Pitch Accent Doesn't Matter???
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 лип 2018
- EXPLANATION:
Second to last clip:
The women in the clip mispronounces the name "幸華(こうか)" with a heiban pitch accent, instead of the correct atamadaka pronunciation. The man, Sanma, immediately corrects her, and then goes on to make fun of her mispronunciation. In order to do this, he looks for a word which is normally pronounced the specific way that the women MISPRONOUNCED 幸華, and likely because he only had a split second to think, he incorrectly chooses the word "高価(こうか)". This doesn't work because the correct pronunciation of "高価" is ALSO an atamadaka pitch accent (remember, the woman's original mispronunciation of 幸華 was with a heiban pitch accent). In order to convey the specific "こうか" that he had in mind, he explains the kanji: "高(たか)い値(ね)って書くのそれは?". Here Sanma makes a second mistake (again, likely because he only had milliseconds to think): he mixes up the two kanji 価 and 値 (understandably; they look similar and share the same meaning). This is where I ended the above clip, but in the original, a third man, Beat Takeshi, goes on to make fun of Sanma for mixing up the kanji in 高価.
Last clip:
Normally, the phrase “なんでも合うんじゃないか” would be pronounced with the accent on the “あ” in 合う. When the suffix “説” attaches onto a word or phrase, it overrides the original accent, and forces a new accent to be placed on the last mora of that word/phrase it's attaching onto. So, the accent of the phrase “なんでも合うんじゃないか説” should be placed on the “か”, just before 説. Perhaps because the original accent of the phrase “合うじゃないか”, and the accent-override rule of 説, got jumbled up in his head, Shibuya mispronounces “なんでも合うんじゃないか説” with the accent on the じゃ, right in the middle of “合うんじゃないか”'s original accent, and the new correct one. As it sounded quite funny, Naito immediately starts to make fun of him. Shibuya then embarrassingly points out that the way he pronounced it made it sound like he was saying the word “阿吽” (あうん, heiban), which is commonly used in the phrase “阿吽の呼吸” which means, “the harmonizing, mentally and physically, of two parties engaged in an activity”. Shibuya then goes on to pronouce "合うんじゃないか説" with the corrent accent, but Naito continues to poke fun at him.
Shout out to Firmy for helping me with the translation!! Follow him: / firm_metal
**MY LINKS**
👉 Newsletter: www.mattvsjapan.com
👉 Website: refold.link/matt
👉 Twitter: / mattvsjapan
👉 Instagram: / mattvsjapan_
Sources:
• Video
• Video
9時から5時まで
• On Getting Corrected
水曜日のダウンタウン - くまモンの発音で熊本が割れている説
• Video
• アイスどんな食材にも合う説。
#PitchAccent
Nailed it
woah, it's Dogen!
Sup Dogen, you fucking legend.
I just watched your accent video then this
I'll be the third legend i promise it so don't die >:'v
All this video of yours proves is that Japanese can't even get the accent right so I literally don't care about it anymore.
White nonsense at it's finest. Can't even be European properly & want to lecture the rest of the world like a narcissist.
"Every dialect has different pitch accent so it isn't worth worrying about" = "Every dialect of English has different pronunciation so it's not worth trying to improve my thick Chinese accent"
San Kathz is a native speaker of an African language that's tonal. That problably helps
I am sure it's just my ego... but I feel like this video is based on things I have said.
I'm probably just missing something, but what about the yellow area on this map ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent ), labeled "no accent"? Isn't there no pitch accent in Fukishima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, and parts of Miyagi and Yamagata? Couldn't you also choose to speak with a Miyakonojou accent which is a one pattern accent?
Although it is unfortunate, in mainstream Japanese culture, the "no accent" dialects are often made fun of, and used as a stereotype for being uncultured/a hillbilly. Perhaps similar to a southern accent in America.
this video may or may not have been inspired by things that you have said
As a native Japanese speaker, I strongly believe learning pitch accent is important for many L2 speakers of Japanese. Even if you don’t nail it, just knowing the basics can help your comprehension of the spoken language.
