandfather: In fact, the pitch of おじさん does rise from お to じ. This might make you hear じ as if it was stressed. But if you drag out じ here you are 100% saying the wrong word: おじいさん instead of おじさん. And if you think of it like a stress, you will drop the pitch after dragging out the じ: again, exactly like おじいさん, which actually does drop after its third mora. There are only four categories of words in Japanese, but this approach is outright useless with some of them. It looked a little useful here because it used two of Yuki's examples, both of which were only two syllables. With two syllables, the word must either rise or fall, end of story. But as soon as you have three or more syllables, you have a problem. The pitch in おじさん doesn't fall - anywhere. This is completely unlike any English word, since all English words of 2+ syllables are stressed somewhere. It's far more important to get the rhythm right, than it is to get the pitch accents badly, with an analogy that prevents you from picking up the rhythm. This just isn't easy to see when you're hyperfixating on pitch accent and the examples you're focused on involve isolated, two-mora words...

[@okRegan]

in spanish we have the silaba tonica, where a single syllable of a word will always be the high one and the rest will be low. It wasnt till i was helping my gf prepare for her entrance exam in a Mexican university that i realized not everyone can hear the strong syllable of a word, especially if its not your first language, i just assumed it was obvious. The reason why its important to know sometimes is due to grammar, the way we categorize words, aguda, grave, esdrujula y sobreesdrujula, and also some of the rules on tildes, the á, é, etc. and also some word's meanings can completely change depending on where you place that syllable, TOmo=present, i grab or i drink, toMO= past, he/she grabbed or drunk.

[@focotaku]

That’s the stress of the word. It’s the same in English, although in English most words are flat (“planas”). In Japanese it’s based on pitch, though. So not exactly the same. When Japanese transcribe Spanish words, they tend to convert the stressed syllable into a long vowel. So “tomo” would be “TOOMO” and “tomó” would be “TOMOO” (regardless of the pitch).

[@4rumani]

that's not pitch accent.. it's stress (as in a lot of languages)

[@TakahashiQR]

​@@4rumanibut still is very useful to recognize sounds of japanese words

[@AlenBear]

​@@focotakuwell yeah but tomoo and tomó sound nothing alike

[@AnonYmous-jp3qd]

@@4rumaniOne of the markers of stress is, in fact, the pitch pattern it produces, so this is not entirely wrong. Arguably, in Spanish, pitch is more important for stress marking than in English, because in English there is vowel reduction in unstressed syllables, which Spanish doesn't do, making Spanish speakers rely more on the pitch contour of a word for hearing stress where an English speaker will tend to use the vowel quality. That said, there is a reason why pitch and stress accent are different, namely that stress accent is a more complex phenomenon involving more than just pitch, so one must keep that in mind when discussing the topic.

[@dimitrilepain3821]

Another great example of this is auto antonyms (words that are their own opposit), which most of the time are only distinguishable by pitch patterns. In german we like to showcase this phenomenon with the word "umfahren": UMfahren (high-low-low pitch pattern) means "to drive over/crash into something" umFAHren (low-high-low) means "to drive around/avoid something"

[@ficklebar]

That sounds like a nightmare to learn, lol.

[@citizencalmar]

This is something I've wondered about for a long time. When I was studying Japanese in college, they never taught us anything about pitch. I got to an intermediate level, so that I could hold simple spoken conversations, but I couldn't confidently say what pitch pattern any given word has. It makes me wonder if Japanese people I talked to felt like I was pronouncing all of the words wrong. I've even thought about trying to put together flash cards to try and memorize the pitch patterns of the words I already know. Well, at least I have an excuse to re-watch "My Dress-Up Darling" while telling everyone it's for "research purposes".

[@bluemario8361]

One thing too with learning how to hear pitch accent, wheither naturally and/or studying it, is it can help you hear words more clearly which can helps you understand what they are saying.

