Japanese Pronunciation Mini-lecture

[@Dogen]

Hope this video clarified a few points! Pitch-accent and pronunciation lessons at www.patreon.com/dogen

[@kaltaron1284]

Can we get a picture of the AI that generates your Japanese voice samples? ;-)

[@kamitoki]

maybe do a book (in English) on that?

[@sazukegu]

although i'm pretty certain that this will be an actual lecture, im always afraid that dogen will rick roll me

[@averynewtown2782]

Dont put that evil out there lol.

[@ch4.hayabusa]

someone should make three translations of rickroll. one that is rhythmically similar, one that is accurate to the meaning and one that is balanced.

[@Archedgar]

Or nihongo jouzu but that would be a gohobi.

[@prezentoappr1171]

@@ch4.hayabusa ateji , gikun\jukujikun and phono semantic matchings?

[@zeymort3926]

"I'll see you guys again soon. Sayonara." 🤔

[@Saztrah]

As for Japanese people not understanding you: they may just not be as familiar hearing their language sound so different. Many of my colleagues are Turkish, and when I first met them, I had difficulty understanding sometimes. But eventually my brain learned to "eliminate" the accent from their English, and its completely unnoticeable to me now. We learn to subtract accents over time, and we're very used to English being filtered through a huge number of accents. This isn't as common in some places with some languages.

[@archivewiddershins2923]

Wow this is really illuminating and makes a lot of sense in hindsight. Thanks!

[@Saztrah]

@@archivewiddershins2923 It's so interesting to realize, isn't it? From a young age, we acquire spanish, french, german, chinese, italian, etc accent filters, and we don't notice it. The moment you recognize someone's accent, your brain has already partially filtered it out, and your brain has to learn to adapt to every one of those accents on an individual basis. And you notice immediately when you encounter an unfamiliar accent you don't know---just like someone unfamiliar with English-accented Japanese!

[@kaltaron1284]

A similar thing occurs with people from former English colonies like India. They do speak English and they are very fluent but the accent and idiosyncrasies are kinda thick.

[@yui1374]

日本人ですが、Dogenさんのご指摘には気づかされることが沢山あります。 確かにゆっくり話すとき「開ける」はピッチが上がりますね。無意識で考えたこともなかったです。 動画作成ありがとうございます😊

[@BuIlDaLiBlE]

言語って本当に不思議だよね？

[@azubruh8787]

@@BuIlDaLiBlE それな

[@tohaason]

Yes.. and that's why I have a problem with the course of a certain youtuber, the course is *great* (listening to simple conversations), but for some reason they decided to have the voice actors speak s_l_o_w_l_y, and even though they're native speakers they get the pitch accent wrong, automatically! I listen to everything at speed 1.5 or 2.0 (it's *harder* to listen to slow speech than normal speech, for me), but the pitch accent is of course wrong for a lot of words. Fortunately my wife (Japanese) helps me out with this. I just wish they would speak at normal speeds for these recordings.

[@mourningireland4560]

Re: the question about not being understood by native speakers, beginners often try to directly translate from English (adjusting for grammar patterns), which often doesn't work as the forms of expression are so different, and you end up saying something in a way a native speaker would simply never say.

[@Dogen]

Also very true!

[@OmarLivesUnderSpace]

Which doesn't necessarily mean they can't understand that

[@MOPhead2022]

i tend to have the same problem when translating from English into my native language - I'm less confident in it due to lack of experience, so I end up clinging to the original grammar and word connotations so sringently that the end result, although technically grammatical, is tortured and awkward to read

[@ym7977]

I’m Japanese, and this video made me realize that I’ve been always saying the word “kutsu” incorrectly haha. I always tend to pronounce “ku” with a high pitch, and after watching this vid I googled and found out that this was an accent from the region I grew up 😂

[@bobbyslickton4742]

so it’s not incorrect, it’s a regional dialect

[@Kifflom314]

自分は標準語話しますが、関西出身の祖父が過去にそういう発音してた覚えがあります！。

[@johnkrama445]

日本人成日讀錯啲音㗎，高低長短成日錯，尤其個撥音，離晒譜！

[@cumonodalio3938]

@@bobbyslickton4742 it is incorrect in standard Japanese or hyoujungo

[@bobbyslickton4742]

@@cumonodalio3938 Depends how you look at it, I suppose it is

[@jacoboblanco1555]

Regarding the question "Why can't Japanese people understand me?", I think it also has to do with the fact that there are simply not that many non-native Japanese speakers out there, so the average Japanese "ear" is not used to hearing non-native Japanese. Compare this to English where now there are more non-native speakers than native ones and in some places it's more common to hear a mishmash of English in different non-native accents and with non-native mistakes, than to haer correct native English. I suspect that this leads to native English speakers that are more used to unexpected or incorrect accents and common mistakes that non-Native English speakers make, and can thus "auto-correct" on the fly. For example, while travelling for a wedding in Shizuoka, my girlfriend incorrectly said Sakuradai (a station near my house) instead of Sakudaira (a well known place we wanted to get to) when talking to the station staff. I guess the staff member couldn't parse what she was trying to say since for a Japanese person this kind of mistake is very unexpected, but for a person coming from English and learning Japanese it's totally plausible mistake and your brain would automatically think "Maybe they switched the syllables and they meant Sakudaira".