My dad comes from middle of nowhere in Kyushu and says he can’t distinguish many of the minimal pairs of pitch accent (i.e. 橋 vs 箸 etc). Interestingly enough, though, we never have trouble understanding him. I can’t really put my finger on why, but I’m guessing most dialects that don’t follow the standard Japanese pitch pattern still have their own pattern of indicating where the word boundaries are. That’s why when we encounter someone that speaks a dialect that’s totally unfamiliar to us, we might have trouble understanding them first but will soon pick up a pattern, allowing us to understand each other on a sentence level if not word level.
If an L2 speaker of Japanese go random with this, that’s when we have real difficulties understanding.
I would recommend everyone who’s serious about learning japanese study the standard japanese pattern jusy cause it’s the easiest.
cool story :)
til you're meant to pronounce 橋 and 箸 differently
Star Light in standard Japanese, 箸 is high-low and 橋 is low-high and they are differentiated in pitch accent.
@@ibarakidoji and then it gots completely opposite when it comes to the Kansai dialect. confusing.
Dogen teaches standard Japanese accent right?
HOW DARE YOU TELL ME THAT I HAVE TO ACTUALLY PUT EFFORT INTO LANGUAGE LEARNING?
DISGUSTING
@@TheFrenchmanCooks nawnaw
Keep coming back to this video and each time I can hear the differences more and more... it’s a good feeling
How long have you been studying? I get the same feeling when I listen to anime OPs 😊
Super interesting!! To Japanese people, it must be as different as light and right are to us.Kinda scary to think I could be getting it so wrong and not even realise it.
i also like to think of it as saying something like GArage (UK English), as opposed to gaRAGE (US English), seeing as we use a lot of stress in our speech, where Japanese don't, to distinguish words the way we do.
Another example would be saying univerSIty, instead of uniVERsity, which would sound very odd imo.
@@joshttale pretty much this. It's a lot worse than getting R and L mixed up lol (well, maybe with the exception of "election" that... can get awkward)
@@kougamishinya6566 I disagree, mixing up L and R in English is a much bigger mistake than stressing the wrong syllable. R and L are two completely different letters in our language and mixing them up will severely impact your ability to be understood. Stressing the wrong syllable is awkward but it isn't the end of the world, even native speakers occasionally make mistakes, particularly with words they don't know. And there is variation between the different UK and the US accents as well.
I come back here every so often because it's probably my fave video of yours. I've watched the 有名人の集まる店 full clip so many times now, and I was thinking, there really aren't many こうか words that don't have an 頭高 pattern. Searching in a pitch accent dictionary I could only find 鉱化, 降下, 硬化 which are not the very first thing you'd think of within a split second (though it would be pretty impressive if he did!)
gotta be honest, could hardly tell the difference in any of those
When he first put out the video I felt the same way but later on especially recently I kept trying to consciously pick up on these accent differences and holy shit they matter a lot apparently. I started guessing when reading anime subs which pitch accent is correct to use and then play the audio and find out whether I was correct or not. It's actually become quite fun and makes me feel closer to fluency than when I thought it all sounded the same.
Tbh, all you need to do is be conciously aware of it. When memorizing stuff or looking up words, I guess and check the pitch accent too(Jsho is a really convenient app for that). You start to notice patterns. It also helps if you know basic stuff like what heiban or atamadaka means.
When I saw this video for the first time last week, I didn't notice anything. But now I can actually hear the difference in pitch.
The only one that was hard was the "name" one.
I can hear all of them. The only hard one is the name (on the sixth video). The others are easy.
Ohhhh, this video compilation is so perfect! Thank you so much for linking all your sources! :D
I wish I could have plenty more examples of Japanese natives discussing pitch and pronunciation; I still struggle so much with listening and pronouncing pitch. Dogen's videos have been helping a ton, though.
haven't even finished with rtk and seeing this is gonna give me a panic attack!
