Why you can't hear Japanese pitch accent

[@mattvsjapan]

Free Anki Deck: www.mattvsjapan.com/free-anki-deck Hit the link above to download my free gift to you, the 10 most common words for all 4 pitch accent patterns.

[@Dogen]

"You're actually going to be really surprised-once you can hear pitch, you'll notice how bad your pitch is" just @ me next time bro

[@thinksie]

"Your japanese is so good"

[@aajohnsoutube]

The master has spoken. Or perhaps sang.

[@the_observer9786]

英語上手

[@Nirr0]

じょうず！

[@sspoon]

DOGEENNNNNNNNN

[@ryusuzuki3886]

A born-and-raised-in-Japan English learner here. Thank you so much, Matt and Ken, for creating those unputdownable videos. This comment is for sheer appreciation and a request for your channel. A min read. I’ve watched all of Matt’s interviews with other high Japanese achievers, Atsu, and even an authentic linguist like Stephen Krashen and several videos on pitch accent. Without studying abroad, I’ve been into American English for years in Japan. And it’s been a massive help for me to get numerous insights into language acquiring. (ex. I was petrified when I first heard that Matt had got to consciously start tackling pitch accent even after the years of natural immersion because I’ve been immersing myself into English almost the same way as you said you had done. I guess you can totally relate to this, but I was like, Jesus Christ, is it even possible that I’m sounding weirder than I think I knew? What have I been doing, you moron!! I immediately googled and dug up information on the pitfalls self-taught English learners can fall into, and started consciously paying way much more attention to natives’ rhythm, speed, stress, etc when listening and shadowing.) I guess I’ve got to achieve the next phase for now, which I wouldn’t have done without your videos. And I’m sure I’m getting further because of your channel. I can’t thank you enough. p.s. Your Japanese is fantastic. Matt vs. Japan is evidently one of the most underrated KZbin channels of all time. I’d appreciate it if you could shoot a video discussing the so-called Affective Filter Hypothesis with Ken because it is so far the worst enemy that I can get to know its existence. It will be another gripping video for other subscribers and me if you kindly share how you guys have been dealing with the filter and overcoming it. Thank you for reading this far. Hope I see you around in Japan or the US after this messy pandemic.

[@icanfly5964]

As a native Japanese speaker I can guess what the word is just by hearing the “hummed” versions in the video :)

[@oaoJ69Joao]

Teach me! :)

[@aniharper525]

Thats awesome. I hope to get to that point one day.

[@airi7004]

Great idea to separate the pitch study from actual words. I always understood pitch accent as just “the vibe,” and this is a wonderful way to structure learning to develop that melodic/vibe intuition :) Cheers!

[@TheManWhoDestroyedTheWorld]

It's been 5 days since I watched this video (just finished all 4 patterns in the top 40 deck) and I already feel the difference! I can't thank you enough for all you've given me, Matt. I really don't know where I would've been with my Japanese now if it wasn't for all the knowledge that you shared. You're a real treasure to the language learning community. It even helped me improve my English a little bit 😀 THANK YOU, MATT!

[@aimickelson9102]

I’m a pretty new student - started self-study a little over 5 months ago and now at N5. This seems like an accomplishment, but my main goal is speak with Japanese friends, so I’m focusing most of my efforts on input these days instead of academic reading / writing. This was a very clean way of describing pitch accent! Originally, I discarded the idea of learning pitch accent because it seemed too advanced. After all, my primary focus is learning vocab and grammar. However because pitch accent is similar to music, I noticed pitch has helped my listening abilities. I’ve been casually memorizing pitch patterns while I hear new vocabulary in movies/tv. It is has become another way for me to grab on to words when spoken, much like word order helps me identify words. I’m not sure if anyone else has had this experience.

[@ghostrookie740]

As a Mandrin Chinese native speaker, I've been using Matt's imerssing method learning Englsih for the past few months. I used to watch tons of anime so I'm not completely unfamiliar with Japanese this language. I just found really interesting that it seems like mandrin native speaker would find learning pitch accent not that hard?(I'm not sure since I'm not learning Japanese) I feel like I can natrually hear and imitate the pitch accent when you guys analyzing the whole pitch accent system. This has been an interesting experience when hearing you guys talking about this topic. I wonder if it would be easier for mandrin Chinese neative speaker to pronounce the wrods since we have the concept of "tones".

