Talk:Japanese pitch accent

message: I was wondering if anyone else thinks that it would be worthwhile to point out the difference between the Japanese way of emphasizing a syllable and the English way. I have heard many Japanese speakers mention that English speakers who learn Japanese often retain the habit of lengthening the emphasized syllable in addition to the pitch change, whereas Japanese speakers retain the same rythm no matter whether the syllable is emphasized or not. Mattopia 06:41, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accent vs. Emphasis 

message: The text claims that 80% of all Japanese words would be accentless -- of course without giving citation. This must be another mistake.  How are words defined here?  If you look for example at Shin Meikai Nihon-go akusento jiten, you get the impression, that about 50% have accent and 50% don't.
: You seem to be about right, at least according to the /Accent/ paper above by Haraguchi, Shosuke. (1999). who says "The largest number of words (approximately 55 percent) are unaccented. Among the accented words, approximately 75 percent have accent on the antepenultimate mora" (7). However, the paragraph preceeding says "Let us begin with a discussion of nouns. ..." and the section heading is "1.3.1 The tonal melody of nouns", so I'm unsure whether the author refers to nouns or words. --209.151.140.79 (talk) 03:25, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  80% of all Japanese words without accent? 

message: I've noticed a few textbooks (published in Japan) and the very few dictionaries (for English users) that bother to give the accent patterns employ a sort of bracket to show how to accent words. At least two examples of this method are Merriam-Webster's Japanese-English Learner's Dictionary and Kodansha's Basic English-Japanese Dictionary, but I've seen it used elsewhere. Would it make sense to try to incorporate this system into the article along with or rather than typing capital letters or the ↓ symbol for the sake of conforming to what some learners are accustomed to? Dambrosio 06:09, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Normally we try sticking to the IPA, so that people who don't know the language can still follow the article. However, it wouldn't hurt to add an ad hoc transcription in addition to the IPA. kwami 12:05, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But for pitch accent, the argument is futile. The arrows to represent pitch accent are not known to common people who know IPA. --188.99.142.18 (talk) 09:22, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Common Ways to Represent Accent in Japanese 

message: What are the common or standard ways to say "pitch accent" in Japanese? I found 高さアクセント and 高低アクセント but not sure if these are unambiguous or the most common or standard. Anatoli (talk) 22:35, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: 高低アクセント or  ピッチ・アクセント. Ja Wiki uses 高低アクセント. Oda Mari (talk) 18:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Oda Mari. Anatoli (talk) 20:45, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Pitch accent" in Japanese 

message: Regarding this phrase:
háshiga 'chopsticks', hashíga 'edge', or hashigá 'bridge'.
It seems to indicate that the intonation is low-high-low for 端が (edge) and low-high-high for 橋が (bridge), but this is the opposite of what appears in the Goo dictionary.
http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/srch/jn/%E3%81%AF%E3%81%97/m0u/
I'm confident that the current entry is wrong, but I don't want to step on any toes. Shall we change it?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.120.180.50 (talk) 17:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, your correction brings that into line with the table, where I got it right. kwami (talk) 19:30, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intonation of "hashi" 

message: A lot of gaps filled in under 'dialects' need to be verified; different sources may not mean the same thing by 'eastern' & 'western' type accents. I don't have a good country-wide description available. — kwami (talk) 08:55, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  dialects 

message: I don't understand while the inclusion of this category has been reverted twice. The main article of this category says: "Pitch represents the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound" which is AFAIK the feature this article is about. Moreover, Japanese pitch accent sends to Pitch accent, which in turn sends to Pitch (music), i.e. to the main article of the category I tried to add. Perhaps :Category:Pitch (music) or Pitch (music) should be renamed or merged, but  I think :Category:Pitch (music) is the most relevant available category for the moment (:Category:Japanese phonology is not precise enough).  Apokrif (talk) 20:58, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I am a native ja speaker but I don't understand your claim at all. As far as I know, linguistic pitch has nothing to do with musical pitch. If you think they are relevant, please show me RS first. Thank you. Oda Mari (talk) 05:26, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Do you mean that the Japanese pitch accent, or musical pitch, or both, are not "the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound" ? Apokrif (talk) 09:51, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I mean the Japanese pitch accent. Oda Mari (talk) 14:30, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Pitch (music)]] 

message: The audio example gives examples of words in isolation. For example, 端 is pronounced differently from 橋 in the audio example, whereas the "downstep" analysis of spoken Japanese, which the rest of the article uses, suggests that there is no difference between them at all except when there is a following word such as a particle. Although the audio was provided by a native speaker, I do wonder if maybe she was hypercorrecting and in fact would not pronounce 端 as completely flat in normal conversation. (It's not unknown for native speakers of languages to do this. For example, in Spanish it is said that 'b' and 'v' are pronounced identically. But many will nevertheless pronounce them differently when, and only when, speaking extra "clearly" for this sort of lesson.) - furrykef (Talk at me) 00:41, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Whether that's hypercorrectness, I don't know. I do know that I mess up a lot when I'm speaking quickly; all people do. But I don't consider my stumbles normative, correct or beneficial to communication. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.238 (talk) 00:13, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  The scalar pitch section and some discussion in another section below describe how these two could be different without it being hyper correction. There is a third, middle phonetic tone M that appears after the initial mora until the accented mora, which is H, or until the end in heiban words. However since only the downstep is phonemic, LM and LH would not be phonemically distinguishable in isolation to native speakers except extralinguistically. The difference would however be audible to speakers of other languages.165.91.13.85 (talk) 08:01, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding the "normative Japanese pitch accents" example 

message: Are  and  correct? I thought only Kagoshima had contour tones in one-mora words. Shouldn't they be  and ? Or is this a phonemic distinction only in Kagoshima? — kwami (talk) 22:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: In Kansai dialect one-mora words are pronounced with long vowels. So some books describe them as [híì] and [kìí]. 日 always has falling tone, and 木 always has rising tone. --180.10.81.176 (talk) 00:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah yes. Forgot. Thanks. — kwami (talk) 03:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  contour tones in Osaka? 

message: The second half of this section, which talks about the relevance of syllables and nasals in the Tokyo dialect, refers to "kai" as a single syllable. I have seen a few sorces that claim "ai" to be a diphthong, but most, including most relevant pages on this website, would consider "kai" to be two syllables in hiatus.
I recommend replacing "kai" with a word such as 精, "sei", /séè/, (polish / refinement), because it demonstrates the chroneme / double vowel that is much more often considered to be a moraic coda than a seperate vowel.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.218.106 (talk) 18:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguous / Poorly Chosen Example in the 'Syllabic and Moraic' Section. 

message: I don't know Japanese. Curiosity led me to this article when I saw a Japanese IPA pronunciation that ends with an arrow in the final position. My naive logic makes me think this could not really affect the sound of the word itself, and would only become clear when the accent of the following sound was modified. Is my guess true, or a mistake? TooManyFingers (talk) 16:01, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: More or less. See § Scalar pitch, #3. Nardog (talk) 16:34, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arrows in IPA