pitch accent (not tones)

[kinoko]

it would be nice to have the dictionary/vocab lists/dialogue transcripts with marked high/low tones. like:
NAtsuko: koNNICHIWA! PIitaa wa GEnki DEsu KA?
PIitaa: waTASHI WA zekKOCHO DEsu yo.
Or maybe like:
Nátsuko: Konnichi wa! Píitaa wa Génki désu ká?
Píitaa: Watashi wa zekkócho désu yó.

sometimes you can tell easily, but sometimes, like in the case of tsugi, if you hear just the word alone, you can't tell whether it should be "tsuGI WA" or "tsuGI wa."

i hope you know what i mean!

[Bueller_007]

it would be nice to have the dictionary/vocab lists/dialogue transcripts with marked high/low tones. like:
NAtsuko: koNNICHIWA! PIitaa wa GEnki DEsu KA?
PIitaa: waTASHI WA zekKOCHO DEsu yo.
Or maybe like:
Nátsuko: Konnichi wa! Píitaa wa Génki désu ká?
Píitaa: Watashi wa zekkócho désu yó.

sometimes you can tell easily, but sometimes, like in the case of tsugi, if you hear just the word alone, you can't tell whether it should be "tsuGI WA" or "tsuGI wa."

i hope you know what i mean!

I think that'd be quite confusing.

[metablue]

I'd be really interested in hearing more about tones and what they mean. I've read that getting the tones right is really important if you don't want to have a foreign accent forever, but I've also heard people say that there are no tones in Japanese and that it sounds kind of flat. Then I have friends that have been learning for a while who had never heard of tones.

I don't think Japanese sounds flat at all. The women almost seem to sing. For that matter, how do men and women use tones differently? What do the tones mean? How are they used? Are they just a way of distinguishing words?

Laura

[kinoko]

i don't think it would be confusing, but quite on the contrary. with accents marked, you can read a sentence with words you've never heard perfectly. It would help out a lot for everyone's pronuncation... in my opinion, at least.

and i used the wrong term. the correct term is "pitch accent." chinese has tones, and im studying it, so i got it mixed up...

well, "tones" are just like emphasis in english. like, the émphasis is ón the áccented sýllables that i'm cúrrently týping[, but i'm nót so súre i'm réally márking it corréctly]. we have emphasis with syllable length and loudness, and sometimes pitch, but japanese pretty much just has pitch. it makes the difference between words like HAshi/chopsticks and haSHI/bridge, or Ame/rain and aME/candy. the capital syllables have a higher pitch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent

that explains it nicely.

as for men and women blah blah blah... i always hear men mumble and not distinguish the pitch as much as the women. i dunno if you'll sound girly if you distinguish the different pitches too much, though... any fluent person willing to answer this one better?

[Bueller_007]

i don't think it would be confusing, but quite on the contrary. with accents marked, you can read a sentence with words you've never heard perfectly. It would help out a lot for everyone's pronuncation... in my opinion, at least.

IMO, both of your methods of indicating tone make things much more difficult for both the reader and the writer.

#1. REAding A SENtence LIKE THIS IS A BIT disTRACting, esPEcially IF IT'S IN A FOreign LANguage. Plus, it takes more time to type that way.

#2. Accents like ´, are commonly used in European languages to indicate pronunciation, and in Asian languages to indicate tone. AFAIK, there's no precedence of their use in Hepburn romanization to indicate stress. People might get confused and think that the accent changes either the tone or the pronunciation of the syllable. (Plus, how would you put a stress accent on "kō" (こう), which already has one to indicate its length. (Computer typography doesn't allow two accents.))

The only non-intrusive system of writing stress that I've ever seen looked this:
　　＿
箸 - は|し (indicating stress on the "ha")

And I can't imagine that the jpod crew are going to go through every word and mark them like that. Nor would I want them to, as it doesn't seem to work as well in this font as it did in my old textbook.

No offense, but I think its quite unnecessary to write the stresses in the show notes, especially since the jpod cast speaks each of the words numerous times in the podcasts. If you have any syllable stress questions, you can just listen to the recording, no?