[@user-sky-you-shka]

I noticed that Chinese speakers pick up on Russian stress really quick compared to speakers of other languages. I saw foreigners reading specially adapted texts where the stressed syllables were marked and still making mistakes while Chinese speakers read accurately

[@cubecomber9162]

It's easier cause you use tones lol

[@notcyfhr]

Interesting comment but I do have to say you should probably learn to condense your messages to smaller comments because that’s very long for such a simple message. And btw your writing is very good for learning for a few months

[@Katerpilet]

I’ve been studying mandarin for two years, and since studying I can easily hear Japanese pitch accent. I think tones prime your brain for it

[@dennischen2922]

As a second generation Chinese immigrant studying Japanese, hard agree. Never really had any issues with pitch accent. My mom has started learning Japanese too, and even though shes a complete beginner she could replicate pitch accent perfectly.

[@matsudakedo]

THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH MATT, been trying to find a video like this for a while

[@bimtucklez]

Wow, thinking of it like a melody really made a huge difference. I would always end up saying it louder, but humming out the patterns and trying to say the word seems to be really helpful. Thanks so much for the deck!

[@AJGress]

This is probably one of your best videos so far. I have been following you since 2017 or so, when I just started studying Japanese. It's great to see how the quality of your content has gone up, not only in terms of editing but also your charisma and professionalism. Looking forward to seeing more!

[@misterguyman9669]

This is just what I needed. Your recent content has been on fire!!

[@JuanHernandez-pr6qt]

Love that you’re uploading Matt!

[@速水もこみ]

Hi matt! I'm Japanese🎌 and I'm interested in your channel. I guess every Japanese says this so, Im sorry to say this but how you talk in Japanese was crazy amazing!😁 And I think that is showing us who you are. I can tell, you studied hard. Im proud that I found your channel today👏 Im Mokomi, nice to meet you😊

[@x3non500]

The anki deck is a great idea! Thanks a lot for all your amazing contributions to the immersion learning community!

[@alrensantoine3601]

I knew about pitch and stress accents, but this is the first time I realized how stress accent in English definitely plays a part in parsing a sentence not only in what words are being said, but what the sentence means. I imagine pitch plays a similarly important role in Japanese.

[@bernardryan475]

In this sentence in English the stress can change the word from verb to noun. “ He ExTRACTed the EXtract during the experiment”

[@carolday3381]

Yeah its a thing in English, take the sentence I didn't lie. 3 simple words,.. such different meaning. stress pronounce the brackets (I) didn't lie means I am not the one who lied but some one else did lie, I (didn't) lie means I was telling the truth and,.. I didn't (lie) means I was stretching the truth, and perhaps misguiding your beliefs on the topic, like a politician.

[@kkuwura]

Tihs was an AMAZING explanation of how to do different pitch accent patterns. The analogies you gave, with the person wearing different clothes, also made perfect sense and I could see were well thought out. Usually it's kinda hard to explain concepts in a language to a speaker of another language when they have totally different frameworks of looking at things, but I feel like you translated the idea of a pitch accent pretty well for me. You finally explained to me in a concise way what's the difference with pitch accent and stress accent. Amazing

[@ColeLangs]

Great to see you uploading again Matt!

[@MagicalCrackdown2]

Wow! I'm not even trying to learn Japanese, I'm trying to learn Czech, but this video was still immensely helpful with identifying native speech patterns, pitch, and sentence structure. With native speech, it's easy to disregard such fundamental things like this and just focus on words and vocab. Keep it up, guys! You're inspiring language learners of all shapes and sizes! Even though I'm studying Czech, I still love your Japanese videos, keep it up!

[@eternalniwakadx]

私は日本語話者ですが、英語と日本語の違いがわかる興味深い動画でした！ アクセント辞典も日本語学習に役立つと思います。(自分が知ってるのだと「JAccent」とか)

[@WhatIveLearned]

Best/most fun explanation of pitch accent I've seen so far

[@GilBeloGil]

I will be eagerly waiting for the release of the verbs pitch accent video!

