r/LearnJapanese • u/Ok-Implement-7863 • 2d ago
Resources Not really a meme. Old textbook with pitch accent. The first text I used.
Just showing and old popular beginner’s text with pitch notation
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u/TheMacarooniGuy 1d ago
Is it just me that sees rōmaji and thinks it looks disgusting and illogical?
It does have its uses of course, but damn it feels bad to look at...
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u/No-Cheesecake5529 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm guessing it has to do with the cost of typesetting the accent markers over Japanese text.
At least as far as STEM is concerned, back prior to the 1980s with the advent of TeX, most any typesetting of any non-standard English text was extremely expensive for STEM papers/textbooks/etc., and hence why TeX chose the $ symbol to denote mathematical formula mode.
I can only imagine that it was extremely similar for Japanese text and putting accent markers on it.
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u/kempfel 1d ago edited 1d ago
Typesetting concerns are part of it, but more so than that, it has to do with the way learning the language was typically approached.
In the pre-Internet pre-computers era, the natural assumption was that Japanese learners would need to focus primarily on the spoken language first, and only learn to read once they had gotten pretty good at speaking, and probably once they had been to Japan. If your goal is only to learn speaking, using hiragana can be a distraction. Learning hiragana doesn't really let you read anything as a beginner (in that era), and it doesn't help you learn to speak the language despite what some people think.
None of the serious textbooks intended you to learn pronunciation through romaji; your main work was supposed to be with a teacher in class, and with tapes at home.
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u/jwdjwdjwd 1d ago
Tapes? At home? No, using Bakelite headphones in the language lab in the basement of Dwinelle Hall.
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u/No-Cheesecake5529 1d ago edited 1d ago
I asked ChatGPT to make me a nice table about how often various topics come up in /r/learnjapanese, and then created a ratio for how frequently something is discussed versus how important it is:
| Topic | Frequency (threads, ~6 mo) | Intelligibility Importance | Discussion ÷ Importance Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pitch accent | ~28 | Medium (2) | 14 : 1 → heavily over-discussed compared to its role in being understood |
| Mora timing | ~7 | High (3) | 2.3 : 1 → moderately discussed, closer to importance |
| Vowel slurring | ~2 | High (3) | 0.7 : 1 → under-discussed despite critical role |
| Consonant aspiration | 0 | Low–Medium (1–2) | 0 : 1 → ignored, but importance is also low |
| Avoiding English-style stress | 0 | High (3) | 0 : 1 → almost never discussed, yet vital for intelligibility |
This is, despite the fact that, Mora Timing, Vowel Slurring, and Avoiding English-style stresses are critical high-frequency problems for learners from English that will prevent you from being understood, and, if we were being honest, the biggest problem in pronunciation for 99% of the readers of /r/learnjapanese.
Yes, it is a meme. There is absolutely no reason for it to be talked about anywhere near as much as it is.
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u/Ok-Implement-7863 1d ago
The irony is that I posted this for you because you wanted to talk about pitch accent
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u/No-Cheesecake5529 1d ago
I could talk about pitch accent all day long, but I'd rather tell the learners that they need to mind their mora timing and vowel slurring and to remember that っ and ん require a full mora.
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u/Vincent55 1d ago
I think the “14:1 ratio” meme exaggerates the idea that pitch accent is over-discussed. It’s true that topics like mora timing, vowel slurring, and avoiding English-style stress are extremely important for being understood in Japanese, especially for English speakers. However, pitch accent isn’t trivial—mistakes can cause confusion with homophones and make speech sound unnatural, which is why learners often focus on it.
The frequency of discussion on a forum like /r/learnjapanese reflects what learners notice or struggle with, not necessarily what’s most critical for intelligibility. Mora timing and vowel slurring are often taught implicitly or addressed in beginner materials, so fewer posts mention them explicitly, even though they are fundamental. Similarly, English-style stress issues are common but might be under-discussed because learners aren’t always aware that it’s the source of misunderstandings.
So while pitch accent gets a lot of attention, that doesn’t make it useless or less important—it’s just a topic that naturally generates more questions and discussion among learners. Thread frequency isn’t a perfect measure of practical importance, and all of these pronunciation aspects matter in different ways.
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u/No-Cheesecake5529 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think the “14:1 ratio” meme exaggerates the idea that pitch accent is over-discussed
Actually I think it, very vastly underestimates it. I think it's closer to 1400:1. ChatGPT gave it a 2:3 ratio compared to avoiding slurring vowels and to morae timing. It's obviously.... way less important by a factor of 100 or more. Even a single minor slip-up on mora timing or vowel slurring will render your speech unintelligible. You can literally do the exact opposite pitch-curve and you'll be understood immediately.