[kinoko]

I never said that "my" methods were the only way to go about this. I agree that the caps are a bit distracting, even. However, I think that the second method would work pretty well, and I've even seen it used in two books, one of which I actually own (Colloquial Japanese by H.D.B. Clark and Motoko Hamamura).

The way to get around the acute+macron problem is to just not use the macron, but instead use two vowels in a row, like sóo or sóu. No big deal if it's not standard Hepburn--it gets the job done. But even if the acute accent mark weren't ever used this way before, that's not a very good reason at all to avoid doing this. It would be really easy to note somewhere on the site what the accents are for.

And the problem with marking pitch this way
＿
箸 - は|し
is pretty obvious, and easy to fix. There is always a kana transcript in all of the notes, and the truth is, only one syllable per accented word really needs to be marked. So in the kana transcript, instead of the lines above and below, there only needs to be one kana underlined per accented word, like this:
はし
But you still don't even need to do that, since the roomaji version could be VERY easily marked if you set your keyboard like I have. I only need to press the ' key before I type a vowel to type anything like this: áéíóúý

And like I said in this thread's first post, it's not always that easy to tell which syllable the stress is on. In words like hashi (chopsticks) or nihon (Japan), it's easy to tell, but in words like koto and tsugi (next), you can't properly learn the accent unless the word is followed by a particle. Underlining the low-pitch syllables, 「つぎの　キ[/u]ーワードは...」 is incorrect. The correct way would be 「つぎの　キーワードは...」, with a low "no." But if you had only heard the word tsugi by itself before, you wouldn't know which one to say, because, without a particle after it, you can't tell.

If a word with no or final-syllable accent in a cast isn't used with a particle, even while listening, you can't tell. I still firmly believe that accent marks (maybe just optionally) would make lots of people happy, and improve the accents of anyone who listens to this podcast.

[monkeyjay]

I think that tones are super interesting. I have a healthy interest in accents, and being able to speak japanese like a native would be awesome! I cannot however think of an easy to read, easy to type, method of doing this. :'(

I have also heard that japanese is flat, but I think that is a fallacy based on the fact that syllables aren't STRESSED like in english. but they do have tonal differences that much is obvious if you listen to any spoken japanese. They don't sound like robots! Except the japanese robots.

I read a little about it and the tokyo dialect is what most of the tonal practice is based on. (the hashi, hashi = bridge, chopsticks example is the most common one I've found)

be interesting to see if there is a quick to develop way of showing these, or if it's just going to be one of those things you have to pick up!

[Bueller_007]

The way to get around the acute+macron problem is to just not use the macron, but instead use two vowels in a row, like sóo or sóu. No big deal if it's not standard Hepburn--it gets the job done. But even if the acute accent mark weren't ever used this way before, that's not a very good reason at all to avoid doing this. It would be really easy to note somewhere on the site what the accents are for.

So 大阪 becomes Óosaka. And "rōmaji" becomes "róomaji". Doesn't that look like it should be pronounced like the "oo" in "cool"?

...the roomaji version could be VERY easily marked if you set your keyboard like I have. I only need to press the ' key before I type a vowel to type anything like this: áéíóúý

Yes, my keyboard is set up the same. But it still slows me down considerably if I have to type the stresses, because I have to stop and think--"Was that right?"--and run over the word a few times in my mind to make sure. This problem would be even worse for Japanese, because pitch accent is non-standard. ("Did I just write that in Osaka dialect or Tokyo Dialect?") And it would make creating the show notes virtually impossible for jpod crew who are native english speakers.

And like I said in this thread's first post, it's not always that easy to tell which syllable the stress is on. In words like hashi (chopsticks) or nihon (Japan), it's easy to tell, but in words like koto and tsugi (next), you can't properly learn the accent unless the word is followed by a particle.

Isn't it more important to copy their pronunciation? I would argue that in words where "you can't tell" where the accent falls, the accent isn't very important. And actually, I would say it's not very important anyway. There are so many synonyms in Japanese that they're used to having a big pile of words with the same pronunciation and stress thrown at them. The proper word is inferred from context.

I've only ever had stress cause understanding problems in one word: 布団 ("futon"), which in Japanese is stressed on "ton", but in English is stressed on "fu". Say it to them as FUton, and they don't have a damn clue what you're talking about.

