hey everyone Duggan here so my friend Joey the enemy man recently made a kind of Japanese Q&A Japanese feedback video that he posted on his YouTube channel and on that video there was a question about pitch that someone asked and he mentioned my channel when answering that question so I thought I'd just take this opportunity to give kind of like a five minute brief introduction to Japanese pitch accent because I thought a few people might be coming over this isn't scripted but um I've been teaching Japanese pitch accent for about three years now and I've
got a bunch of books over there maybe I'll show you real quick so that this is like half the books that I I use when I make my pitch accent lessons it's not I'm not trying to brag or anything I'm just kind of trying to show my credentials but anyway here's a five minute introduction to Japanese pitch accent so pitch accent means that and the accent of a word is determined by its pitch rather than its stress so what does this mean so English is a stress accent language and this means that a words accent
is determined by its stress its kind of force on a particular bit so if I say tomorrow then the part of that word is it has a larger stress it has more force than the surrounding bit so it's a little bit louder and it's a little bit longer than the other bits but the pitch is a little bit higher but not significantly higher it's the extra stress on that syllable that makes that the accent of that word whereas in Japanese if we have a word like thick I which means the world it's not that there's
stress on that initial accent it's that there's a higher pitch on that accent so it's thick I say high high low low so the easiest way to think about this is that some languages have strong and weak bits that would be English whereas Japanese has high and low bits so stress accent languages and pitch accent languages Japanese is a pitch oxen language if a word has an accent and that that words accent is determined by a change in pitch so that's a basic introduction to what a pitch accent language is so now I'm going to
give a real brief introduction to the four different Japanese pitch accent patterns there are four so the first one is called optimal comp and it means that the first syllable it's actually called a mora but I think it's okay to think about it as a syllable for the purpose of this lesson the first syllable of the word is high and then all the remaining syllables are low including the particle that attaches so if we go back to the example word sake high high low low and then the particle also attaches low so sick I want
sick I want or sick I go high low low particle look that's automic o most native English speakers don't have any trouble with this particular pattern the next pattern is called the naka de Kaap pattern and in this pattern the pitch starts low goes high and then goes down again within the word so the word for Japan is an example of this starts low goes high and goes back down again the holton me home me home and the particle again attaches low me ho mah gay ho mah so sick I law versus any home law
that's pitch accent pattern number two cough middle the pitch goes up and then down within the word both of those again native English speakers usually don't have any trouble with those two patterns but this the remaining two are where things get a little bit tricky so the next pattern is called the old akka pattern and with this pattern the accent falls at the end of the word this means that the pitch starts low goes up and then stays up until the last syllable of the word but then the particle attaches low so an example of
this would be the word little brother so this is pronounced as Otto and that probably sounded kind of relatively flat to you because the initial rise in pitch isn't that dramatic in Japanese it's the drop that's real dramatic so again old old ball but then the particle attaches low so it goes from high to low at all toga toga toga a native English speakers have the tendency to try and put the accent within the word because that's what happens in English typically whereas in Japanese like with the word Alto Alto the accent comes at the
end of the word so most native English speakers will say all total rather than total or total rather than total or total rather than total and the thing to keep in mind here again is that the pitch stays high until the end of the word and then it drops toga toga toga toga not total calm that's wrong it's not at all toga its total total so again that the drop in pitch is from toe to the following particle the particle attaches look the third pattern again is talked up pitch start slow Rises just a tiny
bit although because pitch is indicated with a binary system this looks like the same distance as this but it's actually not forgive the intricacies I explain this in more detail in my series but starts low goes high stays high until the end of the word and then drops a little da okay so that's the third pitch accent pattern and the final one is called the hey bong pattern in this pattern the pitch start slow Rises and stays high through the particle so this means that there's no drop in pitch and thus any word that has
this accent pattern is accent-less because there's no drop in pitch so an example of this word would be if we say the word for the United States in Japanese it's a MIDI comp I'm ready calm so it starts low goes high and stays high and then again the particle attaches high as in maybe caca or another example would be for example the word for the best cycle again a lot of nning native English speakers have the tendency to say things like cycle with the accent at the beginning but this is wrong its cycle so if
you put a particle at the end it would be like cycle in the cycle and again the particle attached is high there's no drop in pitch so cycle neat site there not go got caucus a cop all of these are examples of the final head-on pattern and hey bond in Japanese means flat there's a slight rise in pitch again so it's not actually flat but it's much better to think of heya bong words as close to flat as opposed to all the other patterns that we've covered thus far so this one particular pattern of words
in Japanese is relatively flat and that's one of the reasons that Japanese teachers often say Japanese is flat because native English speakers often screw up these words completely but all of these other patterns that we talked about earlier they do have drops in pitch and thus pitch accents so brief a summary of this lesson because I want to keep things concise Japanese is a pitch accent language it has high and low bits as opposed to strong and weak bits and there are four Japanese pitch accent patterns there is Auto Morocco as in stick Iowa there
is nakka nakka has in any home wah there is aa cop has in Hong Kong and there is hey bong as in America or ku Sangha or go cop so those are the four main pitch accent patterns um hopefully this was useful to some of you I talked about all this in detail in my my patreon series and I about like what kinds of words typically fall into which category of pitch accidents so one basic example is like work verbs that end with the tend to be hey bong so like you'll blue or told the
and these these words are not yobu and not tobu but again you'll look told Luke so verbs that end with vote tend to fall into this category that's one of the many many many many many many rules that are talked about in books like this and that I teach in my patreon series so if you're interested in learning more about Japanese pitch accent maybe consider checking that out if not it's totally fine too and if anyone's new checking out the channel thanks for stopping by really appreciate it thanks to joy for the shout out and
I'll talk to you guys all again soon bye
