Japanese Pitch Accent, The Son of, Ni-ban
Dewey, Chetham & Howe
get access to 2 hours per week of tutoring. The young lady who is
doing the tutoring comes from Shikoku (I asked her where she's from so
that I could learn to differentiate whatever accent she may have.)
She's been correcting me especially on pitch accent. She says that
where she's from, there are three levels of tone -- normal, medium and
high.
Textbooks and other study and reference materials have very little
information on Japanese pitch accent.
How important is pitch accent? I know the difference between HAshi
and haSHI (and 'haSHI GA', for that matter,) but how important is some
level of skill with pitch accent? Will I be totally misunderstood, or
just easily identified as a gaijin (assuming I'm talking over a phone
or intercom?)
Any advice on how to acquire the 'ear' for it? Try as I might, it's
almost impossible to hear as such. Because pitch is used as an
additional 'emotional/expressive' channel in English speech, it's hard
to turn that function off and discern the pitch modulations that have
semantic meaning.
Are there really more than two pitch levels? More than 3?
--
Warren J. Savage
'pas de lieu Rhone qui nous'
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Sean Holland
at deweyc...@NOTpacbell.net wrote on 9/23/02 5:59 PM:
> One of the nice things about taking Japanese at a college is that I
> get access to 2 hours per week of tutoring. The young lady who is
> doing the tutoring comes from Shikoku (I asked her where she's from so
> that I could learn to differentiate whatever accent she may have.)
>
> She's been correcting me especially on pitch accent. She says that
> where she's from, there are three levels of tone -- normal, medium and
> high.
>
> Textbooks and other study and reference materials have very little
> information on Japanese pitch accent.
>
> How important is pitch accent? I know the difference between HAshi
> and haSHI (and 'haSHI GA', for that matter,) but how important is some
> level of skill with pitch accent? Will I be totally misunderstood, or
> just easily identified as a gaijin (assuming I'm talking over a phone
> or intercom?)
>
> Any advice on how to acquire the 'ear' for it? Try as I might, it's
> almost impossible to hear as such. Because pitch is used as an
> additional 'emotional/expressive' channel in English speech, it's hard
> to turn that function off and discern the pitch modulations that have
> semantic meaning.
>
> Are there really more than two pitch levels? More than 3?
>
Oh boy. There's some folks in here really love that stuff. HHHLLLHHLL...ugh.
But now they'll have to do HHHMMLL. Colin (Collin?) and Bart will have a
field day.
Charles Eicher
...
>Any advice on how to acquire the 'ear' for it? Try as I might, it's
>almost impossible to hear as such. Because pitch is used as an
>additional 'emotional/expressive' channel in English speech, it's hard
>to turn that function off and discern the pitch modulations that have
>semantic meaning.
I am of the "osmosis" school of pitch accent learning, I figure that with enough
exposure, you absorb this without realizing it (and hopefully without spending
too much effort working at it). You tend to unconsciously mirror the speech
patterns and rhythm of the people you interact with. You're lucky to have a
native speaker to practice with. You can progress a lot more rapidly when you
have someone who can correct your pronunciation, live and interactive.
>
>Are there really more than two pitch levels? More than 3?
If there are more than 3, I don't want to hear about it. I have enough trouble
as it is.
Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson
<deweyc...@NOTpacbell.net> wrote:
>One of the nice things about taking Japanese at a college is that I
>get access to 2 hours per week of tutoring. The young lady who is
>doing the tutoring comes from Shikoku (I asked her where she's from so
>that I could learn to differentiate whatever accent she may have.)
>
>She's been correcting me especially on pitch accent. She says that
>where she's from, there are three levels of tone -- normal, medium and
>high.
>
>Textbooks and other study and reference materials have very little
>information on Japanese pitch accent.
>
>How important is pitch accent? I know the difference between HAshi
>and haSHI (and 'haSHI GA', for that matter,) but how important is some
>level of skill with pitch accent?
The official NHK Japanese accent differs from the Kansai accent, my
area, and when I've talked to Japanese people about it, they often say
it's very important, but can never remember it correctly themselves...
