Pitch Accent Doesn't Matter???

EXPLANATION:

Second to last clip:
The women in the clip mispronounces the name "幸華(こうか)" with a heiban pitch accent, instead of the correct atamadaka pronunciation. The man, Sanma, immediately corrects her, and then goes on to make fun of her mispronunciation. In order to do this, he looks for a word which is normally pronounced the specific way that the women MISPRONOUNCED 幸華, and likely because he only had a split second to think, he incorrectly chooses the word "高価(こうか)". This doesn't work because the correct pronunciation of "高価" is ALSO an atamadaka pitch accent (remember, the woman's original mispronunciation of 幸華 was with a heiban pitch accent). In order to convey the specific "こうか" that he had in mind, he explains the kanji: "高(たか)い値(ね)って書くのそれは?". Here Sanma makes a second mistake (again, likely because he only had milliseconds to think): he mixes up the two kanji 価 and 値 (understandably; they look similar and share the same meaning). This is where I ended the above clip, but in the original, a third man, Beat Takeshi, goes on to make fun of Sanma for mixing up the kanji in 高価.

Last clip:
Normally, the phrase “なんでも合うんじゃないか” would be pronounced with the accent on the “あ” in 合う. When the suffix “説” attaches onto a word or phrase, it overrides the original accent, and forces a new accent to be placed on the last mora of that word/phrase it's attaching onto. So, the accent of the phrase “なんでも合うんじゃないか説” should be placed on the “か”, just before 説. Perhaps because the original accent of the phrase “合うじゃないか”, and the accent-override rule of 説, got jumbled up in his head, Shibuya mispronounces “なんでも合うんじゃないか説” with the accent on the じゃ, right in the middle of “合うんじゃないか”'s original accent, and the new correct one. As it sounded quite funny, Naito immediately starts to make fun of him. Shibuya then embarrassingly points out that the way he pronounced it made it sound like he was saying the word “阿吽” (あうん, heiban), which is commonly used in the phrase “阿吽の呼吸” which means, “the harmonizing, mentally and physically, of two parties engaged in an activity”. Shibuya then goes on to pronouce "合うんじゃないか説" with the corrent accent, but Naito continues to poke fun at him.

***MY LINKS***

Sources:
9時から5時まで
水曜日のダウンタウン - くまモンの発音で熊本が割れている説
#PitchAccent

[mattvsjapan]

"Every dialect has different pitch accent so it isn't worth worrying about" = "Every dialect of English has different pronunciation so it's not worth trying to improve my thick Chinese accent"

[ibarakidoji]

As a native Japanese speaker, I strongly believe learning pitch accent is important for many L2 speakers of Japanese. Even if you don’t nail it, just knowing the basics can help your comprehension of the spoken language.
My dad comes from middle of nowhere in Kyushu and says he can’t distinguish many of the minimal pairs of pitch accent (i.e. 橋 vs 箸 etc). Interestingly enough, though, we never have trouble understanding him. I can’t really put my finger on why, but I’m guessing most dialects that don’t follow the standard Japanese pitch pattern still have their own pattern of indicating where the word boundaries are. That’s why when we encounter someone that speaks a dialect that’s totally unfamiliar to us, we might have trouble understanding them first but will soon pick up a pattern, allowing us to understand each other on a sentence level if not word level.
If an L2 speaker of Japanese go random with this, that’s when we have real difficulties understanding.
I would recommend everyone who’s serious about learning japanese study the standard japanese pattern jusy cause it’s the easiest.

[ansgaar]

HOW DARE YOU TELL ME THAT I HAVE TO ACTUALLY PUT EFFORT INTO LANGUAGE LEARNING?

DISGUSTING

[ayj]

Keep coming back to this video and each time I can hear the differences more and more... it’s a good feeling

[kougamishinya]

I come back here every so often because it's probably my fave video of yours. I've watched the 有名人の集まる店 full clip so many times now, and I was thinking, there really aren't many こうか words that don't have an 頭高 pattern. Searching in a pitch accent dictionary I could only find 鉱化, 降下, 硬化 which are not the very first thing you'd think of within a split second (though it would be pretty impressive if he did!)