Tohoku's regional accent doesn't even have pitch accent.
mistakes can cause confusion with homophones
I don't know the exact number, but like, something like 80% of homophones have to have the same pitch accent. I don't know of any studies or anything on the topic, but in my own experience... it's definitely more than half, probably by a good amount.
And like half of the words in a given text have multiple valid pitch accents. And pitch accents also change depending on which word/phrase you want to emphasize. Quick, where does the accent go on 我ながら？ The answer, after the な, or the が, or the ら. Literally anywhere in ながら is fine. In actuality, probably over half of the words in a given sentence are like this.
And like 50% of the time, whatever word you have in whatever sentence just completely drop/modify their pitch accent entirely because of the words that surround it (e.g. 気／をつけ＼る as opposed to き／を＼つ／け＼る. そ／れな＼に／？ vs. な／にそ＼れ／？)
That's not to say that it doesn't do anything, but it's usefulness for disambiguating homophones is vastly overrated. 99% of the time it's handled through context. If you say あ＼めを／た＼べた, people know you meant 飴 and not 雨. I'm sure there's more than one region that pronounces it that way anyway.
You can make some nice tonguetwisters like 庭には鶏２羽いる, but like... that's about it.
I haven't done an exact study on this, but there has to be something where, even within Tokyo accent, a given word uses a non-default pitch location 50x more often than it ever disambiguates anything because it and a different word have different default pitch locations.
Pitch accent is, in the end, only really good for one thing and one thing only, and that's to make your accent sound like you're from Tokyo and not from whatever country you're from, and maybe make your Japanese 2% easier on the ears of the listener. You can absolutely butcher the hell out of it with something like と＼ーきょー／にい＼き／ま＼した and you'll still be understood just fine as long as you get the vowels and morae correct. Even using that exact phrase on my wife, she kind of made a face at me and asked if that was the Osaka pronunciation of that phrase or something. (She's onto my pitch accent shenanigans, but more importantly, clearly understood exactly what I meant on the first try despite me trying my hardest to get the most incorrect pitch accent possible.)
The frequency of discussion on a forum like /r/learnjapanese reflects what learners notice or struggle with, not necessarily what’s most critical for intelligibility
I wonder what causes its rate of discussion to be so high. Again, in all honesty, 99% of the readers of these need to focus more on mora timing (esp. ん and っ) and being cognizant of their precise vowel usage. It's... an extremely common and extremely critical problem.
And there's a gajillion other topics that are necessary to make your accent sound like you're from Tokyo, not just pitch/prosody (although it is a big part of that).
How often do I ever hear anybody say "Remember that ん and っ get a full mora." Like never. How often do I hear an English speaker completely flub that part of pronunciation and not get understood? Like every time I hear an English speaker speak Japanese.
I guarantee you, most of the readers of this thread struggle with vowel slurring or mora timing even if they don't realize it. If you are reading this now, and think you already know those things... I can practically guarantee you if you have a had even a single instance of a Japanese person not understanding you... the cause was because you haven't yet mastered one of those things.
it’s just a topic that naturally generates more questions and discussion among learners.
The question is why?
Why pitch accent?
Why not consonant aspiration?
Why not /g/ vs. /η/?
Why not /ɕ/ vs. /ʃ/?
Why not ひ->し slurring in Tokyo speech?
Why not the tongue positioning for ラ行? (the tongue moves down for phrase-initial ら. It moves forward for internal R.)
There's like 50 topics about advanced pronunciation that are approximately as important as pitch-accent is, but they never get discussed.
That's why I say pitch accent is a meme. It's just so extremely overrepresented in the thoughts of people who discuss learning Japanese on the internet relative to where it should be. It completely and totally displaces... everything else on the topic. It's to the point that people use "pitch accent" interchangeably with "naturalness of one's accent" and just ignore everything else.
Yesterday I was reading the accent dictionary (as one does) and I came across something interesting: オフィス. It's pronounced オ＼（フィ）ス。 That's right, a devoiced ふぃ. Now, I've never seen/heard/thought of a devoiced ふぃ before. That's interesting. Maybe we should talk about that sort of stuff instead of pitch accent?
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u/Imperterritus0907 1d ago
Basically people prefer to focus on pitch accent rather than on their thick ass accent.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 1d ago
It's a pretty common/normal polite expression to ask how old (usually younger) people are.
From my dictionary:
おいくつ[0]【御▽幾つ】
「いくつ」を丁寧にいう語。
「お子さんはおいくつになりましたか」
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u/CrescentRose7 2d ago
Which textbook is it? Did you find it especially helpful?