Japanese Language Stack Exchange
Japanese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [pitch-accent]

高低アクセント. Changes in pitch associated with a particular word. Does not include changes in pitch due to intonation.

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If Kanji are necessary to disambiguate homophones, how come it's still used, being that Japanese people seem to know the difference when speaking?

I'm a beginner. People argue for Kanji being that it helps disambiguate homophones in written Japanese, but in spoken Japanese, kanji (or any other visual aid) are not available, yet people seem to know the difference between [話]{はな}す, [離]{はな}す,…
Matcha
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How important is one's pitch when speaking Japanese?

I'm aware of some words in Japanese that have the same reading but different meaning depending on the pitch of each syllable. The canonical example is はし (hashi), which can mean either chopsticks (HAshi) or bridge (hashi or haSHI). However, most…
MatthewD
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How does pitch accent work in Japanese?

My studies taught me there's two ways to say each mora in Japanese, with the way you normally talk and when you put a bit more emphasis on a mora, i.e. when someone says なつかしい, the word would be sounded out as na-tsu-ka-SHI-i. I know only one…
Roy Fuentes
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Pronunciation of す in です and the end of ます verbs

I've always been curious about the pronunciation of the す in です and at the end of 〜ます verbs. Most commonly the "u" sound is inaudible, but sometimes by some people it's more pronounced, and some people really go for it. Does it vary by age group,…
ジョン
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How to pronounce the English alphabet? (A, B, C, ...)

I just had to tell a long booking number over the phone, and realized that some characters like V/B can be hard to convey. So, I want to learn exactly how each letter is currently taught in Japanese schools. For every case where there are variants…
Nicolas Raoul
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What are the pitch-accent rules for compound nouns?

I've been trying to learn the pitch-accent of standard Japanese, but this is more difficult as it should be as it's hard to find good learning resources that provide proper descriptions of how the accent works. For many words, this isn't too much of…
Harith Vasant
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Why is debug デバッグ but bug is バグ?

I'm interested in why the extra small tsu in included in the word デバッグ but not バグ. Are there any rules governing voicing in words formed via reduplication? Lyman's rule may explain this, but does anyone know any more information on why the triple…
ishikun
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Accent changes in conjugation

I find that Japanese pitch accent seems to have some sort of interaction with the morphology. For example, 早い is pronounced [はやい]{LHL}, but 早く is pronounced [はやく]{HLL}. Are these changes regular? No grammar book I have describes the interaction…
ithisa
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Sentence level pitch accent for 標準語

I was wondering if anybody had any references (preferably freely available) or insights that explain 標準語 (or should I say 関東語) sentence-level pitch accent. I already have a dictionary which describes pitch accents on individual words, but there seem…
dainichi
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How do you pronounce みずうみ? (lake)

I was wondering, I learnt an う lengthens the sound before it. When I learnt the word みずうみ I thought it is a long u and saw it as a whole new word, but I noticed みずうみ exists of 2 words:　みず (water) and うみ (sea), the u does not function as lenghteing…
user2667257
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What are some examples of three-mora atamadaka verbs besides 帰る?

I couldn't find a good way to research this on my own, I'm afraid. I'm not looking for a comprehensive list by any means (in before it turns out 帰る is the only one...), but rather just a few examples because 帰る always seemed pretty special to me in…
Kaskade
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Is accent position predictable for -i verbs in Osaka/Kansai?

Background While I'm not especially confident about the reliability of my sources (Wikipedia (0) (1) (2) and some guys' personal websites), and it's possible that I transcribed some of these wrong, the sources agree on the following accent rules…
Mechanical snail
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Understanding how pitch accent changes in words, especially 和語

These words all begin with 花（はな↓）, but they all have different pitch accent patterns. 花火　は↓なび　(There is also 花火↓師) 花芽　はな↓め 花見　はなみ↓ (also, 花見↓月 vs 花見時 which is 平板) Knowing that the pitch accent of each word is 火↓、芽↓、見↓る（also, 見↓事) does not help me…
Janusz ヤヌシュ
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Beginner miscomprehension of spoken Japanese - finding wrong word boundaries

As a beginner of Japanese, I very often I don't understand or completely misunderstand spoken Japanese - even if I know every word in the sentence, and may have recognized it in different context. Here is an example where I was completely stunned -…
Reiner
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Is it true that the べつに when used to mean "nothing particularly" is pronounced differently from when it is used to mean "separately / apart"?

Is it true that the べつに when used to mean "nothing particularly" is pronounced differently from when it is used to mean "separately / apart" ? Like am I right to say that these 3 examples belong to the same…
Pacerier
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