[@Lithoxene]

I can say, undoubtedly, having musical experience has been a huge help for me in gaining awareness of tones and pitch-accent.

[@alexjustalexyt1144]

Oh definitely, especially when you try to get what every musician wants, perfect pitch but only get so far as to get to decent relative pitch.

[@Val.Kyrie.]

Yes! I thought I was crazy because I was hearing pitches and tones, like changing notes, but we’re always told Japanese is flat and monotone and everything is said the same. Found Dogen trying to find out what’s happening lol.

[@tohaason]

Hm.. maybe. I don't feel that pitch accent is difficult, and I *am* a (hobby) musician. If there's a real connection is impossible to tell. EditAdd: It occurred to me it may as well be because I'm *not* a native English speaker. I didn't fall into the "ko-NICHI-wa" trap the first day I started Japanese :-) (Of course, everything adds up.. if one thing easy, something else is difficult.. I still don't have fluency in Japanese and my memory is terrible for recalling vocabulary)

[@mr.person555]

Another reason people may be confused with a word like 靴 is that the de-voicing makes the pitch itself harder for an untrained ear to hear and your brain may fill it in with the wrong pattern. I also think, with your example of "tomorrow" being stressed wrong but still understood, there are no other similar words to "tomorrow" to get it mixed up with, so it takes less time for a native speaker to understand it even though it might be stressed wrong. My go to example in English is actually the heteronym "content" - stressing it like "CONtent" would mean things like information, what things contain, etc. while "conTENT" is a state of feeling satisfied. If someone said "I make contTENT for KZbin", as a native speaker it would take a lot more time for me to understand what was meant because the result is a grammatically correct sentence, but it doesn't quite make sense and I would need to think a little longer to go "oh, they meant to say CONtent". With an example like stressing tomorrow as "TOmorrow", it feels weird, but I also don't get mixed up with another word that is spelled the same with a completely different meaning and stress accent. Japanese is a language with tons of words that, spelled out on paper are homophones, but in speech do have different pitch accents. Things like the popular examples of 帰る・カエル (go home/frog), 雨・飴(rain/candy),　橋・箸(bridge/chopsticks) make for funny example sentences, but may be different enough in real speech to where it would be difficult to be really misunderstood, though they still may make a native speaker need to pause for a second to think. However, there are countless examples of other similar in Japanese words where each "homophone" could make sense in the given sentence and cause more confusion if the wrong pitch accent pattern in speech. I think using heteronyms like "content" where the pronunciation difference is rooted in the stress accent are good English parallels to help emphasize the importance of pitch accent and demonstrate where it may lead to confusion. Sorry for the wall of text!

[@Val.Kyrie.]

Raining candy would be pretty awesome, not gonna lie 😂

[@8__vv__8]

Your example helped me understand, thank you! Also, as long as a wall of text isn’t big enough to divide the city of Berlin into Allied and Soviet sectors, you’re probably fine.

[@ahtikatiska]

You just casually blowing my mind with 'the way t is pronounced in fast pronunciation of little is actually the same as japanese r', is exactly why you are a treasure.

[@ikiyou_]

butter

[@Demian_Garcia]

Depending on where you're from the t in water will sound like a fully realized t, a japanese r, or just won't make any sound. What an interesting language english is

[@omp199]

@@Demian_Garcia I've never heard of a way of pronouncing "t" in "water" that doesn't make any sound. Are you perhaps thinking of the glottal stop? You didn't mention the glottal stop, but some British people have a glottal stop in the middle of "butter". The glottal stop is a consonant sound made by stopping the flow of air in the throat. Specifically, by closing the glottis, which is the space between the vocal cords.

[@Demian_Garcia]

@@omp199 Yeah, I thought about adding a clarification about the "not making a sound" thing being a glottal stop, but I thought it would be understandable either way. Anyway, bo'o o' wo'ah is still one of my favorite things to say to mock the bri'ish (soy español, se lo tienen más que merecido)/s

[@Finn31088]

Yeah, I think so too, but sometimes when Japanese people say the "r" sound slowly or the "r" comes at the beginning of the word, they just end up saying the "l" sound in English.

[@yankokremenarov1113]

I was one of those students who thought Japanese pronunciation is relatively easy and I should be able to pick it up without too much trouble. You really make me realize how immense and interesting is the world of Japanese pronunciation. You are also extremely talented at teaching as I already said before. So I'm 100% confident that your product is worth it. Especially as you are saying that you're proud of it, given that you look so self-aware and grounded, I am sure it's more than worth it. Thank you so much for this clarifying video. It's just as precious as the last one.

[@Dogen]

My pleasure Yanko, and thank you for the kind words!

