Japanese Pronunciation, Video 1: The Japanese Writing Systems and Pitch Accent

This is the first of a 4-part series on Japanese pronunciation. The goal is to get familiar with the sounds of Japanese and the IPA symbols. You'll then be able to learn them faster, either through your own studies or through my pronunciation trainers. More links below:

[marygebbie]

this is so well written! I think people with no Japanese language knowledge can follow your video easily.

[ryotakus.]

Quite amusing ! I've never thought of the phonetics of my own language seriously.
Normal Japanese people wouldn't think of it either, since we usually catch every sound as kana alphabet without breaking down into smaller pieces. It's really fresh to me. And the description of the pitch accent is also excellent.

[miked]

Great video, I'm hooked on getting the pitch accent correct. My girlfriend is Japanese and insists there is no pitch accent, but I hear it all the time while listening to Japanese. Hope to learn more. Thanks for your video, keep up the amazing work!

[AbdulrahmanMajash]

Ah, thank god I stumbled upon this! This video was recommended to me by a Japanese native!
The pitch accent definitely looks scary at the beginning. Thanks a lot for the video and your clear yet somehow concise explanations!

[facundotorres]

It's been a while since I started learning japanese online and this is the first good explanation I hear about the pitch. Awesome channel!

[alanmonteros]

I am a native Spanish speaker and hearing America with Japanese vowel pronunciation gave me auditory whiplash

[maxanchidin]

Nice and informative video! However, I have found two mistakes (I also checked with the 日本語発音アクセント辞典 dictionary):
6:51 フラミンゴ has an accent on ミ
7:05 and again at 9:19 ケーブルカー has an accent on ル (or カ)

[Emile.gorgonZola]

3:28 not quite true, ティ /ti/ exists although it's a new innovation

[HoangPhan]

absolutely awesome! thank you so much!

[fitrisukmawati]

mr, how we can decide this word must be written with double vowel or single vowel. eg. komputer is konpyuutaa.. why it becomes konpyuutaa. why not konpyuta. pls help me. tq..

[Eduarodi]

I have a question after watching this video. Don't many other European languages (but not English) have what you describe as pitch accent? I'm a Spanish native speaker and I think the way we speak my language is very similar to the way you explain pitch accent in Japanese. Unstressed vowels aren't reduced. Stressed ones aren't lengthened, and as far as I can tell, they aren't any louder either. Sure the melody is not the same, but is there any other difference than that?

[tirtha_debnath]

Can you make pronunciation videos for Swedish languages.?? Please...

[Li.Siyuan]

Ceasar salad? Sylllabaries? Reallly? Other than these weird and inexplicable spelling errors, this series in general is extremely useful - thank you.

[blindedbliss]

Roman and Germanic languages also use two ALPHABETHS/alphabets.

[firstlast]