My wife trained as a singer, so she's got a dictionary full of HLLHs
only, but for the life of me I can't hear the difference well enough
to be able to reproduce it with anything!
>Will I be totally misunderstood, or
>just easily identified as a gaijin (assuming I'm talking over a phone
>or intercom?)
Whatever you do, you will be identified as a gaijin, so you could be
unlucky and get the frequent situation of people who can't hear
anything you say - or that could just be me!
>Any advice on how to acquire the 'ear' for it? Try as I might, it's
>almost impossible to hear as such. Because pitch is used as an
>additional 'emotional/expressive' channel in English speech, it's hard
>to turn that function off and discern the pitch modulations that have
>semantic meaning.
Actually, I did have one real example that I managed to change my
delivery, but I'm not sure if it was a HLHLH thing or not. I would
often talk about kita-ku (LHL?) (north district) and people would just
go blank and not understand, until I copied other people who pronounce
the word more like ki-taku (HLL?), now everyone understands.
>Are there really more than two pitch levels? More than 3?
Search me mate - I'm tone deaf for most of these things.
Ken
Kevin Gowen
> On Mon, 23 Sep 2002 17:59:12 -0700, "Dewey, Chetham & Howe"
> <deweyc...@NOTpacbell.net> wrote:
>> Will I be totally misunderstood, or
>> just easily identified as a gaijin (assuming I'm talking over a phone
>> or intercom?)
>
> Whatever you do, you will be identified as a gaijin, so you could be
> unlucky and get the frequent situation of people who can't hear
> anything you say - or that could just be me!
This has not been my experience. I have been taken for a NSoJ on the phone.
One instance that comes to mind was when I called the local driver license
bureau to set up an appointment for a driving test. After going through a
menu system and a few transfers, I finally got to speak to the person in
charge of such things. I asked him when I could take the test and what sort
of documentation I would need to bring with me. He started asking me about
what driving school I went to and so on, and I finally told him that I
thought that all I needed was my alien registration card and a translated
copy of my license. "What? You're not Japanese?"
>> Any advice on how to acquire the 'ear' for it? Try as I might, it's
>> almost impossible to hear as such. Because pitch is used as an
>> additional 'emotional/expressive' channel in English speech, it's
>> hard to turn that function off and discern the pitch modulations
>> that have semantic meaning.
>
> Actually, I did have one real example that I managed to change my
> delivery, but I'm not sure if it was a HLHLH thing or not. I would
> often talk about kita-ku (LHL?) (north district) and people would just
> go blank and not understand, until I copied other people who pronounce
> the word more like ki-taku (HLL?), now everyone understands.
What is the deal with HLLH? I had never encountered it until I started
reading this group.
--
Kevin Gowen ケビン・ゴーエン
FSU College of Law 佛勒里達州立大學法學部
Dennis Wheeler
>
> What is the deal with HLLH? I had never encountered it until I started
> reading this group.
Here's a description from Takasugi-san's site:
http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/phoneme.html#accent
I don't completely understand it yet myself either.
For example, I can never remember how to say "hashi" to mean bridge,
or chopsticks, but I've been told that it's the exact opposite
accent/pitch between the Kansai and Tokyo dialects.
Kevin Gowen
> "Kevin Gowen" <kgowen...@myrealbox.com> wrote in message
> news:<amptqh$7ubge$1...@ID-105084.news.dfncis.de>...
>>
>> What is the deal with HLLH? I had never encountered it until I
>> started reading this group.
>
> Here's a description from Takasugi-san's site:
> http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/phoneme.html#accent
>
> I don't completely understand it yet myself either.
I understand that Japanese has tonal accents. It's just that in seven years
of studying Japanese I have never felt the need to diagram these accents
with LHLH.
> For example, I can never remember how to say "hashi" to mean bridge,
> or chopsticks, but I've been told that it's the exact opposite
> accent/pitch between the Kansai and Tokyo dialects.
"Ame" for "candy"/"rain" is another commonly cited example.
Chris Kern
wa kore wo kakimashita:
>"Ame" for "candy"/"rain" is another commonly cited example.
Perhaps if I had been able to tell those apart I wouldn't have taken
"ame no REI" as a "rain ghost".