[@TheWiseRabbit]

OMG this is crazy! It's like a magic trick. The first time I paid attention and heard KUtsuga and after your explanation I clearly heard kuTSUga. I think I know why. It's the shortness of the vowel. In Spanish (my native lang.) if a vowel is accented it *feels* longer (probably pronounced longer as well) so when hearing it short in Japanese it throws the accent sense off.

[@Dogen]

That can definitely throw things off! Glad to hear that you were able to hear it after listening to the break down!

[@GoldenMusashi]

This is definitely something I noticed falling for.

[@Trainfan1055Janathan]

From an English speaker's perspective, I've noticed that if someone has a thick accent, I can understand them better when they talk slower. It might help that guy to speak slower.

[@phartuchek]

NAtsu is the Kansai version of naTSU. And the fact that it still conveys the meaning without any problems makes many students think that accents in Japanese are negligible. Although when Kansai people talk fast to me, I have problems understanding them in the first couple minutes, not because of Kansai-ben specific words and grammar, but because it takes some time to get used to the different intonation created by the different accents. So I guess one should preferably learn the accents of the place he's gonna live in, will make life much easier.

[@Aatagawa25]

Omg this was so helpful. I feel like I'm starting to pick up on the pitch accent when listening to native speakers and can tell when someone non-native is speaking but it has been hard to translate what I'm hearing into practical knowledge that I can use to help intentionally work on my own accent and way of saying things. Your explanations on pitch accent are really helpful and really got me over trying to stress with volume like in American English, and both videos on the tsu accent and this one finally put some language to this difficult thing I was trying to understand.

[@Dogen]

Very glad to hear you found it so helpful!

[@maximadigital]

Dogen is the MVP. It also sometimes really pays off to not be a native English speaker when it comes to these things.

[@JoeHardacre]

I hadn't realised the American 'tt' and British 'tt' were so different until you broke it down. Long live the glottal stop.

[@GoldenSuperKamichu]

I found myself using and recognizing some types of pitch accents naturally, by speed and Kansai dialect or Tokyo accent.

[@TheeKaroolyne]

This has opened my eyes and my ears to a new level of understanding

[@michelleyamamoto5519]

This is very helpful, I had never heard this explanation of why some Japanese people I encountered seemed completely puzzled by me and would get someone else to converse with me at times, even though I believed I had said everything correctly. Exact pronunciation and pitch go a long way here.

[@goldthunderx]

Thank you for clearing things up! Especially on the つ rule. This is incredibly useful!

[@theeggman85]

The topic of "Why don't Japanese people understand me?" is such a fascinating topic that would make a fantastic future video. It's something I've thought about as well, and there are so many factors in addition to what you mentioned here (pronunciation / pitch accent mistakes). Things like word choice, the context of the conversation, the listener's familiarity with your type of Japanese accent, and more all contribute to this "chain of unknowns" that result in the listener not feeling confident that they understood you. For instance, you mentioned 夏 in this video - if you pronounced it with the accent first (like NAtsu), people could get the impression you are talking about ナッツ (nuts) based on the context. And then add in the fact that so many words share the exact same kana and pitch accent with each other - I have had well over one occasion where someone thought I was talking about word A, when I wanted to convey word B.

[@holliswilliams8426]

This thing of hearing things differently happens in Spanish as well, so English speakers often typically think that the second o is different to the first o in the word ''ojo'', even though vowels in Spanish are always the same regardless of where they occur. I also had that problem of people not understanding me and wondering why, as you say this is often because every word in the sentence is slightly off so the whole ends up being increasingly difficult to understand (many small micro-mistakes when you speak can add up to a very strong ''macroscopic'' accent when you speak continuously). Like if you listen to an Indian person with an Indian accent, listen carefully to what they say and almost every single phoneme they make is very slightly off, which adds up to an overall Indian accent, like when they say the number ''ten'', listen carefully and they say each letter in the word slightly wrong, like ''tuehhn''.

[@juanki8350]

I understood your Indian example, but I didn’t understand what you meant by the Spanish “ojo” example, If its ok, can you explain it to me? (I’m a native Spanish speaker, so I don’t know if that had to do with me not understanding).

[@jamesfrankiewicz5768]

@@juanki8350 As an native English speaker, with mild exposure to Spanish (i.e. I know the 'j' in Spanish is pronounced like an 'h' in English), if I had never heard the Spanish word "ojo" before and only seen it in a book, I might be inclined to pronounce it like the Japanese insult "aho".

[@juanki8350]

@@jamesfrankiewicz5768 ahh now I get it, thank you for the explanation.

[@termina2737]

@@juanki8350 I was gonna say it’s probably because of English speakers’ tendency to add diphthongs when they shouldn’t be. So instead of “ojo” it’s o-jou. Or even worse, ou-jou. 😅

[@tibowmew]

@@termina2737 Definitely not only English speakers that do this, as my Korean students can attest to, but a very good point. That was my guess too.