It's stuff to worry about later, don't stress about it
I've studied Japanese in college and my professor was an elderly Japanese woman. She's awesome, I adore her. However her hearing wasn't the best and to add on to that when I spoke Japanese to her sometimes she wouldn't understand me. But when her assistant did, with a much better accent/ pitch, she understood perfectly. When she did understand/ hear me she would correct my pitch accent when needed. When she applauded me it was when I repeated words I spent many hours going over the phrases in mutt textbook as I was trying to sound like the speaker on the CD. So it IS important. Natives will let foreigners slide sometimes (I won't let my husband slide with Spanish cause it hurts to listen to a bad accent) but out of respect for the native listener and their time a learner should at least try to put some effort into it. After those experiences I decided to look further into pitch accent but there really isn't a comprehensive source to study from outside of Dogen's lessons but he's been an awesome resource. However, if a person's goal isn't to be understood but only understand then maybe it's not as important. Ultimately it depends on whether or not you plan to speak to natives. Best of luck either way.
Natives won't let foreigners slide sometimes. They'll let them slide nearly all the times and just write off their skills while telling them how good they are.
You need to check Campanas de Japanese on UA-cam. He goes deep around pitch accent and moras. It's nice.
@@kirklurkpu4470 Thank you for this! It's very interesting. And you're right, it's nice ☺
Pitch accent makes phrases sound natural. And easier to speak. And easier to understand. Not so hard to learn and practice the basics and there are some specialised texts with exercises and CD. . .
dos gos what texts and cds are you referring to? Can you provide a resource? I've been wanting to find one but the only ones I know are old or outdated or only Japanese or all of the above. Thank you for your time.
Ask Publishing has a book with 2 CDs called "Japanese Pronunciation Activities" にほんご発音アクティビティビュ。Beginner and intermediate exercises but book is useful for even N1 level people working on accent in general. Perfecet textbook.
I didn't get pitch accents at first but every time I watch this I pick up more and more of the differences
実際、単語によっては方言で違ったりするから外国語話者からすると難しそう
It's actually so weird how this isn't explained and used in classes/textbooks in the same way I feel that it is for Mandarin Chinese. To learn how important pitch accent is further along in your language learning can be very demotivating 😲
In Japanese textbooks used in China, the pitch accent is always labeled in the vocab list. So I was surprised when I knew that English speakers learn none of this "normally".
This reminds me of the inability of English speakers to understand tonal languages like Mandarin. Some even explain it as "singing", which isn't alike, and implies that English doesn't use different pitches (not true). (Imagine a stereotypical "robot voice" in sci-fi movies; that would be actually flat and pitchless.)
So I began to think that maybe English speakers somehow can't perceive tone/pitch at all, which is also weird.
0:30 I grew up near Tokyo and it seems to me both Sanma and Matsu pronounced in the same way just like高価, 効果, 校歌, 硬貨
It's interesting and mysterious that some ppl feel they are different.
These are the nuances of the language that sadly aren't mentioned much in formal textbooks up until the 4th year of study even. Pretty much immersion and shadowing are the best ways.
As native-ish speaker (almost forgot but been relearning), interesting that I didn't forget pitch accent. I never realized how distinct the difference was until learning that pitch accent exists.
Thats good to hear
Finaly we have an answer😎🖒
Great find📺😉
Running through kanji makes it seem fun to study pitch accent XD, and should I do a core deck or just do sentences right after kanji?
i started bunge learning japanese at some point by myself and i made good progress and i love everything about it, the grammar, the kana, the kanji but also how it sounds. i just tried to imitate the sound people make (i am used to doing that, i have learned many languages before, such as English, and I grew up bilingual) when they say the words and i guess i adopted some of the pitch accents naturally, as whenever i was talking to japanese natives they seemed to have no issues understanding me at all. but once i learned that there actually is a real pitch accent with rules and names and all it freaked the hell out of me. i hardly dare to speak anymore and it really ruined the fun journey for me a bit... idk why, i typically dont get cornered so quickly, but this really bothers me for some off reason. any hints on how to motivate myself again and how to stop worrying so much about my pitch and just go back to speaking, which seemed to work perfectly well so far :(
this! ^
Who's the girl from the kabedon video? For 研究, purposes, of course.