[@maskedanimatronic147]

I'm only slowly starting to learn Japanese now, because I didn't have time and I focused on Spanish past year. The pronunciation in Japanese is surprisingly easy and fun, but it might be easy because in my native language there's a big difference between short and long vocals and I'm used to having to use this partly. Also using Oshi No Ko as an example is amazing!

[@jblauh01]

The way you break this all down makes it all make sense clearly. Thank you so much! Thumbs up.

[@MuSicBlock5774]

I love how these videos explain so well different aspects of the language!

[@OKOKOKOKOKOKOK-zn2fy]

I've always been a drummer. To solve the pitch accent problem, I set up two cowbells, a low and a high pitch . I shadow the soundtrack from an anime and tap out the pitch changes I hear on the cowbells as I repeat the lines . It looks ridiculous, but it works. After doing that in conjunction with my learning of new vocabulary sentences for a few weeks, I can now hear the pitch accent . I like to practice with the speed cranked up to 1.25X normal. When you can hear the pitch changes at that speed, normal speech will be easy . You have to listen for it. Then, when you can hear it, you have to get fast enough to follow it in real time. It will take about a month to get this down . Then, you have to relearn all the vocabulary you already know in sentences to hear what you missed on the first pass . If it was easy, it wouldn't be rewarding .

[@dacueba-games]

とても分かった。どうもありがとうゆた先生

[@Vlogoosh]

素晴らしいクラスです！ 先生、本当にありがとうございました！ 😃

[@SIRKISSHY]

ayo this was definitely the video i needed!! thanks so much!!

[@JapaneseAccentChannel]

This is so true!!! Well explained!!!

[@user-bi9iz1vc7x]

Thank you, this is exactly what I was trying to find. Most videos do not acknowledge this.

[@YouMayKnowMeAsNate]

This deserves a like for 3:50 alone

[@mumu8x]

Love your videos 油田さん

[@DeusaRem]

The best pitch accent video you will EVER see!!!

[@FunkieFelix]

The visuals are phenomenal. W lesson

[@GiovanaS575]

Great video as always, this channel is all good, always with great tips and tricks. For me, being Brazilian, Japanese is an easy language, easier than English and Portuguese, but learning all Keigo's rules is too complicated, but not impossible. Please Yuta-san keep up the great work of teaching us real Japanese. ❤

[@-Devy-]

How on Earth is Japanese easier for you than Portuguese? That makes literally no sense.

[@BrandonSallinger]

Pronunciation is almost identical. English phonetically is one of the most difficult languages in the world to actually speak. Japanese has no cognates or anything like that but is very easy to speak and understand, assuming you're not trying to learn how to read or write it.

[@GiovanaS575]

@@-Devy- Yeah, I know, no other language should be easier than my own language, but the Portuguese language is extremely full of rules, verb conjugations, grammatical classes, specific words for feminine and masculine, many similar words with different meanings, anyway , there are countless reasons why I find the Japanese language easier than Portuguese. And English is easy too, the problem is that some words are impossible for us to pronounce, words ending in -th because there is nothing like it in Portuguese.

[@SoicBR]

I'm also Brazilian. Besides pronounciation and being less irregular, how is it easier than English?

[@Haru-tr2cq]

This happens to me since my native language is Spanish, pronunciations are almost identical and I have no problems compared to english.

[@nicbentulan]