-Chis
Kevin Wayne Williams
Well, since Japanese is a deformed language, maybe we should come up
with a way for that dreaded kanji visualisation to propagate from
speaker to listener.Maybe we should all signal the JIS Code with our
fingers while we speak.
KWW
Kevin Gowen
This is why I always carried an Etch-A-Sketch when I lived in Japan.
> KWW
Bart Mathias
> Actually, I did have one real example that I managed to change my
> delivery, but I'm not sure if it was a HLHLH thing or not. I would
> often talk about kita-ku (LHL?) (north district) and people would
> just go blank and not understand, until I copied other people who
> pronounce the word more like ki-taku (HLL?), now everyone
> understands.
Must have been the other way around. All ward names, when the "-ku"
is attached, are accented on the preceding syllable by speakers of
eastern dialects (which include Tokyo dialect[s]), so the "ta" is H
and the "ku" is L.
> >Are there really more than two pitch levels? More than 3?
> Search me mate - I'm tone deaf for most of these things.
Bart
Bart Mathias
> One of the nice things about taking Japanese at a college is that I
> get access to 2 hours per week of tutoring. The young lady who is
> doing the tutoring comes from Shikoku [...].
> She's been correcting me especially on pitch accent. She says that
> where she's from, there are three levels of tone -- normal, medium
> and high.
It depends on what part of Shikoku she's from. Most of Shikoku has
"Kyoto-style" accent, which is a bit more complicated than
"Tokyo-style" accent, which is to say word accent doesn't depend
entirely on the location of a significant drop in pitch level.
But the southwest part of Kochi, and perhaps Ehime, have Tokyo-style,
according to my reference.
Phonetically speaking, the sense that a given mora occurs on one
pitch and another mora on a different pitch, is by-and-large an
illusion. Pitch makes contours over words and phrases, and there are
no instantaneous rises or drops.
Phonemically speaking, probably all dialects (even those that don't
have word accent at all) can probably be described in terms of two
pitches, high and low. "Low," however, has two allophones--depending
on where a low occurs, it may be more or less low (compared to a high
or a low in another environment). This led linguists to a
"sandankan" (or "sandansetsu"? I don't remember for sure--"three
step view/theory," anyway) of Tokyo-style accent.
The "LH" stuff that appears in this NG so often is both potentially
ambiguous and overkill. The best way to mark Tokyo-style accent
would be with an accent mark on the vowel that precedes (actually,
"begins") a drop in pitch. Accent marks in this NG, however, turn to
Japanese characters on many people's screens, so the next best thing
is probably to put "|" after the last "H" vowel. (Note this does not
work for Kyoto-style accent, which is, so-to-speak, two dimensional.)
> How important is pitch accent? I know the difference between HAshi
> and haSHI (and 'haSHI GA', for that matter,) but how important is
> some level of skill with pitch accent? Will I be totally
> misunderstood, or just easily identified as a gaijin (assuming I'm
> talking over a phone or intercom?)
Hard to say. Probably not all that important, although there are
anecdotes about people from one part of the country being
misunderstood in amusing ways in another part of the country.
Certainly in Tokyo, native Japanese from all over the country manage
to get along without changing their accent. One would suppose that
just about everything would be expected, let alone tolerated, from
people who don't look like they might be native Japanese.
On the other hand, I have been corrected over and over again during
my attempts to speak Japanese, and not only by my wife (who is often
wrong, anyway). Sometimes it's because I was misunderstood, like
once I called a kettle a turtle (ka|me instead of kame|) in a context
where "turtle" might have almost made sense (as is pretty well known
in this NG, my Japanese is of the sort that "almost makes sense"
anyway). Sometimes it was just because a cranky person wanted to
complain, I think.
> Any advice on how to acquire the 'ear' for it? Try as I might,
> it's almost impossible to hear as such. Because pitch is used as
> an additional 'emotional/expressive' channel in English speech,
> it's hard to turn that function off and discern the pitch
> modulations that have semantic meaning.
Right. The same thing can happen when you try to learn Mandarin,
where 4th tone sounds like "Yeah!" and second tone like "You sure?"
and so on.