Yes it's 石原さとみ. It's a clip from the drama 5時から9時まで
サンキュー
Forget about her, who's the Kouka girl.
@Crayon Shaun Chan god bless lads!
these are literally all banter and light-hearted teasing
壁ドンのやつは流石に吹いた。
what i get from this video is that even japanese people can get it wrong. i can't imagine them nitpicking like this with a foreigner, and i can't imagine myself studying pitch accent. i mainly study japanese to understand japanese, and i wiew being able to communicate in japanese to an extent as a possible side effect of that. if that extent is not great i honestly don't mind, but i have to wonder if focusing a bit more on output would improve my input.
edit: words that didn't make sense
I have never worried about pitch accent and hadn't even heard of it until AJATT was on my radar. And I have had a very successful life with Japanese. Is my Japanese perfect? Certainly not, but Einstien's didn't have perfect English nor does Trump and they seemed to have done pretty well for themselves. #KeepLanguageLearningFun!
Learn Japanese From Zero! But if someone finds phonetics fun, then language learning is still fun
Learn Japanese From Zero!
Hey, George! I actually find studying pitch accent incredibly interesting. Not only because it contributes towards my goal of one day speaking like a native but because it's fascinating in its own right.
Point is, I'm having fun here! And so are plenty of others.
さるも木から落ちる。
@@japanesefromzero This! Exactly.
Matt, can we can get you entrance theme music already?
We could have a chorus of white guys singing ♪ "all paths led to AJATT, and we are all kanji princes!" ♪
Gomangoman11 Can I join in on this even though I’m black?
Heck yeah! We could just claim that you were Katsumoto and no one would know the difference!
Gomangoman11 can I join to I’m also black
*holds the door open* "Come on in!"
What would you say is the best way to study pitch accent? I plan on learning Japanese at my university here hopefully next year and ik this would benefit me alot to learn and study pitch accent
This seems similar to the Australian Rising Inflection except that you can still understand it correctly if you’re an English speaker
Prolly coz Australians speak English.
Dammit Matt, fine. What is it this time? Making me stop my shit once a week to watch your videos... radda radda radda.
Got it. When commuting to work on the train, I will make sure to look like a crazy person waving my finger up and down when reviewing sentences.
I am just learning about pitch accent now and have lived in Japan for over a decade.
After seeing this video I wonder both how bad my pitch accent is and if it is as bad as I fear it could be, I wonder if I am a lost cause at this point due to old habits dying hard.
I gotta memorize all the pitch accents for all the words ever!!! right? Sigh...終わりがない。
頑張らんば
It's crucial. But how best to learn it Matt sensei??
I explain my thoughts on that in my newest Patreon post
I’m a person that is fluent in Japanese. Not as good as you, but fluent. I have to ask. Do you think you and I could ever truly master pitch accent? I find that I am very inconsistent with my pitch accent. Sometimes I hit the right pitches, but then at other times for the exact same words i hit the pitch accent wrong. Hearing myself speak through a recording is frustrating because of this. What are your thoughts?
If Matt can do it you can do it. He ain't shit. Just determined.
And I mean that with all do respect to the both of you lol
I think it can be done. If Dashan can sound like a native speaker of Mandarin, then I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to do the same for Japanese. Would it be worth all of the time and effort that it would take? That I am not sure of.
I haven't done it yet lol
Matt VS Japan Thank you for your reply! And for me, I see Japanese as something I do for the rest of my life. The constant reward of getting better and being able to speak to people that most people in my country can’t speak to is quite rewarding. What about you? Do you see yourself continuing your pursuit of mastering pitch accent? How are you doing with it currently? Also, I plan of making videos on pitch accent and my findings on it.