[@poweredByMyMom]

I am not going to take the Patreon lessons because I am Japanese, but I don't think there's anything better than it as far as I know because Japanese people including almost all teachers DO NOT KNOW anything about pitch accent. It is too natural for us even to recognize there's such thing. I didn't even know this can be an issue before watching his videos. I am gong to teach Japanese to my friend, so I might end up taking the course how to teach it lol. Highly recommended.

[@LastProtagonist]

Hey Dogen, don't be afraid or ashamed to plug your program. I understand the hesitation, but as you pointed out in your video, resources for this kind of topic for non-academics are quite scarce, and it's invaluable source of information for learners. I have a degree in Japanese, and pitch accent wasn't even brought up at all when I was in school, so I had to just kind of passively pick things up, and there's a huge difference in having a "feel" for things vs. understanding them in-depth. I think your channel has been a godsend in articulating some of the challenges in learning Japanese (and English!) and this level of quality does come at a cost. It's difficult managing time and energy to create content, and the quality of info in your products is arguably better than a textbook's, so it's completely understandable that you should be compensated for your work. I think as we move into the future and academia becomes more decentralized and moved further into the realm of content creation, it'll become more common that people will be able to purchase academic resources directly from individuals rather than big name publishers. Keep up the great work! お疲れ様です

[@spiderwebb222]

About the kutsu example, I believe there's an element of the fact that the ku sound is naturally more "explosive" than the tsu sound, which can make it sound like it's being accented, even when it's actually not. In particular when the ku is devoiced, weirdly. On the issue of being understood by Japanese natives, we also have to bear in mind that especially when using mainly textbook-learnt Japanese, the way of phrasing/sentence structures etc may sound unnatural, especially if you're essentially still thinking in your native language and then translating it in your head (I'm definitely still at that stage 90% of the time). So that's another potential barrier to being understood well.

[@chickennugget6684]

well i'm glad it's not just me who thinks like that i've been trying to turn off my English when reading Japanese and it feels weird but i still like understand, it's weird either way i don't even know if that's a thing i should do, i'm particularly curious what it is like being fluent in two languages because then i'll understand the way my thinking should be. as a sidenote the R sound is annoying, because i have no idea what i should be saying it like, and either way after some sounds like し it turns into an L for me.

[@spiderwebb222]

@@chickennugget6684 Once I'm comfortable with a certain topic/sentence structure I generally find I can more or less think about it in Japanese and don't have to translate it. But it's pretty much impossible for me to do that with general conversation at the moment, just too early I guess. About the R sound, imo it's much closer to an L sound than R, just a little harder, almost to the point that it becomes a light D sound. Also, and this is the thing that blew my mind, you actually have to move your tongue forward as you release it, to produce the sound correctly. In English I guess we do it slightly with a 'la' type sound but it really felt unusual to me the first time I realised and tried it out.

[@silvanvanderhorst7366]

eventhough it was not the main point of your argument, the fact that you mentioned that in regular english speech, the "ttle/ddl" in the word "Little" is technically pronounced the same as the Japanese r, was surprisingly helpful

[@清水なつめ-z9k]

私は静岡育ちですが靴を「く↑つ↓」と発音しがちです。日本でも東京から西へ行くほど頭高アクセントになりやすいと聞いたことがあります。

[@blackrosenuk]

You are SO GOOD at teaching pitch accent. So helpful. Thank you.

[@lastnamefirstname8655]

thanks for the japanese pronunciation mini-lecture, dogen.

[@rikvdmark]

Having lived in Japan definitely skewed my hearing i a positive way. I definitely don’t have this issue. This is of course no weird in my opinion because I lived a worked with Japanese people for almost a year. I’ve always had a strong habit of listening to native speakers and copying them instead of throwing my own interpretation in the mix. This is very helpful when a pronunciation does not match the way you pronounce words in your native language.

[@Nintendan95]

at 4:00 I said it out loud to see what my brain does, and YEP you got me, I only upped the も This stuff is so crazy interesting, thank you once again for these incredible videos.

[@Dogen]

My pleasure Nintendan! Great name by the way!

[@otheusma]

I've been watching the entire playlist feeling so lost, but after this video i feel that it 'clicked'. Thank you so much for this content, Dogen!

[@ykknc]

8:12 Yes as a native speaker, one time I couldn’t understand someone saying すもう (sumō) because she said “somo”, with wrong pitch accent (accent in the first mora instead of going up at the second one), wrong vowel (so instead of su) and wrong vowel length (mo instead of mō). To be fair she wasn’t studying Japanese, but I’m sure if it was just one mistake that she made, I would have been able to understand what she meant easily. This kinda stuff happens quite often when I talk to someone who knows Japanese words but never studied the language. One time a guy said something about 厨二病 (chūnibyō) and I was sure he was speaking some advanced English that I didn’t know.

[@Bobbias]

Interesting, I would have thought 厨二病 would be easy to recognize. Though I guess since it has 2 long vowels, if the speaker got the vowel length wrong, that might also make it harder to understand right away. And as a native English speaker, I love that word. We just don't have an equivalent.