Great series of how anime characters speak Japanese. Please do Itsuki Nakano from the quintessential quintuplets or any or all the 7 main characters in TQQ. How they speak Japanese I believe is very important to understanding the plot eg the honorifics, the lost in translation stuff (eg when they say things like zurui, hatsukoi, uso, tachi, fukuzatsu Vs taihen, mote etc that are removed from the dub). I compiled a lot of the lost in translation stuff in r/gotoubun Something to consider about Itsuki: The Quintessential Quintuplets' character types are: Ichika - Onee-san / ara ara, Nino - tsundere, miku - kuudere / dandere, Yotsuba - genki Itsuki - ?? - Tsundere like Nino? - Eat-suki? - Imouto? - Someone who speaks keigo to their siblings, to Fuutarou and to Raiha and to everyone basically? Actually, the main thing I learned from Yuta's videos that keigo is basically just desu, masu & their variations. I swear when I learned elementary Japanese in bachelor's (foreign language classes are required in universities in the Philippines) we were never even taught the word keigo. All this time I had no idea Itsuki was the only quint and actually only main character who was talking keigo to EVERYONE. Anyway, I have a theory as to what Itsuki's type is, but you're not gonna like it... For more japanese stuff re TQQ, see r/gotoubun r/itsuesugi r/raitsuki etc Also: ubmu3x ubmu3x ubmu3x ubmu3x ubmu3x ubmu3x

[@spaghettiking653]

Very unexpected but nice analysis!!

[@nicbentulan]

​@@spaghettiking653 Lol thanks so you agree with the UBMU3X theory? A lot of people call me insane for my UBMU3X theory. But for me it explains the Japanese stuff as well as many issues in the plot.

[@spaghettiking653]

@@nicbentulan I actually forgot to ask, what is the meaning of ubmu3x? I haven't finished the series mind you, I got the manga recently and was planning on reading but so far I'm only as far as the 2nd anime season.

[@nicbentulan]

​@@spaghettiking653 Look up ubmu3x. It's my theory about Itsuki. Yotsuba is the girl in the photo of Fuutarou in s01e08 But Itsuki is the girl in the photo of Uesugi in s01e04. It's Itsuki x Uesugi but a different Uesugi

[@Dankyjrthethird]

My man I didn’t want to say it, i really didn’t. But i think you’re getting too into this anime thing

[@trollingisasport]

Great idea about slowing down the video like that! I'll recommend that for English learners too!

[@TheBombayMasterTony]

Good explanation.

[@halimech1]

Nice one yuta, I think from all the japanese teachers here on KZbin you manage to keep delivering videos that motivate learners instead of making them depressed or reluctant to keep studying by scaring them with unnecessary details and over anaylsations. Most native speakers, I'm German btw, won't be able to tell you why something is said in a certain way. It just is. And you don't need to learn it in order to learn a language. I learned italian in 1,5 years just by living in italy, listening to a looot of conversations and italian music, podcasts, movies and so on. I've never opened a book about learning Italian and I am able to hold good conversations, ask questions and express myself. I think Japanese takes more time to learn, but the ting is that most people who learn Japanese live OUTSIDE of Japan, not inside. That makes a huge difference in my opinion. It's harder to stay motivated, have a direct goal such as meetimg friends, going shopping in Japanese and so on. It's important to not forget to have fun when learning something new, not just languages and I think a lot of people are scared of making mistakes when speaking. But in reality, Noone cares. Everybody in italy notices that my italian is not perfect. So what. I'm not italian and they know. They can literally see it in my face haha :) Don't be scared, have fun, Noone cares that your Japanese isn't perfect, only you. Enjoy this live and try to find Japanese friends on Facebook or wherever, try speaking with them and have fun being a fool. Most people don't learn languages for business anyways so don't forget that languages are meant to create connection between people. Even with broken Japanese and a good, polite attitude you can go reaaally far. And smile when they say Nihon joosu or whatever :D

[@TCLTKL]

I think the biggest problem is Japanese never marks pitch accent even on furigana. This makes everybody need to guess pitch accent On the other hand, I think vowel devoicing is the bigger trouble than pitch accent because it can be inconsistent even in standard Japanese (in other words, some people devoiced but another people not where all of them are speaking standard Japanese) e.g. つ in 夏フェス. I will be overwhelmed when facing those inconsistent words. Same as pitch accent, vowel devoicing are also never be marked.

[@EdwardLindon]

Just as English stress accent is not marked on English words, and pronunciation irregularities are not marked. (Try the 9 different realizations of "ough" for example.) Writing systems are conventional and approximate repositories of semantic value. They are not supposed to exhaustively describe phonetic realization.