I haven't yet developed an "ear" for it, although I found it pretty
easy early on (1956) when I was studying with Linguaphone. In real
life when I ask someone how a word is pronounced, I find that I
frequently have trouble distinguishing words of more than two moras
and accent on the next-to-last mora from words with no (audible)
accent, but I can't figure out why. But I'm still not willing to
give up.
> Are there really more than two pitch levels? More than 3?
Just in case my long answer above was too much to wade through,
here's the short version: Yes and no.
By the way, are you a bunch of lawyers or something?
Bart
rose
Kevin Gowen wrote:
>
> Kevin Wayne Williams wrote:
> > Well, since Japanese is a deformed language, maybe we should come up
> > with a way for that dreaded kanji visualisation to propagate from
> > speaker to listener.Maybe we should all signal the JIS Code with our
> > fingers while we speak.
>
> This is why I always carried an Etch-A-Sketch when I lived in Japan.
わはははは！ うけた。。
□■ <:３ ）～
■楽猫 <:３ ）～
Kevin Wayne Williams
If you truly wanted to do it Japanese style, you would do it with a
great big calculator. If the person you were talking to was white, you
would refuse to speak, and only display the number.
KWW
Kevin Gowen
That bullshit was one of my biggest pet peeves. I would immediately hit the
"clear" button and then pay up, using exact change if possible while
repeating the amount of the charge.
Kevin Gowen
Now, how about that sexual vanilla?
>
>
> □■ <:３ ）～
> ■楽猫 <:３ ）～
rose
Kevin Gowen wrote:
>
> rose wrote:
> > Kevin Gowen wrote:
> >>
> >> Kevin Wayne Williams wrote:
> >>> Well, since Japanese is a deformed language, maybe we should come up
> >>> with a way for that dreaded kanji visualisation to propagate from
> >>> speaker to listener.Maybe we should all signal the JIS Code with our
> >>> fingers while we speak.
> >>
> >> This is why I always carried an Etch-A-Sketch when I lived in Japan.
> >
> > わはははは！ うけた。。
>
> Now, how about that sexual vanilla?
それは受けません。 ￣ｍ￣）
□■ <:３ ）～
■楽猫 <:３ ）～
Hirofumi Nagamura
>
> For example, I can never remember how to say "hashi" to mean bridge,
> or chopsticks, but I've been told that it's the exact opposite
> accent/pitch between the Kansai and Tokyo dialects.
According to an introductory text I have on hand, two-mora nouns can
be classified into five groups, whose membership is mostly consistent
between the two dialects:
Group Kantoo Kansai Examples
-------------------------------------------------
I LH(H) HH ume, kao, ushi, kaze, kabe
II LH(L) HL oto, tera, ishi, uta, tabi
III LH(L) HL ashi, ike, inu, iro, kutsu
IV HL LH ine, sora, umi, obi, hari
V HL LHL haru, oke, ayu, koe, saru
(The "(H)" and "(L)" denote the pitch of the following particle.)
Groups II and III are distinguished for historical reasons only.
Group V is distinguished in certain varieties of Kansai dialect --
such as the Kyoto dialect -- by a little drop in pitch at the end. In
other varieties (such as mine), it's the same as Group IV.
"Hashi" for "bridge" falls into Group II, "hashi" for "chopsticks"
into Group IV, and "hashi" for "edge" into (I believe) Group I.
Cheers,
--
Hirofumi Nagamura
Freelance technical translator
Kobe, Japan
Kevin Gowen
Don't be 食わず嫌い。
rose
Kevin Gowen wrote:
>
> >> Now, how about that sexual vanilla?
> >
> > それは受けません。 ￣ｍ￣）
>
> Don't be 食わず嫌い。
いや。食っても嫌いだと思います。（爆
□■ <:３ ）～
■楽猫 <:３ ）～
Kevin Gowen
> Kevin Gowen wrote:
>>
>>>> Now, how about that sexual vanilla?
>>>
>>> それは受けません。 ￣ｍ￣）
>>
>> Don't be 食わず嫌い。
>
> いや。食っても嫌いだと思います。（爆
Ｒｏｓｅ、淑女は「食う」と言えない。
rose
Kevin Gowen wrote:
>
> >>>> Now, how about that sexual vanilla?
