Japanese Pitch Accent┃Sound Like a Native and Avoid Embarrassment!

Japanese has a lot of homonyms.
For example, "ame" can mean "candy", "rain" or even "Knit it!".
In writing, kanji helps you distinguish them.
(E.g. ame - 雨 = rain, 飴 = candy, 編め = Knit it)

When speaking though, you cannot rely on kanji.
So this is where the pitch accent plays a role!

If you want more videos on the pitch accent, make sure give this video a thumbs-up and SHARE ♡

CORRECTION
12:18 もう (already) ⇒ もう High-Low

う ん こ う - L H H H (heiban)
vs うんこ - H L L (atama-daka)
BUT
う ん こ う ちゅ う - L H H H H H
う ん こ ちゅ う - L H H H H
(With the ちゅう added, they are both heiban-gata)
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[TrainfanJanathan]

"Once you go down, you must _stay_ down." That made me laugh a little bit too hard.

Also, I wonder if Japanese singers take pitch into consideration when writing songs.

[googleboughtmee]

It must take forever to create all those graphics on screen, but they're SUPER helpful, thanks!

[JapaneseAmmowithMisa]

CORRECTION!!
12:18 もう should be "HIGH - LOW" (atama-daka-gata).
(My pitch accent was fine, it's just wrong in the subtitles.)

[amarug]

everytime i start gaining some little bit of confidence in my Japanese, a new monster waits around the corner... 😂

[JaredK]

Just as a personal anecdote, for those whose native language is a non-pitch / non-tonal language.

I could not hear pitch accent *at all* at first, even though I did spend some time studying the terminology and understanding how it worked. The thing that helped me was sitting down and listening to native content *with the intention* of just listening for pitch accent, specifically long strings of 平板 words in a sentence to start (because it sticks out the most obvious to me). I remember using the audio book for ペンギン・ヘイウェイ, and also listening to the movie ラブ&ポップ, and I even still remember phrases with these long 平板 chains like 「唐突に変わるときがある」and 「大人も子供も」- which really stuck out to me. Once I was able to hear this pattern clearly, the other patterns started to become more obvious to me and I could recognize them pretty clearly in just my regular immersion with no extra effort listening for it. "It just clicked", you might say. Just have to get your foot in the door and let your brain do the rest :)

[joels]

For non-Japanese people, since we may not have a pitch accent in our own languages, we often incorrectly hear the Japanese high pitch as "louder" or "given more stress". Your tip about using your abs to change pitch really helps make the high pitch without necessarily changing the stress or volume of the syllables!

[eruno_]

Been learning Japanese for 4 years and I swear pitch accent is the hardest part for me

[luisbanegassaybe]

Every time I hear the phrase “japanese pitch accent”, I only think of Dogen

[topesjeebal]

Finally! A pitch accent lesson from Misa sensei! Was hoping for one for ages, ever since I found Dougen!

[zehaha]

Could you also make a part 2 explaining the "sentence-level pitch accent"? Like, if you have a long sentence and you're speaking in a normal fluent way, how the sentence should sound.

[magicstixr]

Japanese teachers: "Japanese is a flat language."

Also Japanese teachers: This video.

[RuneR]

Worst thing about this is I had no idea pitch accent existed, but then i saw Dogen's "japanese is flat" video and after that I started practicing it. Thank you for making a lesson on pitch accent!

[daron]

Me: Japanese pitch accent is weird.
Chinese (4-6 tones) : “Hold my TsingTao 🍺”

[yoku]

As an English speaker, I find pitch accent a little difficult. Since English is a stress-timed language, it's hard for me to not put stress on one mora only. It's hard to go from stress-timed to mora timed with a pitch accent.

[juniper]

So happy that you've put out a video about pitch accent, it's something I've been trying to work on recently!

[Sergof]

As soon as I heard "Un", I knew where it was going 🤣

[ashzika]

"Let's be normal"
So even Misa is calling me out now

[carilloMonteo]

"This lesson is not about how to say poop in Japanese"

it is now

[longmeaderulez]

I see those D&D books back there. Have you ever thought about doing a Japanese language D&D stream? That's something I'd love to see. It could be a really good resource/listening exercise for learners! Just a thought...

[paradoxelle]

Thank you for this, I know you said it's more important for advanced learners since it might give people the wrong impression, but I think it's essential to learn early on for learners at least the existence of pitch accent, because we really can't hear the difference unless we know to try listening for it, and thus we won't understand the difference between certain words without at least knowing the basics. I think for people who aren't concerned about having a foreign accent in Japanese it's not necessary to learn every words pitch accent, but to be aware will help you to listen and comprehend at least standard Japanese, and for people who do want to have a decent accent someday as their goal probably would appreciate learning about the existence of pitch accent sooner than many Japanese courses teach, because they'll learn words wrong and then have to go back and reform bad habits in their Japanese, which can be frustrating, especially when you're essentially having to do that anyway coming from English or other non-pitch accent/non tone languages to Japanese, because people from those languages aren't conscious of how they pronounce pitches unless they are a musician or know about pitch accent. Also thanks for teaching us how to pronounce famous memes, this is a very useful and fun video! *One note on the word 二本, it's cylindrical not sylindrical. English spelling is confusing and breaks rules all the time because we have loan words from so many languages with different pronunciation systems and we tend to imitate the spelling rules it's from sometimes.... ^.^' I think for most part Japanese is much more consistent with it's spelling rules than English even though the grammar is more complex. Thanks again for the video Misa-sensei!