[@Aussern]

I've been watching this Netflix series called Midnight Dinner for pitch accent practice. I try to mimic as much as I can and it's helped me drastically. Lots of practical speech, and tons of different actors/accents/scenarios to learn from. The show is pretty good on it's own right too

[@user-su4dd9kp7l]

深夜食堂？top tier show for sure

[@jame254]

Forgot about that show. I have been watching a bunch of cheezy dramas on Netflix for my input.

[@beastlysun]

i find it funny that every single "learn about Japanese pitch accents" video will inadvertently stop using correct pitch right after explaining it. The amount of pitch differences in Japan is huge and differs wildly between dialects (or at least with my own experience)

[@soyosugawara2658]

Good advice.

[@Nole2701]

In my opinion, a good way and a fun way is to just simply watch a lot of anime. I learned most of my Japanese from anime and over time you'll be able to just pick up if something sounds "wrong" or "off" when pronouncing or hearing it.

[@Prince.Hamlet]

Nice Al Bundy reference! God I love this channel.

[@fatimahmakgatho8968]

Thanks man

[@jansenbaldopena8009]

My struggle with pitch accent really is knowing how to mix pitch accent with intonation. I think I kind of get it but since I don't really get much feedback about these things and not much content about it is available online, it's been difficult polishing the imperfections. Another thing is knowing what happens to the pitch accent of words when they're conjugated or when certain suffixes are attached to them. Japanese people have been complimenting my pronunciation but one comment that stuck with me was "your pronunciation is great but it still sounds a little bit funny". I had the feeling it was the pitch accent which, at the time, I have read about in books but didn't pay much attention to until I found a video about it on KZbin even before Dogen made it such a very popular topic on the platform. It turns out I was right. It took me time to get the hang of it but I realized I have been picking up the correct pitch accent of some common words all along because I consistently say them in a certain way but not the ones I hear less often. By the way, the difference between 平板 and 頭高 patterns, and a few other concepts are not intuitive to learners.

[@dendrobium.stamen]

7:37 Yuta album when? 😆 Thanks for the insight!

[@Garfield_Minecraft]

眠いんだよね my fav sentence lol

[@Gamer_Wolf19]

なんで？

[@spectria.limina]

Great video, but I was *not* expecting a sudden burst of a beautiful singing voice in the middle! You should sing more!

[@kitokamadarame6174]

As you showed we have pitch accents in many other languages too. For example: try to say instead of aMErica, ameRIca. But I think in Japanese it's so much in focus because there are many words that are written the same (at least in hiragana) but mean totally different things. To me it's also pretty hard to get it right. Some words you just say right on first try but then there are many where I'm not sure where the accent actually is.

[@Aethid]

English uses stress accenting in much the same way as Japanese uses pitch accent. Stress includes quite a few things, with pitch being one. Stress also modifies volume and timing, which is not present in Japanese pitch accenting. English often uses stress accent to differentiate between verbs and nouns which would otherwise have the same pronunciation, for example “compound”, as COMpound or comPOUND.

[@fatimahmakgatho8968]

That self promotion was slick 😂

[@blaketfg9374]

Love the video, it honestly isn't too different from certain languages. Even in English when you speak you put an emphasis on certain vowels though 99% of native English speakers don't consciously analyze emphasis. We call it word stress where you put "Stress" on a syllable/vowel in a word, sometimes 2. It can be very similar to pitch pattern. When Japanese is written in English letters you can see it follows the same stress patterns in English. Sensha. In English we would either stress the E or the A and when we hear you say Sensha you would either stress the E or A to make either SEN higher or SHA higher. Very similar to English but you seem to stress full syllables where in English it's generally just vowels but it seems very similar to me. Edit: Should mention an English word with 2 stresses the second stress wouldn't be as much as the first. Like the example you gave in a low high low where the second low isn't as low as the first low. In English it's exactly the same but we call it less stressed. So it would be no stress, stressed, less stressed pattern instead of low high low.