I have a "direction", not a "destination" when it comes to my Japanese studies. I am currently putting a certain amount of effort into improving my pitch accent, but I don't know how long I will continue to do this. Language learning yields highly diminishing returns the further you take it. Once it gets to the point where I have to study for months and months just to improve my Japanese by a hardly noticeable amount, I think I will decide that my time would be better spent on something more constructive.
Interestingly I picked up the pitched accent naturally without realising until I learnt that there is such a thing. Sometimes I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that my native language has two tones. I wondered if speakers of Tonal languages can pick up pitch accent better. Then I heard Thai people speaking Japanese in some UA-cam video and thought their accent sounds really strange when they Japanese, so maybe that's not really the case.
Interesting
I do have to agree, Mister Man Sir...
when pitch accent is pointed out like this its really obvious to hear, i wonder if there's a way to make the language part of your subconscious mind always notice pitch accent automatically out of necessity? i heard that japanese people learning english do something similar. they learn to hear the "L" vs "R" sounds by forcing their mind to realize that registering more detail is necessary to differentiate words. I'm certain there's a way to acquire pitch accent, i'm probably just going to try forcing myself to pay attention to it.
The method that Japanese people use to learn to hear the difference between L and R (minimal pair practice) couldn't work for pitch accent because, as you just pointed out, it's actually already easy to hear. But it's possible that directly perceiving pitch accent enough times might be enough to lead to acquisition, even without comprehension necessity. This seems to be the key to foreigners mastering tones in Chinese, as it turns out that although Chinese tones are MORE necessity for comprehension than pitch accent, it's still possible to get fluent while neglecting them and then consequently constantly messing them up while speaking. I think they key is to use conscious knowledge of pitch as feedback so that you can train your mind to directly PERCEIVE the pitches very clearly, and through constantly noticing those pitches you are perceiving directly, one will begin to acquire.
Most of the cases in the video are just someone *nitpicking* other person's funny accent on a certain word.
Trolling like this is common in Japanese TV show.
The penultimate link is broken or blocked. Is there an alternative or video title you could provide? What was the show and actors?
I fixed the link!
thx!
So many people legit triggered by this video lmao
good content
It could be the difference between life and death.
Im a native chinese, and I found a lot of westerners are having difficulties hitting the right pitch accent when speaking chinese (maybe they neglect it from the start because they dont think it's that important or maybe they are just not used to it). But it sounds really strange without pitch accent and it often becomes uncomprehensible. Japanese is not that complex when it comes to pitch accent but imo it is still very important
Actually, Japanese pitch accent is far more complicated than Chinese tones. In Mandarin, each syllable has one of 4 tones, and shifts in those tones due to combination rules are few in number, simple, and consistent. In Japanese, there are countless rules and exceptions, many which multiply on top of each other at once, rendering determining the correct pitch accent quite a complicated equation at times. Also, because Japanese pitch accent applies at the level of WORD, and not SYLLABLE, you have to have the whole equation figured out BEFORE you even start to pronounce the word, unlike Mandarin where you only have to look one syllable ahead.
Yeah, I've been dabbing just a bit in Mandarin Chinese lately and I gotta say the tones aren't nearly as hard as everyone made it out to be. At least, compared to my months of struggling with Japanese pitch and still feeling like I've made no tangible progress. Especially after seeing Yoyo Chinese's video teaching Mandarin tones with English words, I feel pretty capable of being able to both hear and and pronounce the tones well enough. :)
(Of course, I'm not sure if OP meant Cantonese instead, in which case I hear it's quite a bit more complicated than Mandarin since it has one more tone, and each tone is a bit more ambiguous.)