> >>>
> >>> それは受けません。 ￣ｍ￣）
> >>
> >> Don't be 食わず嫌い。
> >
> > いや。食っても嫌いだと思います。（爆
>
> Ｒｏｓｅ、淑女は「食う」と言えない。
紳士もバニラの話はしないと思います。（￣～￣
□■ <:３ ）～
■楽猫 <:３ ）～
Kevin Gowen
> Kevin Gowen wrote:
>>
>>>>>> Now, how about that sexual vanilla?
>>>>>
>>>>> それは受けません。 ￣ｍ￣）
>>>>
>>>> Don't be 食わず嫌い。
>>>
>>> いや。食っても嫌いだと思います。（爆
>>
>> Ｒｏｓｅ、淑女は「食う」と言えない。
>
> 紳士もバニラの話はしないと思います。（￣～￣
よく言った。
rose
Kevin Gowen wrote:
>
> >>>>>> Now, how about that sexual vanilla?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> それは受けません。 ￣ｍ￣）
> >>>>
> >>>> Don't be 食わず嫌い。
> >>>
> >>> いや。食っても嫌いだと思います。（爆
> >>
> >> Ｒｏｓｅ、淑女は「食う」と言えない。
> >
> > 紳士もバニラの話はしないと思います。（￣～￣
>
> よく言った。
どうも。。（・＿・；ゞ
□■ <:３ ）～
■楽猫 <:３ ）～
Dewey, Chetham & Howe
wrote:
>> She's been correcting me especially on pitch accent. She says that
>> where she's from, there are three levels of tone -- normal, medium
>> and high.
>
>It depends on what part of Shikoku she's from. Most of Shikoku has
>"Kyoto-style" accent, which is a bit more complicated than
>"Tokyo-style" accent, which is to say word accent doesn't depend
>entirely on the location of a significant drop in pitch level.
She specifically said that where she grew up, people speak with a
Kyoto accent. But she also said that she was
speaking/tutoring/correcting with a Tokyo accent. I decided to ask my
question to this group after she said that there were 3 pitch levels
-- something not mentioned in any of my texts/references.
Another thing that she was instructing me to do is to raise/lower the
pitch while vocalizing the mora. In fact, she said that most of the
time I should make the pitch rise and fall on the vowel sounds (kind
of like a roller-coaster.) It should only jump up/down during
voiceless i/u or doubled consonants.
Not that I mind, but if I'm being instructed in Kansai-style speaking,
I'd like to know.
<snip - the rest of the interesting post -- good stuff there that'll
come in handy as my skill increases. then on to...>
>> Are there really more than two pitch levels? More than 3?
>
>Just in case my long answer above was too much to wade through,
>here's the short version: Yes and no.
>
>By the way, are you a bunch of lawyers or something?
'Lawyers'? Why? (is this a 'WOOSH'? (Probably is, now...))
--
Warren J. Savage
'pas de lieu Rhône qui nous'
Ken Masuyama
> "Dewey, Chetham & Howe" writes:
......
> > How important is pitch accent? I know the difference between HAshi
> > and haSHI (and 'haSHI GA', for that matter,) but how important is
> > some level of skill with pitch accent? Will I be totally
> > misunderstood, or just easily identified as a gaijin (assuming I'm
> > talking over a phone or intercom?)
>
> Hard to say. Probably not all that important, although there are
> anecdotes about people from one part of the country being
> misunderstood in amusing ways in another part of the country.
1. 鹿児島の高校の生徒だったときの話。健康診断で, 医者に「下を(LHL)向い
て」と言われた島根出身の友人は舌を剥き出したそうです。
2. 東京で, 私が池の葦を(LHL)刈りに行く, と言ったら, 足を刈りに行くのだ
と誤解されて驚かれました。
--
massangeana (Ken Masuyama)
Marcus Mas
I've never been to Japan, but could you explain the deal with the calculator
that many people mention in this group?
>
> > KWW
>
> --
> Kevin Gowen ケビン・ゴーエン
> FSU College of Law 佛勒里達州立大學法學部
--
Marcus Mas
alfonskranz
"Marcus Mas" <SSFF...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ams31c$gce$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net...