[@AubreyKerria]

On 眠い, Yuta actually points with his lips and tilts his head backwards when the pitch increase-- which is an incredibly natural way of consciously controlling pitch! However, this legendarily bad poker face on a "test yourself" section is... I laughed pretty hard. Good video though!

[@ArveEriksson]

Pitch patterns, overstated complexity? I'd actually agree with that. My language doesn't mention pitch accents/patterns at all in school (at least not for native swedes), but it is a HUGE element of our dialects. Emphases also play a big role, but the situation is more like pitch patterns forming in response to where the emphases land. Maybe it would help to first teach how to say different words with the same syllables, and only afterwards point out that the pitch pattern makes the difference? Hard to say now, having heard about the concept already, but I think I for one would've felt more confident that way. (Edit: My point being that I, and presumably many other learners, are actually already using pitch patterns in ordinary conversation, only without thinking. And along comes Japanese and demands that we think about when to breathe, eh?)

[@SherrifOfNottingham]

Every time I hear people talk about how people speak different dialects in different parts of Japan so "which dialect do I learn?" Well, people speak different dialects of english here in America, most of the language we speak is very similar making "dialectic" language usually words and phrases on top of the "standard english" we all know. We mostly don't even write (or type out) dialectic language with minor exceptions. The fact is knowing the standard language will usually prepare you for the different dialects relatively well. As for pitch accent, "uh oh" and "un huh" are not "words" but grunts that imply meaning entirely with the "pitch accent" (which is why they're PERFECT for teaching how we do this). The core issue with moving from english to Japanese with regards to pitch accent is that we actually use pitch accent in english to denote a "feeling" of a word. We can use pitch accent to denote sarcasm, a question or even whether we feel positive or negative about what we're saying using pitch accent since beyond the "huh" examples we used there's not really many words in english that require pitch accent to differentiate it from another, so having the difference between bridge and chop sticks be pitch variations is not really a thing. Doesn't mean we don't have words that spell and pronounce the same and mean something different, they're called Homonyms (Homophones specifically) The first example of a homophone in english that has a slight difference in pronunciation is "Know" and "No" but it's not really agreed upon, but it's an example of "pitch accent" in english in a sense, "Know" kind of slides from low-high while "No" slides down to "low" and stays there. But the reality is the more important part is actually length, "Know" should be held out longer, where as "No" usually has finality and sharpness to it, so even if you get the pitch wrong the length should give it away. This, again, leads more into the fact that english pitch accent has more to do with feeling and additional context rather than specifying which word of a homophone you're using.

[@itsaUSBline]

For the record, I'm a native English speaker, and I pronounce "no" and "know" exactly the same way. I always learned to pronounce homophones as identically as possible, because they have the same pronunciation. Context dictates which one it is.

[@user-jh6uq6ns4v]

Are there maybe some patterns how accent is related to meaning? Say, for 戦車 and 洗車, does it matter that the first consists of [attribute+object] (where the main component is the 2nd one) and the second of [action+object] (where the main component is the 1st one)?

[@Webberjo]

3:54 Yuta, please, I'm at work!

[@Charles15101980]

Arigatou Gozaimasu, Yuta, for teaching the Japneses pitch accent, which is a highly important phonetic element and, unfortunately, not often taught in Japanese courses

[@_douglasfranco]

The plug was awesome

[@varencilator]

Hi, Yuta. I wanna let you know that you got referenced in a video by Bonsai Pop, called The Rurouni Kenshin Controversy (showing your thoughts on Logan Paul's visit to Japan, around 23:30). I'd love to hear your thoughts on the complicated subject matter of that video with your lived understanding of Japanese culture!

[@name3583]

If you want to learn Japanese language: you have to learn hiragana, katakana, kanji, and then pitch accent, ....