[LukeJapanWalker]

Super interesting!! To Japanese people, it must be as different as light and right are to us.Kinda scary to think I could be getting it so wrong and not even realise it.

[damiyuhh]

I didn't get pitch accents at first but every time I watch this I pick up more and more of the differences

[m.i.]

0:30 I grew up near Tokyo and it seems to me both Sanma and Matsu pronounced in the same way just like高価, 効果, 校歌, 硬貨
It's interesting and mysterious that some ppl feel they are different.

[Tomyb]

haven't even finished with rtk and seeing this is gonna give me a panic attack!

[ShoulderMonster]

Ohhhh, this video compilation is so perfect! Thank you so much for linking all your sources! :D
I wish I could have plenty more examples of Japanese natives discussing pitch and pronunciation; I still struggle so much with listening and pronouncing pitch. Dogen's videos have been helping a ton, though.

[xoreign]

These are the nuances of the language that sadly aren't mentioned much in formal textbooks up until the 4th year of study even. Pretty much immersion and shadowing are the best ways.

[jahayrac]

I've studied Japanese in college and my professor was an elderly Japanese woman. She's awesome, I adore her. However her hearing wasn't the best and to add on to that when I spoke Japanese to her sometimes she wouldn't understand me. But when her assistant did, with a much better accent/ pitch, she understood perfectly. When she did understand/ hear me she would correct my pitch accent when needed. When she applauded me it was when I repeated words I spent many hours going over the phrases in mutt textbook as I was trying to sound like the speaker on the CD. So it IS important. Natives will let foreigners slide sometimes (I won't let my husband slide with Spanish cause it hurts to listen to a bad accent) but out of respect for the native listener and their time a learner should at least try to put some effort into it. After those experiences I decided to look further into pitch accent but there really isn't a comprehensive source to study from outside of Dogen's lessons but he's been an awesome resource. However, if a person's goal isn't to be understood but only understand then maybe it's not as important. Ultimately it depends on whether or not you plan to speak to natives. Best of luck either way.

[amarug]

i started bunge learning japanese at some point by myself and i made good progress and i love everything about it, the grammar, the kana, the kanji but also how it sounds. i just tried to imitate the sound people make (i am used to doing that, i have learned many languages before, such as English, and I grew up bilingual) when they say the words and i guess i adopted some of the pitch accents naturally, as whenever i was talking to japanese natives they seemed to have no issues understanding me at all. but once i learned that there actually is a real pitch accent with rules and names and all it freaked the hell out of me. i hardly dare to speak anymore and it really ruined the fun journey for me a bit... idk why, i typically dont get cornered so quickly, but this really bothers me for some off reason. any hints on how to motivate myself again and how to stop worrying so much about my pitch and just go back to speaking, which seemed to work perfectly well so far :(

[dosgos]

Pitch accent makes phrases sound natural. And easier to speak. And easier to understand. Not so hard to learn and practice the basics and there are some specialised texts with exercises and CD. . .

[skhtrm]

As native-ish speaker (almost forgot but been relearning), interesting that I didn't forget pitch accent. I never realized how distinct the difference was until learning that pitch accent exists.

[oishiiyum]

It's actually so weird how this isn't explained and used in classes/textbooks in the same way I feel that it is for Mandarin Chinese. To learn how important pitch accent is further along in your language learning can be very demotivating 😲

[jboops]

these are literally all banter and light-hearted teasing

[morondes]

gotta be honest, could hardly tell the difference in any of those

[Geo-stjv]

Running through kanji makes it seem fun to study pitch accent XD, and should I do a core deck or just do sentences right after kanji?

[Orikron]

Who's the girl from the kabedon video? For 研究, purposes, of course.