Pitch Accent | Learn Japanese for free

Pitch accent is when an accent becomes distinct from others by highlighting some Morae (syllables) over others. This can be found in the review series for the Phonology dissertation for further reading. Or in other words, the section for learning dialects if you want that for some reason and the way Japanese speakers get around comprehending the right words when they use the same reading, but mean different things.

 For the summary from our friend Wikipedia: For instance, the word for "river" is [ka.waꜜ] in the Tokyo dialect, with the accent on the second mora, but in the Kansai dialect it is [kaꜜ.wa]. A final [i] or [ɯ] is often devoiced to [i̥] or [ɯ̥] after a downstep and an unvoiced consonant. [1]

The Japanese word is Koutei Akusento ( High-low accent | 高低アクセント ), which is different to Kyoujaku Akusento ( Strong-Weak Accent | 強弱アクセント ) which is when you have stress on a word, think a plosive or a really heavy stress in a language. Some people might say English has this featured type of accent. The Yamanote accent is considered the Received Pronunciation of Japan, and can be heard in things like news broadcasts. Please do not feel any pressure to follow this 'standard', as it will earn you any respect in these quarters to do so.

A mora is a phonological unit which measures syllable weight or sounds produced after short pauses in a syllabic noise (See ima, where the mora is the \ point).

Dialect refers to the local accent a Japanese speaker may hold.

Dialect Flucatuations

Japanese Pitch Accent Map (2013, CC3.0) Henlly

Pitch-accent systems of Japanese. Blues: Tokyo type. Yellow-orange: Kyoto–Osaka (Keihan) type. Pink: Two-pattern accent. White: No accent. Speckled areas are ambiguous.

Accents and tones greatly vary across Japan. Many dialects that are like Tokyo can be found in  Hokkaido, northern Tohoku, most of Kanto, most of Chūbu, Chūgoku and northeastern Kyushu. Most of these are high tones or Heiban, or Downstep plus low tone. 

Tohoku and Tottori though use low tones for unaccented words, and very high for accented syllables (Oitaka) like in English stress intonation. The Downstep here indicates something else at times.

Keihan (Kyoto–Osaka)-type dialects of Kansai and Shikoku have nouns with both patterns: That is, they have tone differences in unaccented as well as accented words, and both downstep in some high-tone words and a high-tone accent in some low-tone words. In the neighboring areas of Tokyo-type and Keihan-type such as parts of Kyushu, northeastern Kanto, southern Tohoku, around Fukui, around Ōzu in Ehime and elsewhere, nouns are not accented at all.[1]

Funky pronunciation

There is a component of Japanese which changes the types of meaning by changing the inflection (where we change how high or low in a word the pitch/syllable noie goes). See the audio file and accompanying table below for example:

Listen to Me!

Japanese Pitch Accent Demonstration (2008, CC3.0) Benjamin Mako Hill, Mika Matsuzaki

Romanization	Accent on first mora			Accent on second mora			Accentless
hashi はし	/haꜜsi/ [háɕì] háshì	箸	chopsticks	/hasiꜜ/ [hàɕí] hàshí	橋	bridge	/hasi/ [hàɕí] hàshí	端	edge
hashi-ni はしに	/haꜜsini/ [háɕìɲì] háshì-nì	箸に	at the chopsticks	/hasiꜜni/ [hàɕíɲì] hàshí-nì	橋に	at the bridge	/hasini/ [hàɕīɲī] hàshi-ni	端に	at the edge
ima いま	/iꜜma/ [ímà] ímà	今	now	/imaꜜ/ [ìmá] ìmá	居間	living room
kaki かき	/kaꜜki/ [kákì] kákì	牡蠣	oyster	/kakiꜜ/ [kàkí] kàkí	垣	fence	/kaki/ [kàkí] kàkí	柿	persimmon
kaki-ni かきに	/kaꜜkini/ [kákìɲì] kákì-nì	牡蠣に	at the oyster	/kakiꜜni/ [kàkíɲì] kàkí-nì	垣に	at the fence	/kakini/ [kàkīɲī] kàki-ni	柿に	at the persimmon
sake さけ	/saꜜke/ [sákè] sákè	鮭	salmon				/sake/ [sàké] sàké	酒	alcohol, sake
nihon にほん	/niꜜhoɴ/ [ɲíhòɴ̀] níhòn	二本	two sticks of	/nihoꜜɴ/ [ɲìhóɴ̀] nìhón	日本	Japan