[@ykknc]

@@Bobbias Yes he had both pitch and vowel length wrong and that made it very hard for me to recognize the word. It’s understandable though as he’d never studied Japanese language and most likely did not have the idea of pitch accent or vowel length. Also, he said it at the very beginning of the conversation (I think he was asking a question about it) which didn’t give me any context, and it didn’t help either. I agree that 厨二病 is a funny unique word (with a little bitterness of memories of young and stupid days), and I’m astonished a lot of Japanese learners know such a cultural word.

[@tohaason]

It's embarrassingly easy not to understand what people are saying. The other day a Japanese woman I know asked me a simple 3 or 4 word question, in my native language, and I didn't get it - my wife had to intervene and repeat the question for me. The only mistake was that the young woman used the Japanese questioning intonation, with high pitch at the end of the sentence, and that simple thing threw me off because we don't use that intonation for questions in my native language and dialect. It shouldn't be a problem, but it was. And I even *knew* about that thing in advance, my wife used that same intonation pattern in the past and people often didn't understand her, so I told her about it and she fixed it. And still I ran into the same problem when the young lady spoke.

[@ykknc]

@@tohaason Was it just wrong intonation or did she make other pronunciation mistakes as well? For me it gets really difficult to understand what people are saying when they make multiple mistakes at the same time (wrong pitch, wrong vowel and wrong length, in the case of my first comment), but if it’s just one mistake it’s quite easy to guess what they are trying to say. Interested to know if it was a combination of different pronunciation mistakes in your case too?

[@tohaason]

@@ykknc Only intonation - the sentence (question) ended in a pitch I didn't expect, which made me lose the last word of the sentence. It sounds so strange that this should be a problem, but I observed exactly the same back when some people missed what my wife asked (before I taught her how to fix the intonation).

[@obeastness]

I love these educational videos but damn if they don't make me feel like the most american sounding japanese speaker on the planet lol.

[@Dogen]

Haha we all make mistakes sometimes!

[@Snow-Willow]

I know I make many of my own mistakes but when I got the くつが example correct I felt so reassured. I'm an English speaker so I don't have a background in pitch accent at all, but I do have a natural bent for music so I pretty quickly equated pitch accents to musical tones and have had feel like I have had an easier time with them (hearing and repicating) since then.

[@Archedgar]

0:43 Oh yeah. In Spanish , something like that would be called a "grave word" (palabra grave) which is similar. Phew. I'm glad my native language is Spanish because it makes understanding JP pronunciation a million times easier. Thanks for the lecture, Dogen-sensei-san.

[@kareepan3382]

Only problem with that is that Spanish isn't a pitch accent language like Japanese, but a stress accent language like English, wherein the stressed syllable is said more loudly than the unstressed syllable. In Japanese however, a mora (syllable) is either low or high in pitch, so nothing to do with volume.

[@Archedgar]

@@kareepan3382 I don't remember saying anything about volume so I'm not sure what you're on about. Also, everything you said is wrong but even if that weren't the case, it is irrefutably true that being able to speak Spanish helps tremendously when it comes to Japanese. Feel free to pretend otherwise if you like.

[@ShiroDan3]

@@kareepan3382 I feel like you're mixing a lot of different concepts here. If you compare English and Spanish, it is clear that in Spanish the difference in vowel quality between the stressed and unstressed syllables is not a lot. On top of that Spanish doesn't have truly weak sounds such as the /ə/ which is extremely common in English. Also, Spanish is a syllable timed language, unlike stress timed languages like English, so comparing the two is kinda.... well, you get the picture. TL;DR: It is easier for Spanish speakers hear and mimic Japanese.

[@kareepan3382]

@@Archedgar I never argued that being a Spanish speaker doesn't make Japanese easier to pronounce, it certainly does, since the vowels systems of Japanese and Spanish are almost identical, barring the unrounded u in Japanese. I still think that it doesn't particularly help much when acquiring pitch accent.

[@kareepan3382]

@@ShiroDan3 Yeah you're right, that was a slight fuck up on my part lol

[@ウチ-i9f]

Always appreciate your insight. Pitch accent's quite an interesting part of Japanese. Lot of resources do shy beginners away from it (incl online forums and whatnot) but diving into it earlier actually helped me pick up words better

[@rairaur2234]

Great and very useful content as usual, Dougen! ありがとう！！

[@BvsMAcosh]

For linguistic studies only. If you use any language, this kind of stuff will just stick with you. That is how spoken language works.

[@ando_rei]

8:08 In my personal experience it is quite dependent on the listener's abilities, how much leeway you have with errors. If you are in contact with native people, that are used to talking to foreigners, they are usually more forgiving and can understand you despite pitch errors or other. But for people, that are not used to it and/or are not very aware of their language, one or two slip-ups can make it incomprehensible. I've experienced this in my own native language and in Japanese. For instance when I'm out with Japanese friends and they talk to a cashier. Sometimes the cashier goes "Uh, what again?" and I go "Why, u no understand? Wasn't incomprehensibly bad!". Those situations. 😅

[@ThitutSPSM]

I might be thinking a bit too much but Dōgen’s 「さよなら」is a bit worrying sign.