[@Bonapartinha]

This video is amazing, the space dandy music at the end of the video is classic in this channel

[@nyfxe]

I am highly looking forward to the highly valuable work you both will be creating together.

[@arielasentista6637]

Thank you very much for the deck! I really have no intention of speaking Japanese but being able to improve my comprehension is more than satisfactory for me. Keep doing what you're doing Matt and Ken :)

[@noah1502]

no seriously if there was a pitch accent app with the humming exercises i would totally use that!!

[@jonmeserve2059]

As a musician Japanese pitch accent seems really intuitive, and I can already hear the difference between the melodies. That being said I can imagine it gets complicated when speaking quickly

[@AngelsAndButterflies]

The details in the editing, especially the "remix" part... Wow!!

[@Mikaela_Westmt]

Native Japanese here🇯🇵 Never seen/heard of Japanese pronunciation taught this way, and I'm so impressed and blown away with what you guys have started doing together! It's been over 160 yrs since Japan's national isolationism / closed-door policy ended, lol (in freakin Edo period), it would be great to see more gaikokujin speak "fluent Japanese" pitch accent wise, hehe. (don't think I've ever come across anyone until I found you guys, Dogen, and Nyk from Nyk channel on YT, tbh) Many times I heard them say Japanese is difficult but its pronunciation is flat and pretty easy ...and in my mind I've always been like...um..NO. If Japanese pitch accent is taught in the right and effective way, like how you do it, it might not be so difficult after all - this is so innovative and original! Lucky 100 ppl who will be participating!

[@brtnvmauthor9622]

それは素敵な言葉です

[@brtnvmauthor9622]

さらに、SakuraDropsは誠に可愛いです

[@thefantasicm_2407]

your deck is incredible

[@noah1502]

omg the humming practice helped so much!!! i wish i could just do exercise after exercise with that humming thing.

[@BenyOh]

Thank you very much for what you do and what you bring to the community 🙏🔥

[@Lleldorynix]

I know almost no Japanese, but I never had trouble noticing that something was different about Japanese speech. I just assumed it was a difference in the up-and-down cadence of words similar to how British people can give a different intonation to a sentence to Americans, even if all the words in the sentence are pronounced with the stress on the same syllables as in the American usage of those words.

[@papercliprain3222]

I tried really hard to hear pitch accent before this video and I legit couldn’t and for some reason that humming exercise made me really hear it for the first time. Like you addressed I’m concerned because I realize just how terrible I probably sound so I hope you make more pitch accent instruction in the future.

[@osian3854]

This video has been a long time coming, thanks for the vid Matt and Ken.

[@faith17178]

In Australia we have a very flat (stress ) accent so I think it’s easier , at least for me, when learning and listening to Japanese, compared to America who are very strong with their accents

[@ProfKisuto]

S tier video fellas

[@snowdog03]

Your eyes are turning Japanese.

[@loogloogloogr]

My man matt back with another awesome video. Thanks for the anki deck!

[@The1234hgj]

People like you guys inspire me, Matt. It's actually very motivating to see that, in a society as superficial, vain and frivolous as many have become and are increasingly becoming nowadays, and especially on the internet, there are still people of character committed with such vigor and seriousness to things that are beyond themselves. Yours is a very positive work, and not only to a small community of Japanese afficionados; I believe it's an actual cultural gem, and much appreciated.

[@KS-tl3qu]

10:38 I was pretty sure she was saying “弟が” right after I listened to this humming sound once. I don’t know what made it so clear but it was quite distinctive for me.

[@Shockocksthegreat]

I'm curious about how I'll take to pitch accent being a musician. I can hear it all without a hitch, but I'm thinking I have the advantage of being "fluent in pitch," i.e. being able to sing a C and knowing F# is a disminished fifth above and yadda yadda. I've been learning Japanese for about 5 months now and the similarities between learning a language and good ear training is really staggering. They even have the same faults in college classes teaching them. For example, aural skills really starts you with singing do, re, mi, (output) and has sight singing tests before a good amount of input. And the transcribing is mostly done in a test form without giving a stress free alternative. I only got better in that class when I started transcribing music on my own time in a stress free environment and eventually taught me how to hear and eventually reproduce different intervals effortlessly. Learning Japanese and learning about Refold had been giving me a new perspective on teaching pitch to students, considering I basically Refolded my way through music reading, aural skills, and playing instruments without really knowing it.