But pitch accent isn't even uniform across Japan, so I don't worry about trying to lose my "foreign accent". If someone were to criticize me, I'd just tell them it was Kagoshima dialect, which most Japanese can't understand. Obviously a lie, but a cute joke if you can mix some real Kagoshima-ben in there with it.

[Jason]

I agree with Bueller-san. It would be too much sugar for a dime.

[metablue]

I think it'd be useful. You can hear the tones when the cast do the yukkuri, but they're not made explicit. Some people probably don't pick them up. Japanese has so many words that sound the same (that's got to be the most difficult part of learning Japanese, not kanji). If tones are used to tell them apart, then I'd like to know about them. I've already had lots of misunderstandings on my Nihongo chatroom at work because there are no tones in typing. ima (now) vs ima (livingroom). butsu (my mispelling of boots) vs butsu (thing) vs butsu (all the other meanings). And others that I've forgotten.

Bueller, I don't like "roomaji" either, I can't not read that as an "ooooooo", but "roumaji" is fine.

Laura

[kinoko]

I don't have the roomaji problem. My reading mind goes into a different mode or something when I'm not reading English. And so many people use roumaji that it wouldn't bother them.

I'm perfectly aware that pitch accent differs across the country, but I know that I'm trying to learn one dialect, the standard Tokyo one, and I want to make it sound as good as possible. Also, there are such things as dictionaries with pitch accent markings, you know. If Peter's the only one typing them, then he can use that. But he DOES live among a bunch of Tokyo-ben speakers, so he probably won't even need to use that.

Even if a bunch of people or even the majority wouldn't care, the option of pitch accent markings would help lots of people who want to speak GREAT Japanese, and it's as easy as marking lesson notes with a few lines!

[sierra]

I just started reading this and at first I had no idea what you were talking about. I've lived in Japan for two years now and the amount of times "pitch accents" have come up in conversation I need less than one hand to count. There are a few confusing words like はし and あめ but the majority of words you do not need to worry about. I think they are distracting and a huge waste of time for the cast. A quick mention in the show when a confusing word comes up is all I'd need or want.

[metablue]

Aha! See, you can live there for 2 years and still miss them. Perhaps you're a lucky person who can just pick them up implicitly by listening, without even being aware of it, but what about the people whose brains don't work that way? The ones who don't have such a good ear? This is exactly why I think they should mention pitch accent on the show.

There's another thread somewhere where it was suggested that they just mark the pitch accent on the vocabulary words, rather than putting in the transcript itself. People seemed to agree that was a good compromise.

[sierra]

I wouldn't say I've missed them---I think the fact that I've lived here for some time and I've only been misunderstood/corrected a couple of times reinforces my reasoning for thinking it's a waste of the cast's time to put them on every word.

If you need them at all, I suppose the vocabulary section is the better place to put them, but seeing as how most of us in the forum won't be the ones going through and tediously re-typing the words, it's easy for us to say, "We need them!"

I agree that a show about pitch tones could be very helpful. Just making people aware of them is important, but I believe some people are blowing their importance out of proportion. I understand that we all learn differently and put emphasis on different things, so I believe it's blown out of proportion. I'm interested to know how many more examples you can think of (besides はし、あめ、つぎ) where miss-pronouncing them means a different word?

Someone who sincerely believes it's so important should volunteer their time to type them up every day!

[Jason]

I still agree that it would be a massive waste of time when you consider how much work it would be versus how much good would actually come out of it. I mean, if native speakers don't care about it 99% of the time, what's the point? I don't remember if I mentioned this already or not, but in 3 years of class we never discussed pitch accent once. I think Jpod101's purpose is to help you be functional in Japanese, not make you sound like a native speaker. The only way to do that is to live there long enough. Now, if Jpod had a massive staff so they could dedicate someone to working solely on pitch accents, maybe. But the amount of work it would take would severely cut into the time they have to spend on the content that's really important.

Another thing is that even if you mispronounce one of the "tricky words", it should be clear from the sentence context what you're talking about. They'll know what you meant to say even if you didn't say it quite right.