[@NicoSleepyLeen]

You don't know how greateful i am for this Coming from a hispanic country i feel i have a really good chance to learn pronunciation correctly, and this is just perfect Will be sure to check the patreon lessons at some point, if those are as good as this then it's a small price to pay

[@Dogen]

Appreciate it, Furoppa! Best of luck with your future studies!

[@AliceHollend]

Thank you for this video! It's really an eye-opener (well, an ear-opener, actually), you're absolutely correct in that we tend to adapt what we hear to our familiar patterns.

[@technic1285]

12:14 Bringing attention to this. This just fixed my r sounds, thank you.

[@TheOkamotoo]

3:10 quite funny that I know some native speakers that use this pitch accent (H-L-L) pattern for 靴 or 服

[@kurocky]

Yeah I’m Japanese and I use H-L-L pattern more for 靴が and 服が

[@izan236]

kansai maybe?

[@kurocky]

@@izan236 Yeah I lived in Mie which is close to Kansai area.

[@bandiceet]

What I am finding with learning both pitch and pronunciation, is trying to find a teacher who will pick me up on my mistakes. It took me a long time to find a Japanese native speaker who will actively correct me when I make an error.

[@giascle]

I would love an entire video on the final point about the "accentless" pattern. It always baffled me why sometimes the same word sounded flat and sometimes it didn't, but I never made the connection that it's because of how quickly it's said.

[@shannonjones8877]

面白かったです。 I will definitely have to pay attention to this from now on.

[@LisandroLorea]

9:30 as a native Spanish speaker, something I noticed is that a strong English(language) accent in Japanese is really really hard to understand compared to many other accents. Learn to pronounce A I U E O with the right quality, without reducing them to schwas and WITHOUT GLIDING! Learn to also avoid stress-timing. One thing is saying "Wataꜜshi no naꜜmae wa Maꜜruku deꜜsu" and another to say "Woah TUSHy nana MAY woah MARK DAYSS"

[@seasonsofchange2023]

Dogenさん、最近、あなたが日本語を話している動画を見るととても自然に感じるのに、英語を話しているあなたを見るととても不自然になんじるようになりました。

[@sanadayuki7451]

First comment love u keeeep going dogen san . Any advice to make my voice Japanese plz

[@frankbongio]

The shape of the top of your head, combined with your hair makes it look like mt fuji. Nice.

[@haruame510]

There are plenty of japanese people who have weird accents and we are aware that our language is kind of chaos, bunch of exceptions. We do make mistakes and they are even controversial because language is fluid. What's important is we are just so happy that foreign people are even interested in this minor language in the world. Unlike native English speaks who might thinks that people should be able to speak English at least. So thank you so much for your hard work, and please be relaxed to speak japanese, many of us are happy to help you.

[@janey4319]

Do you have some recommendations for those more advanced materials you mentioned? I *am* a linguistics student and I often find it easier to understand language patterns in linguistic terms.

[@matthewdavis9437]

The flat question means they didn't watch some of your free videos from your phonetics course.

[@LimeGreenTeknii]

12:15 "Actually, an alveolar tap, which is the r sound in Japanese" Dogen accidentally teaches the R sound in Japanese 10x faster than all the "It's kind of an L, R, and D combined" things you'll find out there.

[@2712animefreak]

One thing I'd like explained/mentioned, at least briefly, in videos like this is why such a rule exists. I'd presume that this つ is a suffix of some kind.

[@Mike-ch8fr]

すごく役に立った

[@mamihashimoto1429]

I am Japanese originally from Tokyo. First of all, we, Japanese, are not really thinking too much about where we put accent/stress when we speak.

[@iMortao]

Thanks so much for this video 👍, keep going

[@おさるの子-x9b]

日本人は基本的に言葉を大切にする性格の人が多いと思うけど、同じくらい言語外の感情を読み取ることも重視しているから、発音が間違っていても、相手が言いたいことは何となくわかる、みたいなことは結構ある気がするな

[@darkmasterchriss]

Concerning, the not being understood I would add: Most non-native English speakers also tend to have a number of pronunciation "mistakes", however these are usually so common that native speakers grow a better understanding of what is being said. For example, when you hear a person with an French accent for the first time, you have a much harder time understanding compared to when you are already used to it from previous encounters. Another example is that people who learned English from consuming American media initially often have a hard time understanding British accent, because of different pronunciation. (Most) Japanese speakers have virtually no previous contact to foreigners who speak Japanese and as such have a harder time processing the incorrect speech patterns.

[@richtea87]

Very helpful as always, Dogen!