[@shayd3136]

Thank you sooooo much for this! I've been looking more into pitch accent lately so this is really helpful🥺

[@glasslicker2829]

This is the best gift I’ve ever received from a you tuber

[@屡有佳数ルーカス]

love the kaiji background music

[@josiya4187]

Revolutionary stuff, guys🤝🏾

[@なにいってんの-s5e]

1st and 4th seemed very identical but I can ear a slight difference. I am sure it is obvious but my untrained hear is still learning edit: you actually gave us a free deck for pitch accent, I love this channel. Thanks Matt for all the information shared this is incredible. btw if you ever thought about creating a merch I let you know that I would by a hoodie or so, I really want to give something back, I feel like we got so much for free. I LOVE MATT VS JAPAN CHANNEL

[@gordonbgraham]

I've lived in Japan for 30 years am fluent and literate in Japanese, and I still don't know what pitch is. It's never presented as a problem, that is after my first 5 years I've never had an issue understanding others nor being understood. The only issue I've had is discerning whether or not there is an うafter an お in some words...stress, intonation, I get...pitch? わからない

[@marxiewasalittlegirl]

This is exceptionally useful 🎉

[@dante4444]

Why is it only Japanese that seems to have this big barrier of entry or effort to learn vs other language?

[@apexdenzel7313]

Please make a follow up video for this! This is awesome.

[@gungasc]

Imitating anime characters as a kid helped out a lot in pitch's.

[@CaCtuSnyan]

As a Swede, I wonder if we can understand the Japanese pitch easier? Since our own language is also a pitch one.

[@daysandwords]

I have heard Swedes ask this a few times and my guess would be that there is no significant difference in how well Swedes pick it up in another language, since they often have a strange "pitch" accent in English. So just being aware that it's a thing doesn't seem to really help since I think the majority of people just try to map our emphasis in the sentence on to the words we're using, and this is stronger than the pull towards correct pitch, unless you've heard that pitch from when you were a child. In some ways it could even be worse because Swedes might have preconceived ideas of where the pitch and stress should go and that would be even further off Japanese than English.

[@TomKilworth]

@@daysandwords That's really interesting! I had wondered the same as the OP, but your points make sense. Love your channel btw

[@ketchup901]

I'm Swedish (from Stockholm if it matters) and I had to train myself to even be able to hear Japanese pitch accent. I'm still very far from perfect especially when it comes to speaking. Swedish is not a pitch accent language, it's a stress accent language _with elements of pitch accent._ I can't say whether I had it easier than speakers of other languages but one thing I can say for sure is that you won't get pitch accent for free just because you're Swedish.

[@joeyhitch2671]

Your videos have been a great help and I even listen to your 3 hour video explaining your Journey of learning Japanese. II am very interested in anything you guys can do to help as I have a four-year-old daughter who lives in Japan who is supposed to be able to visit here on the States 3 months of the year but because of the pandemic that his it that has not been able to happen happen since. I've been studying Japanese for the last year and a 1/2 and I have progressed quite a bit but I know I have so much more to learn and I could really use the help.

[@jeromelucania5886]

Thanks for this video. Very helpful to better grasp pitch accent!

[@Hunikengt]

This is very useful, I didn't know about pitch accent training until I saw your video. My native tongue is Arabic. I know also English and Kiswahili, Japanese is a language that I am learning by my self now for years. Still not close enough to understand basic conversation.....

[@autobotsNdecepticons]

I am not good at it, but I think it's kind of like the "cadence" in Italian and Swedish. It's part of the pronunciation, just a lot more subtle in Japanese...which is why I find it harder.

[@stardust-reverie]

2:58 as a musician and japanese student u should’ve put a barline before the last note for the ones representing heiban and odaka

[@otsd-1182]

日本人です。面白うそうな動画なので登録しました！

[@Keikunn_76]

Thank you for this video, it really helped with my pronunciation. Hopefully a lot of people learning Japanese watches this

[@lastninjaitachi]

Matt " pitch accent is important" also Matt " keerati"

[@Luke-sx9jr]

Thanks for another awesome video Matt! I've been using refold to study Japanese for 4 years now I'm keen take my Japanese to the next level with project uproot. I hope I get picked! Sending good vibes from Australia!