> I've never been to Japan, but could you explain the deal with the
calculator
> that many people mention in this group?
Japanese salespeople who assume you don't understand any Japanese at all
show you
the prices of things on their calculators.
Only happened to me on a trip to China though (and I really needed it
there). But then I stayed in Japan
only four weeks...
Kevin Wayne Williams
>
> I've never been to Japan, but could you explain the deal with the calculator
> that many people mention in this group?
Many shopkeepers calculate the cost of your purchase on a 10-key
calculator ... a very old-fashioned looking thing with a large display.
For Japanese customers, they will then announce the total. For the rest
of us,they just jam the calculator display in our face.
It's annoying, but one of those easily forestalled things. If you make
polite small talk in Japanese while you are making your purchase, they
will frequently speak back.
KWW
Dale Walker
It doesn't bother me at all. I live in a part of London where the
majority of shopkeepers come from different parts of the world, so
even in my own street, I have to look at the cash register to see how
much they're charging me as I often cannot decypher the broken English
with heavy Turkish/Bangladeshi/Vietnamese accent.
-------------------------------------------------------------
| Dale Walker London Techno Events Saiko! |
| da...@sorted.org lon...@sorted.org sa...@sorted.org |
| London, UK london.sorted.org saiko.sorted.org |
-------------------------------------------------------------
Marcus Mas
news:3D91B6D1...@paxonet.kom...
Oh, I see. If they just showed me the price, I wouldn't think it's
annoying. But if they were to "jam" it in my face, as you say, then I would
have to say that it would be annoying.
>
> KWW
--
Marcus Mas
Kevin Wayne Williams
>
> Oh, I see. If they just showed me the price, I wouldn't think it's
> annoying. But if they were to "jam" it in my face, as you say, then I would
> have to say that it would be annoying.
It's the resolute silence that is annoying. It is hard to tell the
difference between "he probably won't understand me, so I won't talk"
and "he isn't worth talking to, so I won't talk." If it is the former,
the small talk fixes it. If it is the latter, it is infuriating, not
annoying.
KWW
Jim Breen
>>It's annoying, but one of those easily forestalled things. If you make
>>polite small talk in Japanese while you are making your purchase, they
>>will frequently speak back.
My attempts at that, e.g. in Kinokuniya in Shinjuku, were a dismal failure.
The calculator-shovers, having shoved, just ignored me and concentrated
on small talk with the other sales-staff.
When it comes to politeness and small talk, the people serving in the
shops around Arakawa were streets ahead, but then I guess they don't have
to deal with gaijin bellowing: "How much is that in dollars?".
--
Jim Breen (j.b...@csse.monash.edu.au http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/)
Computer Science & Software Engineering, Tel: +61 3 9905 3298
P.O Box 26, Monash University, Clayton VIC 3800 Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
Australia (Monash Provider No. 00008C) ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学
Bart Mathias
"down" and "ashi" = "reed" being misunderstood as "tongue" and "leg"
respectively by speakers of Tokyo-style dialects, which I hope
everyone saw because I don't feel like fixing the JIS of this
response the output queue.
The Kagoshima accent ought to be the second easiest to learn.
Although my source lists it as "Kyoto-type" (technically,
"keihanshiki" = "Kyoto-Osaka-type"), presumably because you don't
have to change pitch between the first and second moras (i.e., LL...
is OK), in fact where Kyoto-Osaka could have any of four accent
patterns on a noun of "(C)VCV" shape (Tokyo could have three),
Kagoshima apparently has only two, and this applies generally to all
words of (C)VCV(...) shape, namely A) all moras except the
next-to-last one are low and B) all moras are low except the last
one; for just (C)V--no particles attached--it's "\" and "/" contours
respectively (with particle, H-L, L-H).
When two vowels come in a row, or an intervening consonant is
lenited, it seems other things happen that could probably be handled
with some sort of "syllable" rule. Examples in my book are: "ikai,
ikai-ga" = "anchor," HLL and LHH-L (instead of LLH-L), and "iwashi,
iwahi-ga [sic]," ditto.
A very interesting form of Japanese do they speak in Kagoshima.
Bart