In isolation, the words hashi はし /hasiꜜ/ hàshí "bridge" and hashi /hasi/ hàshí "edge" are pronounced identically, starting low and rising to a high pitch. However, the difference becomes clear in context. With the simple addition of the particle ni "at", for example, /hasiꜜni/ hàshí-nì "at the bridge" acquires a marked drop in pitch, while /hasini/ hàshi-ni "at the edge" does not. However, because the downstep occurs after the first mora of the accented syllable, a word with a final long accented syllable would contrast all three patterns even in isolation: an accentless word nihon, for example, would be pronounced [ɲìhōɴ̄], differently from either of the words above. In 2014, a study recording the electrical activity of the brain showed that native Japanese speakers mainly use context, rather than pitch accent information, to contrast between words that differ only in pitch.[1]

Bonasu contento on Japanese Homonym jokes

 This property of the Japanese language allows for a certain type of pun, called dajare (駄洒落, だじゃれ), combining two words with the same or very similar sounds but different pitch accents and thus meanings. For example, kaeru-ga kaeru /kaeruɡa kaꜜeru/ (蛙が帰る, lit. the frog will go home). These are considered quite corny, and are associated with oyaji gags (親父ギャグ, oyaji gyagu, dad joke).[1]

Kango (Chinese Vocabulary) and Garaigo (loan words)

Many of these are affected by Gairaigo ( 外来語 | loan words ) which determines the way that these things are spoken, because in their original context or language, they may have a completely different pronunciation than Japanese letter sounds can make. For more on this, see Smith's dissertation, 1980.

47% = Heiban (of vocabs pitch in Japanese) 

26% = Atamadaka (second-to-last stressed syllables or accented words)

This is an approximation of accented syllables in 'Japanese' words ( Wago | 和語 ).

Foreign Loanwords into Japanese

Yamato Kotoba/Wago 30% Wholly Japanese vocabulary 

Gairaigo 10% (94.1% eigo) Other language vocabulary 

Around 60% of Kango, that is Chinese originating vocabulary used in Japanese is accented, for English is sits at around 94.1%. This has resulted in what is known as 'Wasei Eigo (和製英語)' which is often accented because the sounds are so different to Japanese hiragana. Most words with 1-2 syllables Japanese Katakana can recognise are accented. Most words with 3-4 mora (syllables) are unaccented. 5+ mora are penultimately accented.[1] For example, your Tuna Sandwich, becomes a Tuna Sando, which may bring to mind Tuna in Sand. Yummy.

Evil morae graphs of Accents

Atama-daka (head high) from Tokyo-ben 

  | —-------\               |

–               \ _______| —

  |                              |

Pitch fall pattern

[I\ma] = Tokyo dialect 

[I. ma\] = Kansai dialect

In English this is essentially a type of morae (timing unit of a spoken syllable) or equivalent to tones in Chinese. 

Nakadaka (Middle High) 

  |           /—---\                                              |

  |         /           \           —--            —--         |

–        /               \       /        \        /        \       |-

  |    /                    —--            —-            —- |

  | /                                                                 |

Odaka Accent  (High End) often words like ‘ni’ or ‘ga’.

  |                            ______________   |

  |                          /                                |

–                        /                                   |-

  |    —-----------                                     |

  |                                                            |

Heiban (Flat Accent) 

  |                                                       |

  |                                                       |

–               ___________________   |-------

  | —------ /                                          |

  |                                                       |

Syllables due to Hiragana are well defined units of sound, unlike English which has around 15-16000 (Japanese has around 100 strict 'sounds'). Therefore you can think of Japanese mora (syllable sounds) as dropped or silent letters/syllables. All Japanese prosody is like this, except for proponents of Heiban accents.

Heiban pitch accent does carry on to grammatical particles which are known as Binary Pitch, basically meaning that the level of noise before transfers to a higher sound when the next particle is spoken. 

There is a lilt in Japanese prosody and this is a pragmatical addition and carries over the sentence, or individual unaccented words which is called by Linguists the Downstep. The graduation of downstep is called terracing when referring to phrases or conjoining simple and complex sentences pitch graduation. [1]

Oitaka/Accented

  |              __________                               |  

  |           /                        \                            |   

  |         \                          /                            |  

–             |                       \                            |-

  |   —---/                            \  ---------------  |  

  |                                                                 |   

This pitch carries onto a following particle を。

Bibliography

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent

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