[@konekonekonokokokononeko]

In fact, east and west part of Japanese seems pronounce 「靴」in a different pitch. I'm from a part of the west and east people find me coming from the west from my way of speaking「靴」...

[@nagi159]

maybe some of the people who think that 靴(が) is 頭高 are actually hearing it in the word phrase お靴(が)...? because in that case when the word is preceded by the お sound it actually does have the downstep on the く and maybe that's why they believe they're hearing it as if it were 頭高...?

[@canaldecasta]

Me, someone with 0 idea: Naruhodo ne 😃

[@ayszhang]

Unlikely. I believe it's because the ku and tsu are both prone to devoicing in natural speech, so it's harder to pick up on, where as verbs motsu, sodatsu etc only have tsu as the devoiced mora.

[@jagaimo2]

This is gold. Thank you!

[@shunyo44]

If there are one or at most two pitch-accent mistakes in a sentence and everything else is correct, native Japanese speakers can easily understand the meaning and think it is just a dialect. In fact, in everyday life, it is quite common for people to wonder "where this person is from," and yet be able to communicate perfectly. On the other hand, if the pitch accent is different more than half of the sentence, it is probably quite difficult to understand. This is true whether the person is speaking perfect Japanese but in a dialect that you have never experienced before, or if the person is a student of Japanese who is genuinely mispronouncing the pitch accent. In that sense, I think the frequency of the presence of pitch accents that the conversational partner can hear in a conversation is important for communication.

[@etherdog]

I think it might be time for me to jump on your Patreon, Dogen!

[@Dogen]

Hope to see you there, Etherdog! Cheers!

[@thealmightyconman7145]

I think on that 3rd question's answer you were looking for the term "domino effect". Making many mistakes that add up and create a bigger problem. I was hanging on the edge of my seat while you were talking, hoping you would say it lol. Great video Dogen!

[@連結眉毛-Grayson]

正しい日本語のアクセントは、NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典を見れば載っています。 ちなみにNHKは日本放送協会の略で、公共放送を行っています。

[@davem7359]

My first exposure to pitch accent was at the very end of my Japanese college course, during the final oral exam, when my professor seemingly out of the blue revealed that “hisashiBUri” was actually pronounced more like “hisaSHIburi.” I think anyone who’s studied Romance languages especially gets stuck in a penultimate-syllable-accent-presumption rut.

[@sickranchez4742]

I miss speaking Japanese. I'm now in Poland learning Polish and it's a million times tougher. Ganbatte ne!

[@GalacticYuna]

Bro too true. A lot of people argue Japanese is the hardest for English speakers, but learning a whole new script and learning completely new words, and grammar is where the complications come in

[@franciscotavares9529]

join Japanese speaking Discord servers!

[@wtfpantera]

Powodzenia!

[@wladislaw9242]

@@franciscotavares9529 can you advise any ?

[@prezentoappr1171]

@@wladislaw9242 cave of linguist

[@ozargaman6148]

4:33 that's right, it goes in the square hole!

[@KramRemin]

"Panzification." Don Quijote tends to see things as weirder than they are, Sancho Panza tends to assimilate things to his well-known, solid, Spanish peasant mental schemes. Once the template for High (collapse) Tsu is up and running, due to VERB-DRILL, the nouns have to FIGHT to be recognized as having a different pattern. But one is apparently not supposed to say HA-tsu-on, for pronunciation.

[@asuranrocks]

If your pitch accent is excellent but pronunciation is bad, they'll still understand you coz they recognise the familiar accents, is what I've realised

[@phileo_ss]

Interesting point about つ. The problem with _kutsu_ is, many native speakers DO say it with an accent on く. Same thing happens with _kuma_ (bear).

[@djahandarie]

Though in the case of 熊, atamadaka is very common in standard Japanese. With 靴, atamadaka only occurs by people with kansai-influence in their speech, it’s not standard (even if the person is trying to speak standard).

[@elisew.5230]

Very informative.

[@solisimperium1203]

的 words like 意図的、性的、日本的. these words that end in 的, are all pronounced with heiban pitch patern. At least from what i see in every one of these words. EVEN if their original pitch pattern wasnt Heiban without 的, for example, 意図 has atamadaka, and 日本 has nakadaka. But with 的 being added to them, it makes them heiban. Similar to how odaka pattern gets changed to heiban when the particle attached is の. please correct if im wrong

[@Dogen]

Yes! This is a definite rule, and I explain it in detail in episode 79 of my series. In this episode, I also talk about the suffixes 並 and っぽい. Link for anyone interested: www.patreon.com/posts/38952147 Cheers Solis!

[@ぜっと-y5t]

動詞はたしかに”つ”はピッチが下がるのかもしれません。名詞はそれには当たらないことがありますね。"き↑つ→つ→き↓"とか

[@Artikash]

Good points, I think there might also be folks mixing it up with 屑.

[@Jokertyf]

How does pitch accent interface with de-voicing? At least for me, it's hard to think about producing a pitch when you're not using a voice for a particular mora.