I feel like that argument is a bit flawed, because under no circumstances would I define a fluent speaker as a person who is still at a stage where they produce their speech in syllables. Individual tones can be easy but it's precisely the idea that you have to switch them up on the fly as you _smoothly_ utter the entire SENTENCE is what makes it challenging and yet essential if you want to sound natural. Ultimately you don't consciously recall these constituent parts when outputting as a native in any language.
@@prog112 As a native speaker of Chinese, Matt is completely correct about this. The biggest difference between Japanese pitch accents and Chinese tones, is that Chinese tones are completely consistent, 100% of the time. This is why I don't understand why people say tones are hard. Because once you understand it, it's SO easy. Knowing which syllable to put stress on in English or knowing pitch patterns of words/phrases in Japanese is way harder, because it's inconsistent, there are tons of rules, and even more exceptions.
Chinese has 4 tones, (5 if you are being pedantic and counting the neutral tone), with 0 exceptions in the entire language. Not even a single one.
Did you study other grammar books besides tae kim?
Nope.
@@mattvsjapanNice, Tae Kim and Tofugu are the only grammar resources I’m using so this gives me hope that that + immersion should be enough
This is why I’m trying to learning Japanese or speak it in public.
I might slip up and pronounce a sentence wrong and feel bad about it.
Because there are multiple ways you could say the sentence and have it mean many things and It’s really hard.
Hey Matt, I'm running into a strange situation with my sentence cards. I've been making cards to learn some kanji compounds and I've found that im not memorizing how the sentence is read based on the kanji, but based on the rest of the sentence.
For instance, i can read "値段が高いレストランは好きじゃない" if i ignore the two kanji at the beginning and read the rest. Is this normal?
Anyone knows the name of the woman talking at 29 seconds?
29秒に出た女の人の名前って誰知ってる？
松たか子
Interestingly amazing 😍 and overwhelming 🤯.
You're originally from Canada, right? ^^
USA
Matt VS Japan あざーっす！
If you pay $1 on my patreon and enter my discord server, and I deem you fluent, I will give you the fluent tag which lets you have the same rights as if you were pledging $10
Matt VS Japan Damn you don't play no games. xD
I'm kind of getting the feeling that uproot is about pitch
it's somehow like spanish accent in syllabes?
No, Spanish is stress-accented, just like English. Japanese is pitch-accented, meaning the pitch of the sound carries meaning rather than the stress as in stress-accented languages.
You may be referring to the orthographic accents, or should I say diacritics, in Spanish. Spanish uses the acute accent to mark an irregular stress. It can also be used to differentiate between homophonographs, sí and si for example.
Spanish has a stress accent - you stress one syllable in a word (you pronounce it louder, for longer, and/or with a higher pitch). English and German also have stress accents.
The pitch accent in Japanese is different. First of all, the only thing that changes is the pitch, the volume remains the same. Each 'mora' can either have a high or low pitch (when looking at a word, each hiragana corresponds to a mora essentially, so 元気 げんき would have 3 mora, and 留学 りゅうがく would have 4). You can have more than one mora with a high pitch. There are many patterns and rules to the way pitch changes.
I recommend watching Dogen's channel if you want to learn the basics.
Yes, but not exactly.
Japanese is pitch accent (the only difference is pitch), Spanish is stress accent (the main differences are loudness and length). But they have the same importance: wrong stress/accent, wrong meaning.
I didn't get what is the difference in any example but "item". At least now I don't think that "pitch" is only chinese language privilege.
Pich accent changes on the situation. West Japan vs east Japan. Nomal vs young. Nomal vs station announce, Nomal vs people who work in broadcasting
There are too many cases. This is a matter of very very advanced learners including him.
0:27 デジモンから？
If pitch accent isn't completely necessary then Dogen is selling us snake oil? He stresses that it's very important and should be the primary focus of study from the get go...
It's important if you want to sound great when you speak Japanese. If you simply want to communicate, it's definitely not necessary
I don't think you got that the video title is sarcastic, it's not saying pitch accent doesn't matter it's proving the opposite.
Am I wrong in assuming that there's two levels of 'pitch accent'?