[@xcess7]

hiragana, katakana, terra cotta, kanji, pitch accent, and the many forms of "sorry" bowing

[@tohaason]

No, you don't learn pitch accent as a separate thing. It's not like learning hiragana. Pitch accent is simply a part of what a word is, when you learn how to pronounce a word then pitch accent is simply part of the pronunciation. Or rather, words in sentences. You can't learn vocabulary first, and pitch accent later.

[@k0kiichi]

Whenever I pronounce らりるれろ, I always end up rolling it. I think it’s when I start speaking Japanese, because I can say my R’s just fine until I start speaking it. But I think other than that, I can understand some pitch accents with some words and could pronounce things and can get the pitch patterns right with some words and phrases.

[@SlaserX]

Studying Japanese in college, not one professor talked about this. I had to learn about it from an Owarai show that was comparing Kyoto and Tokyo comedians

[@usersonyasikeeeee]

In russian we also have somewhat of a pitch accent, we divide a word into syllabels and emphasize one or two syllabels in longer words, pitch accent in russian also can change the meaning of the word and we actually learn the right pitch accents of sertain words at school...

[@bookwitch6791]

No, we don't. We have another one - we stress a separate vowel in a word. Pitch accent is about rising and lowering the voice tone for a certain mora, not about stressing a vowel. The mechanism is different.

[@yudaisensei2020]

I totally agree with Yuta. A lot of Japanese learners complicate pitch accent like some kinda extremely difficult concept that you could not possible acquire, but it's actually very simple. It's mostly low-high or high-low. And some low-high words go down in pitch at some point while some don't. That's about it..

[@michaeljuliano8839]

I’ve never consciously worked on pitch accent, but I think I’m pretty good at it (not perfect) because I got past the fear that comes when you try to accurately imitate native speakers when I was learning German. I also have pretty good relative pitch from being a musician, and I highly value the rhythm and melody of language. I don’t mind getting smirks if I say something wrong, either, so I think I’ll be fine. Thanks for breaking that down for us.

[@name3583]

The only pitch accent I remember from Yuta: "I will teach you the kind of Japanese the real life Japanese people actually speak today."

[@dougthemoleman]

Changing the pitch pattern of uh-huh changes the nuance in its meaning. If it dips and goes back up, it's like "I agree, and I'm also curious where you're going with this, please continue". After the person continues / elaborates, you might reply again with a high-to-low "Uh-huh". Or if you're surprised by the conclusion, it might be a low-high-low "Uh-HUuuhhhh". If it's a quick low-to-high "uh-huh", it might read like a quick question, like "Yeah, what's up?". If you happily agree with something you might do a high-mid-low "Uhhh-huhh", like an "amen" or "yes ma'am". A lot of European languages have something similar to this, and we just think of it as adding intonation to any word to inflect its meaning with a bit of nuance, or to ask / answer with it.

[@SpammytheHedgehog]

Even Makima wants that Pochito plush.

[@xcyan_lilyx5788]

I like to use apps to learn vocabulary and kanji and then use anime and videos like yours for pitch and pronunciation

[@AbsalonWhiteJr.]

3:55 broke my brain, I thought something was wrong with the video 💀

[@liamd303]

Hi Yuta. Do you think that short videos such as interviews on tiktok can also help if you repeat them in similar ways?

[@bryant_yt827]

Hi Yuta, can i just mimic a sentence or word when trying to learn pitch accent? or should i mimic and analyze the sentence?

[@AubreyKerria]

Re: Uh-huh pitch pattern: when I say it, it actually goes high low, because, to me, low high sounds like a question-- it sounds like the person isn't sure whether the answer is yes. So, I think it's probably something that changes between regions.

[@eminemrules121]

In theory I understand pitch accent but when it comes to actually practicing it I find it hard to. When I think of pitch, I think of different notes in music, is that truly what it is? Or is it just the locations of a word where you emphasize? Similarly to what @okRegan said in their comment about Spanish

[@ThatJapaneseManYuta]

> When I think of pitch, I think of different notes in music Yes, it's a "melody".