[@ayszhang]

It happens and it will take a lot of effort for you to imitate. I remember I was asked by someone if Chinese speakers can whisper. And we can 😂

[@tykep1009]

Relaxing your tongue and keeping it flat might be helpful. I think the separation of the movement of your tongue and vocal cords is key to this.

[@Dogen]

Hi Jokertyf! The short answer is that in these circumstances there are sometimes multiple correct answers. This is why there are multiple 'correct' pronunciations for a word such as 記者（きしゃ）, for exaxmple. I talk about this in detail using spectrographs in lesson 6.5 of my series, which can be found here: www.patreon.com/posts/japanese-episode-36438446 Cheers!

[@prezentoappr1171]

@@Dogen Kisha and kishi if any devoiced vowel i for masculine trait u for neutral u not devoiced in song is feminine, going by fluent forever and Wikipedia to OP, it's a k with syllabic schwa if it's atamadakagata, eg -en is syllabic nasal in German and japanese うん

[@Deltarious]

"That's the shameless plug" Dogen said, shamefully.

[@amitmarkel]

I think the glasses are new right? Cool. I almost never notice those kind of things 😅

[@Zift_Ylrhavic_Resfear]

Thanks for the video :)

[@Jemppu]

So... the thumbnail there legit made me confused for half a second, surprised if Dogen moved on to Finnish lessons. D'oh. ("Invitation" in Finnish)

[@Graveyard0142]

Re: the question of not being understood, I think sometimes it’s a matter of not knowing what to listen for. My experience goes the other way, of listening to people who have ESL, and I’ve noticed sometimes the breakdown of communication is my fault: because I don’t know what I am trying to listen for, I may fail to connect what they meant or are trying to say, even though they said it in a way that is not necessarily wrong or their pronunciation is not that far off. So I think expectation plays a big part in hearing- which ties into mis-hearing the pitch accent-if you listen for the wrong thing you may hear it.

[@Ruhrpottpatriot]

People have weighed in on native Japanese speakers not understanding foreign speakers who are new to the language because there are not many foreign speakers (as compared to say: English). There was a somewhat similar situation in Germany up until about 50 years or so. You could (and sometimes still can) take people from two different parts of Germany and they won't understand each other. For example taking someone from rural Saxony and then taking someone from upper Bavaria and both speaking their dialects will almost certainly make them not understand each other. Even in the same dialect family this can happen. Take "sieben" (to sieve); in the Westphalian dialects this can take on siëben, siëm, sewen or söwen (among others). This went so far, that many older people from Westphalia had to learn High German because essentially their "dialect" was almost a completely new language to them. This has vanished almost entirely since most younger people learn standard High German in school and never bother to pick up their regional variants, which is a shame, since many of those are very interesting. Think how people would react if the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish variants of English would vanish tomorrow only to be replaced a Londoner's RP. For me (who is from Westphalia) this resulted in having to bring much more effort into conversations with colleagues from south Germany, whose dialects bleed over far more often into their High German, which in turn had me asking questions all the time (and them think I'm dumb), or making the conversations far more mentally taxing. On the other hand talking with people from North Germany was a breeze. Over time I got used to their weird quirks and now most conversations go as fluid as speaking with someone from my home region.

[@khelian613]

A dude I follow who makes Japanese lessons in French naturally included pitch pattern in all his vocabulary flashcards and lessons, but English learners often seem clueless until they bump into a channel like yours... Since French doesn't really have a lexical accent, you'd expect us to be more oblivious about it but maybe we come with less preconceptions?

[@N-ho_N-ho]

KUtsuga really sounds like dialects or teen slang for me.

[@apprendrejaponaisavecanime423]

thanks

[@gyattrizzV]

fitting a circle into a square hole would be easy

[@jacoboblanco1555]

As a person who speaks Spanish, Hebrew and English, I'm curious to do a blind test and see what I exactly hear vs what is actually being said....my brain probably just shrugs it's metaphorical shoulders and walks out.

[@heiinputer9348]

日本人だけど勉強になりますわ

[@rikatsuchida6732]

😅I am from west part of Japan (Osaka) and the accent you are talking about is almost opposite from western accent🙂😊

[@SkinnyBlackout]

Dogen sama, are you planning on growing the hair back or are you going to keep your current length? Dumb question, I know lol

[@じんべえ-i2p]

英語苦手だけど、俺は日本ネイティブなんだと実感ができるいい動画。

[@TheHuntermj]

Oh hey, it's the turtle guy from "master of disguise"!

[@momota5642]

As a native speaker from western Japan, I’m really sorry for every dialect outside Tokyo ruining the pattern. It is definitely a nightmare.

[@flutterwind7686]

Not so much messing up, as having its own patterned system. They just decided that the Tokyo Accent was the "standard" one

[@flutterwind7686]

@千本桜 OFC it's history and capital city. But it didn't have to be that way. In an alternate reality, Kyoto would be the capital of Japan

[@XRatedPoetry]

So this is basically the Japanese version of "I before E"? 🤣