In this lesson you will learn about Japanese pitch accent. This is a pretty advanced topic, and it varies largely by dialect.
It is often said that Japanese is just spoken out with flat sounds, without tonal changes or pitch. This is actually pretty close to the truth, as you will make your way with flat sounds in most cases. However, there are some cases when words with the same spelling are indicating different words, just by changing the pitch accent.
This lesson shows a few examples of how common words are pronounced in Tokyo dialect. Just beware that the pitch does vary a lot around the country. As wrong pitch is a sure sign of a gaijin, beginners are strongly recommended to keep the general pitch as flat as possible.
Listen
Listen to and compare the sounds in the following table of examples, going from left to right, one row at a time. The part of the word with accent is underlined in the romaji spelling.
this is a bit confusing pleasa help!!!!! Written by japanese noob, on 30-10-2008 13:47 i dont get this lesson
yuki Written by tony, on 21-08-2008 16:59 Oh-- and how about 行き and 雪 ?
kumo Written by tony, on 21-08-2008 16:57 Do 雲 (cloud) and 蜘蛛 (spider) have different pitch accents?
Arigato Written by Marcus, on 30-05-2008 13:36 These pitch accents really help me. I feel like I'm learning so much from this site.
more examples Written by johan, on 22-05-2008 20:01 Hi, it's good to see that many comments and wishes immediately after I published the article. I think it will take a while until we take the next recording session to expand on pitch accent, as it is a pretty advanced topic in such. But thanks for all ideas, I will put them on the todo list!!
hashi Written by tony, on 22-05-2008 19:39 I forgot this earlier-- could you also record the difference between 橋に and 端に so that we hear the difference between a word with the last syllable accented, and a word with no pitch accent, please? Thanks.
Reference list Written by tony, on 22-05-2008 15:20 The recordings are great, but obviously you can only do a limited number of these. It would also be helpful to have a reference list of words in which the pitch accent is not on the second syllable. Such lists are hard to find.
どうもありがとう！ A+ Written by anni, on 22-05-2008 14:33 This article rocks! I think if I practice this once per day, I will finally be able to separate "ame" and "ame" so I won't say "I love it when candy falls from the sky" any longer!
Please add things like "hana" and "hana" and keep expanding the list! (Though it may eventually not all fit on one page... I think that would be even better!)
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