4:02
quite true there is something that's
4:04
very similar to stress in Japanese it's
4:07
called pitch accent but it's not done in
4:09
the same way that it's done in English
4:10
so let's deconstruct English word stress
4:13
for a moment so we can have an easier
4:14
time comparing the two languages we'll
4:17
start with an example word America or
4:19
the second syllable may is stressed to
4:22
stress assailable in english you do four
4:24
things at once you're changing the
4:26
vowels the pitch
4:27
volume and the length of the stress
4:29
syllable in the syllable surrounding I
4:30
will go through these one by one
4:32
so first most unstressed syllables and
4:35
English words use different vowels than
4:37
stressed ones the first and last vowels
4:39
in the word America for instance are
4:40
both ah
4:41
rather than ah we're not saying America
4:44
we say America and Japanese doesn't do
4:48
this every ah as always uh every e is
4:51
always e the vowels are consistent
4:53
whether or not the syllable is stressed
4:54
so if we were to replace all of the
4:57
English consonants and vowels in the
4:58
word America with Japanese ones and we
5:01
kept those valves perfectly consistent
5:03
that would give us America America so
5:08
the second thing English does with
5:10
stress syllables as it makes them longer
5:12
than unstressed syllables we say America
5:16
and not America once again Japanese
5:20
doesn't do this they don't mess with
5:21
syllable lengths in fact every single
5:24
character even that stand alone n takes
5:26
the same amount of time whether or not
5:28
it's stressed so if we take that
5:30
Japanophile word from earlier America
5:34
America and we even out the syllable
5:36
length we get America I made iike so now
5:41
we're on to our third topic volume
5:43
English likes to make it stressed
5:45
syllables louder in the word America we
5:48
punch that mare and be very weird if we
5:51
did that to another syllable like
5:53
America or America in Japanese doesn't
5:56
do this either every syllable tends to
5:58
have the same volume so instead of
6:00
America
6:02
bop bop bop bop you get America
6:05
ba-ba-ba-ba in terms of volume
6:07
everything is flat our last topic is
6:11
pitch and this is finally where English
6:13
and Japanese overlap a bit in the word
6:15
America there's a melody to the word it
6:17
starts out low ah goes high man and then
6:21
goes low again
6:22
Ricca ba ba ba ba English stressed
6:26
syllables go up in pitch and the
6:27
unstressed ones tend to go down now
6:29
Japanese has high pitched and low pitch
6:31
syllables as well in the Japanese word
6:34
America the first syllable is low and
6:36
the last three are high America
6:40
and this is a sort of default melody for
6:43
Japanese words the first syllable tends
6:45
to be low and the rest of them tend to
6:46
be high and nearly half of the words you
6:48
meet will have this pattern as a food I
6:50
mean go marathon tally up all other
6:53
words have something called a Down step
6:55
basically there's one syllable that's
6:56
the highest and the rest of the
6:58
syllables after it are low an IPA you'll
7:00
see that down step marked with a down
7:01
arrow if that highest syllable is the
7:04
first syllable you get words like
7:06
caribou dukkha cheeky and tomahto
7:10
starting high for that first syllable
7:12
and then after the down arrow in the IPA
7:14
stay low if on the other hand the
7:16
highest syllable is elsewhere then you
7:17
follow the default pattern first so
7:19
below rest of the syllables high until
7:21
you hit the down step which point you
7:23
come back town so in the skittle you go
7:27
low high high low and she's asada you go
7:30
low high high high high low low these
7:34
melodies are going to be unfamiliar and
7:35
challenging at first that's why I'm
7:37
talking about them in the first video so
7:39
you can notice them throughout the rest
7:40
of the videos and after that whenever
7:42
you encounter spoken Japanese I've read
7:44
a few times that you should ignore a
7:45
pitch accent and pretend that it doesn't
7:47
exist when learning Japanese and I get
7:49
the impression that that's said for two
7:50
reasons a one that it's challenging and
7:53
people don't want to scare new learners
7:55
and two that English speakers will often
7:58
do all sorts of English II things like
7:59
changing volume or syllable length or
8:01
the vowels instead of doing pitch accent
8:03
correctly by just changing the pitch I
8:06
think if you're aware of that ahead of
8:08
time you have a shot of getting it right
8:10
and at the very least being a bit more
8:11
conscious about what you're hearing when
8:13
listening to Japanese and so that's it
8:15
for video one to quickly review we
8:18
talked about three Japanese writing
8:19
systems kanji the thousands of Chinese
8:22
characters adopted into Japanese in the
8:25
two kana syllabaries hiragana and
8:26
katakana which are basically duplicates
8:28
of each other just katakana is used for
8:30
loan words and heed a comma is used for
8:31
native words we'll talk about the sounds
8:33
these syllabaries can produce in the
8:35
next few videos the rest of video 1
8:37
focused on the differences between
8:38
English stress and Japanese pitch accent
8:40
and how English creates stress by doing
8:42
four things at once we play around with
8:44
the vowels of the word we say America
8:46
and not America and we make these
8:48
stressed syllable longer louder and
8:50
higher pitched Japanese on the other
8:52
hand has perfectly consistent vowel
8:54
even syllable length and even volume
8:56
it's only when we come to pitch that we
8:58
see similarities and the Japanese
9:00
syllables can be high-pitched or
9:01
low-pitched we also covered a few the
9:03
pitch patterns you'll tend to see in
9:04
Japanese the default one which starts
9:06
low and goes high
9:07
I've been America the pattern where the
9:09
first syllable is high and the other
9:10
ones are low as Inge K Boudicca and the
9:13
pattern were another syllable is the
9:14
highest OH so it starts low goes high
9:16
and then gets low again after that down
9:18
arrow in the IPA as in be skittle and
9:21
that's all we're going to cover for this
9:23
video next stop the Japanese consonants

[lienha]

can you recommend me a japanese dictionary that uses ipa . Please help me

[sharkle]

Funny I got bit of an English lesson from the word stress section.

[blindedbliss]

WHY do WE have TWO identical ALPHABETS in English? Called lower-case and UPPER-CASE.