[@philipdavis7521]

This is an amazing explanation, thank you!

[@animaterob]

I love this. Thank you!

[@kurolikesmusic]

just what i needed matt, thanks

[@LUKA_911]

Does anybody know the background music at around 11:15? It sounds familiar

[@Blah6384]

Not 100% sure but I’m pretty confident it’s from kaiji (the anime)

[@narumango22]

@@Blah6384 Ya, it's definitely from Kaiji

[@bazidrayan6945]

I am all for it, where can I apply ?

[@damlurker]

Pitch accent just takes way too much time when I have so much other stuff to do.

[@sertaki]

"Ken has the best pitch accent." Dogen: *"Am I a joke to you?!"*

[@jetesouhaitepleindebonheur]

Thank you very much it is a very helpful video as usual 😉

[@Juanpvcool]

You deserve more subs dude😭😭

[@oojiman]

Actually such a good vid bruh like legit this deserves so much more praise and views than these other "language influencers" doing spews for views

[@tatsuya320kmh]

混乱させてしまうかもしれませんが、東京accentと大阪accentというものもあります。 コメディアンには大阪の人がとても多いので、お笑い番組で日本語を覚えた人は、大阪accentで話す人が多いです。it's like American English accent and British. Ex「うしろ」(behind .back) In tokyo う↓し↑ろ↑ In osaka う↑し↓ろ↓

[@MrSpacegrass1973]

その通り. This is why it's worth being able to distinguish such patterns. As a native speaker of English, it is quite odd when I hear American and British accents mixed together in the speech of some foreigners. The more they try to lose their own native accent, the stranger they sound. I've wondered if it's the same with Tokyo and Osaka-bens.

[@eliasbouhout1]

What if you are unable to recognise or reproduce pitch itself in music too

[@Instruisto31]

It's not only Japanese, all the language has their melody. And some of them like English, Italian, French, or the different Arabic languages have a very strong one.

[@malzergski]

Yes, but in most of those languages, it doesn't have a real importance. I'm French and I don't hear anything like pitch accent you should be aware of.

[@FirstKingOfKamelot]

This video came out at the perfect time, I was JUST getting into pitch accent.

[@Michahel]

As a musician who weekly sings psalm toned chant at Mass, this is honestly weirdly complicated for me. I find myself analyzing the pitch musically rather than for speech and wonder things about how big the rises or drops in pitch should be (in terms of intervals) and whether or not the distance between pitches (said intervals) is determined for each different pattern. I also have to assume that the pitch *pattern* is what's recognized rather than the exact pitches themselves (which is actually very similar to the fact that in the Gregorian Chant I often sing, the exact pitches are not so important as the actual sequence of pitches are; the pitch to start on is decided by a director and/or the singers each time a chant is sung ). Needless to say this makes things very interesting for me to follow along

[@callmewhatever.7963]

Had the same thing going on lmao

[@TheChipManOfficial]

I love the concept of comparison with melody and having your brain recognize pitch this way. But for me, pitch accent is very confusing as I am very tone death and struggle with it and get mixed feedback when talking to native Japanese people in person and watching online. My Japanese sensei who is Japanese and I have one on one with 4 times a month, says that pitch accent is not that important. I want to get pitch accent down but seems like me just learning the grammar, words, and everything else first seems to make the most sense. I’ve been studying for over 3 years and never heard of pitch accent until a few months ago when I saw the video of George and Matt doing a live video on it. I’m very conflicted since all these KZbin videos say it’s super important, but the Japanese people I know in person which is a good bit, act like pitch accent is no big deal 😮....It seems like it’s a depending on who you ask kind of thing. But overall, love the audio samples with melody examples. I think that puts pitch accent into a basic concept for people like me who are very tone death. I’ve saved this video so I can come back to it later on when maybe I’m ready

[@gs4207]

Matt : Trying to mermorize the pitch accent of the most 50 common words will really help you . Me : How about 6000 . . .

[@edcasabar]

Thank you for the novel and helpful explanation!

[@asaris_]

I actually started combining my Japanese learning with my drumming. Don't ask me why, but imagining pitch patterns like drumming patterns did help me a lot.