[@eminemrules121]

Thank you so much!

[@JesusiSKing250]

3:51 you got me 🤣

[@alute5532]

Yuta san honto no domou arigatou Sit if you don't mind answering this question Did translated word for Japan mean two books (is there a context to further research?)

[@strawhatrore2072]

I learnt Japanese by living there for 5 years. I honestly have no idea if my pitch accent comes out right in conversation haha. But I have a feeling I have not learnt it. And the reason is my learning brain does not mark the information as important for memory. Because I can understand if people are talking about candy or rain based on the context, I don't recognise the pitch difference as important for meaning. And it's possible this prevented my pitch accent from developing...

[@jamesvasconcelos6174]

What do you think of shadowing? Listening to an audiobook and constantly repeating what is being said. Does this help with pitch accent?

[@dougthemoleman]

Part of the reason people make mistakes is probably that the "flat" high pitches differ from each other within the same word. When there's two high "flat" tones after a low tone, the first high tone will be a little bit higher than the second high tone, if you really listen. Edit: hahaaa, feels vindicating to hear you confirm it, it's simplified!

[@nizaru100]

戦車 and 洗車 examples made me feel I was learning Chinese not Japanese ! Who does use JWPce (Japanese Word processor) ? as a Computer Japanese Editing tool ! But it has no Furigana !🙂 でも、私　について゛みんなの日本語゛っては,いい本ですよね !

[@person1860]

Google translate is also good for learning pitch accents believe it or not.

[@sw0rdz]

Learning Japanese is tough, but doable. I just hope I'm not the only person that finds it difficult to learn (especially as a 2nd language). However, reading signs, credits, etc in Anime gives a strong feeling of sensation.

[@metas2945]

My soul left my body when you did this 3:55

[@yoku651]

Hello, Yuta. I actually live in Tochigi, which apparently has *no pitch accent*? Can you elaborate? I'd appreciate it!

[@shadowllght]

Sometimes people mention my pitch accent. You get some weird shenannigans going on if you're a hafu living abroad that only speaks Osaka-ben at home hahaha

[@danielantony1882]

Osaka peeps usually intentionally use Kansai pitch accent.

[@ragdoll86]

After coming back to Japanese after several years and having studied Mandarin in the meantime, I was so excited not to deal with tones and only then I found out about this pitch thing when the teacher in my course talked about it. I wasn’t exactly overjoyed 😂

[@user-lj1pr1jn4g]

about pitch pattern, tokyo's and osaka's are so different !

[@JannPoo]

Aqua: "No one can imitate Ai, it's something you're born wi..." 8:57 Aqua: .......

[@DeusaRem]

Thank you SOOO much for not used "hashi". 😂

[@plebisMaximus]

I don't really struggle with this. Maybe it's because I'm a native Danish speaker and I'm already used to considering emphasis in my pronunciation, even if the idea of "stød" is very different from pitch accent.

[@immersivesinner3350]

My question has always been, wondering about pitch accent, is there a rule to follow or is it all just wrote memorizatíon? If I read a sentence in my studies with words I've never heard spoken before, how do I know to accent it properly? Is that possible with only reading? The analytical part of this is pretty strong in my head because I studied music and have a music degree.

[@brutallicabg]

I believe there are rules depending on the type of the word (e.g. verb, adjective, etc.) and the number of syllables, but I'm not really familiar with the details. I know for certain that some dictionaries have markings (from 0 to 6) that indicate the pitch patterns.

[@silevol]

There are some rules of thumb and different word categories have different possible accents, so you can often have a good guess or at least a 50/50 probability to pronounce it correctly, but you still kinda need to check every word by itself.