The one that separates chopstick from bridge (which appears to be more important/higher priority)
and the one that separates dialects and is split into 4 different types instead of just HAshi and haSHI
Is it ふ↓く???
They are comedian from Kansai area.
Studying simplified mandarin since highschool for 3 years I had to learn pitch accent. And now learning Japanese and seeing how they do pitch accents, I have to say it's kinda stupid, since you have to assume. Not saying not important but if you wanted to improve consistency add the intonation on top of the character so you know which rising or lower tone to use
is there a dictionary that includes pitch?
Hi Simpson, this vid might help :D ua-cam.com/video/zRSXbqjC2Yg/v-deo.html
Pitch accents by cute Mochina sensei: @
We must follow basic pitch accent(起伏式) correctly when we speak Japanese. The meaning of Japanese word is quite different depends on pitch accent at any time.(I'm Japanese speaker)
I have a question for Matt sensei. Since I haven't heard you talk about it on your channel, what do you think of the book "a dictionary of basic Japanese grammar"?
0:30 who is she?
Satomi Ishihara
So does it?
It does.
dumb ass
If you need to sound like a native speaker absolutely, if you need to be udnerstood it's about as bad as when Japanese people use R instead of L
@@asdf-rj6yk lol I'm just making it easy for everyone to understand, I did get what the video was all about, no need to be toxic.
At least I'm not a prick and an asshole like you, lol.
@@lawthirtyfour2953 👍 this would help out people who'd come to read this comment. Thanks
Something I want to add is that though pitch accent does matter, it is okay to not stress over too much. Reason I say this is because there are many dialects in Japan where pitch accent can change. For example, Hokkaido-ben and Okinawa-ben have similar pitch accent, but Kansai-ben is totally different! And then Tokyo just has a very standard way of talking. So if you travel throughout Japan, you will see the different changes in pitch accent.
A foreigner speaking Japanese usually has inconsistent pitch accent, not particular to any Japanese dialect.
(Edit: what Soyoku U. said)
Yes but, Tokyo pitch accent is consistent within standard dialect. Kansai pitch accent is consistent within Kansai dialect, etc. Saying words with pitch accents from about 5 different regions in 2 minutes of talking is in no way the same as "having a different dialect". Nor is it the same as a Kansai person speaking standard dialect with a little bit of Kansai pitch accent sneaking in. It's often mixed in a very specific way that shows you're a native who grew up in Kansai and moved to Tokyo later on. A foreigner's pitch accent all over the place only gives the impression of a foreigner. So, your argument does not hold up.
Just being devils advocate: aren't examples of native speakers making these mistakes a better argument for pitch accent not mattering? In English I do the same to people, but I'm certainly doing it to bust balls. Regionally, pitch accent propensities will vary when making certain "mistakes", so people encounter those differences fairly often. I'd assume, it's the same as me teasing someone on how they pronounce words like "aunt", "caramel", "fruition", etc. I don't bring this up because I'm opposed to the pursuit of "perfection"; I would love for my Japanese to be indistinguishable from a native speakers'. If I'm to someday reach such a level, I wonder if I made any of the mistakes shown in this video, would it look as though I'm not working hard enough to others. Based on what context I can infer from these clips, mostly everyone's nitpicking for comedic purposes.
lol every language has a pich accent only that Chinese has and accent in every character instead of every word.
in Italian saying Ancora and saying anCOra are two different words with two totally different meanings
Pitch accent languages are actually relatively uncommon: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch-accent_language
You might be confusing pitch accent with stress accent.
this applies to natives tho, and even then the context makes it sound cute to everyone who is correcting them
Native Japanese speakers don't find it "cute" then other natives mess up pitch accent, they find it cringy.