[@LionKimbro]

ngl my question for Ken is just one: Why does the second word of OnePiece -- 「名声」 (of: 富、名声、力) -- sound like "めるせい", when the narrator says it ..? Is this a pitch accent thing, or is this just part of how language transforms things? (Like in English, we say "bag-ah-chips," rather than "Bag, of, chips.") I'm on S1E11 now due to your damn 進めて, and I've been shocked by how often written Japanese and the pronounced Japanese can so deeply diverge. (Another thing my mind keeps hooking up to is how often they say 「おもしり」 rather than 「おもしろい」) I am kind of coming to a place where I feel like: Written Japanese is a conspiracy. Only spoken Japanese is true.

[@jamestroici732]

Anyone else having a hard time installing the pitch accent deck? I only see Anki2 files which my anki wont let me import as a deck

[@jamestroici732]

Figured it out. You need to not unzip the zip file. Then just import the zip file into anki

[@xolang]

Probably the best explanation for Anglophones so far. Bravo! 👍🏾 I myself decided not to adopt the standard pitch accent though since I'm interested in the Kansai region where the pitch pattern is pretty different, and I don't wanna sound even more like a mess, having learned the standard one and changing it again, most probably inconsistently. 😅

[@Anadz94]

Hey thanks for the deck, Matt and Ken!! I studied the first ten heiban words today with Audacity. I recorded the native pronunciation and mine and the difference in the blue diagram was quite funny. Her was so symmetric and mine was just wishwash :P By the way... Do you happen to know, what the name of the program shown at 7:12 above Audacity is?(I assume the one below is Audacity)

[@DANGJOS]

@Matt vs Japan I have a question about 13:58. What about conjugations? If a newbie learns the pitch pattern of say 食べる, they may look for that pattern everywhere. But if it's conjugated to the past or the て-form, then the pattern is completely different. Wouldn't that confuse them?

[@BriantWebster]

what an invaluable video 👏

[@masonlisi4388]

The kaiji backround music 😍😍

[@cunjoz]

my problem is that, being that I'm croatian and from a part that has a really tonal dialect, I'm oftentimes able to identify more nuances in Japanese pitch than what the textbooks say there are

[@8kw7mx9]

I'm interested in Hrvatski, can you explain what you mean with the tonal dialect, what part is it exactly, and could you give an language example? Thxx

[@bloxxerhunt1566]

weirdly enough, I'm brazilian and I learned lots of dialects just so I could fuck with the people I know are from certain regions, and pitch accent translates strangely well to how you pronounce stuff when speaking in a southern brazil accent. They're known over here due to their "singing speech".

[@ivansusanj2706]

Oh I'm a croatian too, which dialect are you refering to?

[@xolang]

I don't understand why that is a problem. Shouldn't it be an advantage for you then?

[@ZombifiedDuder]

What is the name of the anime at 14:03 where the character is intently watching Future Boy Conan?

[@uoluoluol6045]

I love how Matt just raises his eyebrows a little and nods twice every 4-5 seconds 😂😂

[@joaquinegarcia]

Amazing video!

[@gurmeharsingh730]

Thanks for the video! What's the anime at 5:54? It looks beautiful.

[@rektninja4289]

四月は君の嘘 (your lie in April), you will cry😭

[@TomKilworth]

This is where my music degree really comes into its own :-P

[@k.t8174]

日本語習得すんのって大変なんだな。。すげえ

[@wahnsinnik]

Hello! It is one of my life dreams to learn japanese. Right now I am a total beginner, but I intent to improve myself. Therefore, I really wanna nail pitch accent as much as possible. Can anyone recommend a good dictionary website that lists Pitch accent of words? Each time i learn a new word from a book or something, i would like to also understand its pitch accent. Thank you in advance!

[@Makiaveliiste]

I really like the quality of the video editing. What softwares do you use Matt? Tx

[@DavidBonelo]

6:30 Use this to repeat the part with the exercises :)

[@JackLuong]

I'm not a native english speakers but I mastered english word stress just by immersion. I reckon I can do the same for Japanese, I guess my language being a tonal language helped a little

[@joaopareto92]

As a Brazilian, I like so much the Japanese accent, for me, it is one of the most beautiful and cool accents