[@theonh9365]

It seems like on Chinese Japanese dictionary, it’s written where the highs and lows are. Even with that, sometimes a word, a place like narita ta is low but if you put school/ hospital after, narita school, Ta becomes like flat or higher, i believe, because it’s hard to bring it up. Non of Japanese learn that at school, so Japanese can’t explain it well, probably Chinese people who learnt Japanese know a lot better because they pay attention to those.

[@silevol]

@@theonh9365compound words change their pronunciation, as there can only be one accent per word. The accent occurs most of the time in the middle of the words. Mostly at the first syllable of the last word in the compound. If it's just one kanji that's added as a suffix, the accent is often before the suffix. Sometimes compounds also have no accent at all, this is probably when they are often used as a word on their own and some suffixes also make a word accent less.

[@skelassassin]

i just wanna know if i can use 戦車洗車に　to say "im washing a tank", as pitch pattern practice and have a tongue twister

[@MuzikJunky]

We never learned pitch accent. The pitches came naturally depending on the context of what we were saying, but this is really interesting! I guess the English equivalent are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, such as “present” and “present.” Peace.

[@afizi1213]

but the best fact when japanese colony the southeast asia like my country malaysia they dont use japanese word like hiragana they use romanji so its like easy to learn for who know abc

[@DaWorldGuardian001]

Lithuanian uses pitch to differenciate words [even tho it still uses stress], so it's not too hard to learn for me. Pretty sure Norwegian and Swedish have the same thing too.

[@ilithiophobicimbecile5789]

The bakemonogatari reference actually made me laugh out loud Anyway, now I gotta learn how to say it just to flex

[@NamikMamedov]

I am just using heiban

[@Trynottoblink]

This is basically my strategy. If I can I’ll look it up, but if I don’t know I’ll guess heiban because most words are heiban anyway

[@bluemario8361]

what parts of the video were messed up that it had to be reuploaded a few times?

[@AceFuzzLord]

7:25 In that instance, I would assume you are French for no other reason than that's the first thing that popped into my mind.

[@Pallid3]

6:53 there is vizulized low-low-high, but it sounds to me like high-high-low, when you are saying it (I'm basically trying to sing it along as melody). I'm little confused >.

[@silevol]

He made a mistake in the image. It's low-high-high. As for why you hear it as high-high-low: the pitch drops a bit at the end of an utterance, and the first raise in pitch is only minimal. When I started learning I also confused these two patterns a lot when words were on their own. If said in a sentence it's easier to hear the difference. You can use the website kotu to practice listening to minimal pairs like this. If the pattern would be low-high-low though, you would hear a way bigger drop in pitch at the end.

[@dizzydaisy909]

the high-low "uh-huh" says to me that you're concerned that you're being asked about this; it's still basically "yes", like regular "uh-huh", but there's a hint of fear.

[@mayanightstar]

I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I am actually pretty motivated to speak with accurate pitch accent as much as I can xD

[@EdwardLindon]

Useful video. Thanks. As an aside, i find the breathy, hyper-emotional style of some anime very difficult to deal with. I just can't hear the words for all the emoting, so that's not an avenue i can try.

[@bluebird_979]

Check out the liva action drama Brush up life. It has the most natural sounding conversations ive heard in any drama or anime. Very good listening practice. Also a great show.

[@johnkrama445]

3:34 "I" should be lower than "SU", right?

[@jamiestevens2003]

i wanna move to japan, and in school i learn standard japanese so… gonna be going somewhere in kanto~

[@ayo__ayo]

Do Japanese dictionaries have a section with pitch patterns for each word, similar to English dictionaries that have a section for pronunciation?

[@seenonyt2210]

Some do, but not all.

[@ayo__ayo]

@@seenonyt2210 do you know of a dictionary that does have it?

[@seenonyt2210]

@@ayo__ayo there's an online one at takoboto jp. The pitch pattern is under 'see more' in an entry. And thanks for asking! Thanks to your question I found that site.

[@nicbentulan]

2nd : why did chainsaw man replace madoka?