[firstlast]

0:01
hi this is gabe from fluent forever calm
0:04
in these four videos i'm going to show
0:06
you the bare essentials of phonetics and
0:08
spelling for japanese if you're using
0:10
one of my pronunciation trainers don't
0:12
worry about memorizing this stuff the
0:14
trainer will do that for you just watch
0:16
and pay attention
0:17
everything you see here will show up
0:19
sooner or later within the trainer i'll
0:21
be going through japanese using the
0:22
international phonetic alphabet or IPA
0:25
this lets us simplify our discussion a
0:27
lot since i only need to talk about 34
0:29
symbols
0:30
many of which you know already instead
0:32
of trying to wade through northern 200
0:34
spelling rules so let's get started will
0:37
break this discussion up into four parts
0:39
the first will talk about how the
0:41
Japanese writing system works the second
0:44
will cover consonants the third vowels
0:46
and the fourth we'll cover a few of
0:47
Japanese is spelling rules since I'm
0:49
still learning Japanese I have a native
0:51
speaker here sake who will be helping us
0:53
with the examples hi so let's start by
0:56
talking a bit about how Japanese writing
0:58
system works it's a fairly unique
1:00
language and that it has three distinct
1:02
writing systems instead of just one
1:03
kanji hiragana and katakana the first of
1:07
these kanji isn't going to show up in
1:09
these videos kanji are basically
1:10
thousands of Chinese characters that
1:12
have been adopted into the Japanese
1:13
language they don't give you any
1:15
reliable pronunciation information and
1:17
so they're not really relevant to our
1:18
current discussion the other two writing
1:20
systems collectively known as the kana
1:22
are hiragana and katakana are known as
1:26
syllabaries basically instead of an
1:28
alphabet where each character
1:29
corresponds to some sort of sound like a
1:31
vowel or consonant the characters in the
1:33
syllabary correspond to syllables so the
1:36
word katakana for instance has four
1:39
syllables ha ha ha na and so the word is
1:43
spelled with four characters kataka na
1:46
right now I'm spelling it using the
1:48
katakana syllabary but I can also do
1:50
that with hiragana
1:51
here's katakana again in the hiragana
1:53
script so to learn Japanese you'll need
1:55
to learn to full duplicate syllabaries
1:58
with 46 characters in each one and you
2:01
may ask at this point why on earth does
2:03
japanese have two different but
2:04
duplicated writing systems and it's a
2:06
valid question the short slightly
2:09
oversimplified answer is that here Agana
2:11
is used for native Japanese words like
2:13
wasabi
2:14
tsunami in katakana is used for foreign
2:17
loan words like Tia and Sidoti
2:20
Japanese has a lot of foreign loan words
2:23
and none of the writing systems put
2:25
spaces between words so the two
2:27
syllabaries coupled with kanji they
2:29
helped a lot in terms of figuring out
2:31
when one word ends and another word
2:33
starts for the purposes of these videos
2:36
I'll be trying to stick to loan words
2:38
written out in katakana in part to
2:39
lessen the number of new syllables
2:41
you're exposed to all at once and in
2:43
part because listening to loan words
2:44
from English is a nice way to highlight
2:46
the pronunciation differences between
2:47
the two languages to give you a super
2:49
brief overview of what katakana looks
2:51
like basically you're looking at five
2:53
vowels uh-oh which can be combined with
2:56
constants giving you five character
2:59
groups like this kaki ku ke ko na nee
3:03
newsnet no math me move mesmo that
3:07
dee-do dee-do etc there are few
3:10
constants that behave a bit weirdly such
3:12
as Japanese is T which behaves
3:14
predictably with three of its vowels Pat
3:16
they talk but then sounds a bit
3:18
different with two of its vowels Chi
3:20
instead of T and two instead of two and
3:23
interestingly enough those latter
3:25
combinations T and two they simply don't
3:28
exist in Japanese you cannot combine a T
3:30
with the vowels boot or a directly so
3:33
nearly every character in the Japanese
3:34
syllabaries is either a single vowel
3:36
like our or a single consonant and vowel
3:38
combination like kha or just a couple of
3:41
exceptions for this like a standalone
3:43
end character and a character that
3:45
produces doubled up consonants as in
3:47
pickthal and keep and at this point
3:50
we've covered most of what I wanted to
3:52
cover here except one last bit how words
3:54
dress works in Japanese now often you
3:57
hear that there is no words dress in
3:59
Japanese and this is almost true but not