@@mattvsjapan Actually a lot do. ask any Japanese dude if pitch accent is a deal breaker for that cute girl they like, they will tell you its a turn on. Same applies to non-natives
Most natives don't even consciously understand the difference between pitch accent and intonation; asking them something like that is meaningless lol. Yea, I think most guys wouldn't care if the girl they were into sucked at their native language. But personally, I want to sound competent, and now have errors in my speech distract from the message of what I am saying. If you also share this goal, pitch accent is a must.
@@3richie212 "a lot do"?? nnn. not really. and if u talking about the "cute girl" then thats already out of the matter
Japanese women are beautiful man. 😍😍😍
thats like picking at literally every non-native english speaker for not correctly saying pitches. So imo it doesn't matter xD
I internally cringe whenever I hear non-native English speakers mess up stress accent. I definitely wouldn't want to sound like that in Japanese
That's an opinion. A really negative one at that. Indians believe they speak English perfectly and Euro vs America's English are very different. So you cringe because of Asian accents or someone doesn't speak English your way?
I cringe when non-native speakers sound nothing like the linguistic variety that they are modeling their speech after
@@mattvsjapan it definitely depends how bad it is though?? there are many cases where it's so subtle you can hardly tell. and for the examples in this video it's literally so tiny that only native speakers who are purposely trying to make entertainment would pick it out.
@@suckkmycandles Of course it depends on how bad it is. And the examples in this video aren't tiny at all; they stick out like a sore thumb to Japanese people
The differences are audible just fine. I don't believe I can't learn relatively natural pitch accent from audio input. Maybe this is something that affects people that only speak English more than multilingual people.
Have you ever heard of a single foreign language learner of Japanese (started after age 13) who successfully picked up pitch accent without any active study? I haven't. But who knows, maybe you have outstanding talent which surpasses every learner of Japanese thus far
While I respect pitch accent, and certainly don't believe it's "not important"... let's be reasonable.
Pitch accent is not used in most Japanese music, and it's not as if everyone struggles to understand the lyrics. It's obviously a very different component of pronunciation compared to phonetics (like "light" vs "right" as someone mentioned).
It's easy to pick out, especially for natives, but it is not difficult to understand, and not on the same level of a thick foreign accent to a native English speaker's ear.
And of course, it's easy to poke fun, gloat, or hold over the heads of those who haven't mastered it. Like anything else.
Still. Do your best to speak the language as it is spoken.
Being understandable doesn't mean being correct.
@@agustinbarquero8898 Never did I claim the contrary
I have no trouble understand thick Chinese accent but I would rather they not have it. It's sorta the same with pitch accent. It's not critically important for comprehension but it gives them something to appreciate.
> "it's not as if everyone struggles to understand the lyrics"
um actually lyrics are harder to understand than natural conversational speech, and a big factor contributing to that is precisely the lack of pitch indication
(this applies to a lot of languages, regardless of whether they are stress/pitch-accent/tonal, not just Japanese)
HEHEH
くまモンは、熊本弁のアクセントだから、例外だな😅
This video would be like showing English learners clips of late night show hosts making fun of how Donald Trump speaks as proof you need to speak with a perfect English accent.
I didn't study one thing about pitch accent and graduated from uni in japanese studies with honors. I just listened carefully all those years how japanese people speak and how their manners, gestures, ways etc.. are when speaking. All japanese people understand me perfectly and my Japanese girlfriend also has no trouble understanding me at all. My advice: Just mimic what japanese speakers say instead of giving you an extra headache by studying this pitch accent thing
You can have a very thick accent and still be understandable, it doesn't mean you're pleasant to listen to. And even in English, where people are far more open and blunt about these things it's unlikely someone would call you out on a bad accent unless it was truly horrendous to the point of non-functionality, in Japan it's even less likely. Besides depending on how good you're natural ability is you might be mimicking pitch already fairly well right out the gate, which other people might not be able to do.
Obviously I don't know how well you actual pronunce the language; but my brother in christ unless you're literally so dog shit at the language that it's actually impossible to decipher your
gibberish no one, and certainly no one who is on familiar terms with you, is going to insult you but calling out your pronunciation.