In this lesson you will learn about Japanese pitch accent. This is a pretty advanced topic, and it varies largely by dialect.
It is often said that Japanese is just spoken out with flat sounds, without tonal changes or pitch. This is actually pretty close to the truth, as you will make your way with flat sounds in most cases. However, there are some cases when words with the same spelling are indicating different words, just by changing the pitch accent.
This lesson shows a few examples of how common words are pronounced in Tokyo dialect. Just beware that the pitch does vary a lot around the country. As wrong pitch is a sure sign of a gaijin, beginners are strongly recommended to keep the general pitch as flat as possible.
Listen
Listen to and compare the sounds in the following table of examples, going from left to right, one row at a time. The part of the word with accent is underlined in the romaji spelling.
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1:26 pm on February 23rd, 2012
thank you so much i love you who ever did this page thank you i am only 14 and i want to be in Japan when i am older thank you
2:28 am on November 16th, 2011
They are only spelt the same way if written in hiragana, the kanji are different. Often the meaning is clear from the context anyway.
3:50 pm on October 16th, 2011
Okay okay so i get it. they are pronounced differently. if you want to say candy you have to say it this way if you want to say rain you say it that way i get that………….BUT they both are spelled the same way so how do you know which one is which when you are reading it?
2:12 am on July 30th, 2011
Its interesting ame is rain, and ame is candy which is two different things. I like it because it has interested me to go on.
12:32 am on August 24th, 2010
how about:
iie (no)
and
ie (house)??
That ones kinda tricky
4:29 pm on August 3rd, 2010
lol i remember these back when i was a begginer.
the old days
today
10:00 am on January 23rd, 2010
1:37 am on October 30th, 2009
3:49 am on October 10th, 2009
Ohh, difficult to remember.
3:24 pm on July 4th, 2009
if i follow this in other parts of japan and not tokyo will i still be understood? isit strictly only a tokyo dialect? thanks.
6:10 pm on April 20th, 2009
Very interesting!
9:21 pm on March 17th, 2009
@Nott: Yes, it’s only where there are multiple words with the same basic pronunciation that it could be a problem understanding. Bit it would in most cases be obvious which of the words you mean – from the context.
9:40 pm on March 12th, 2009
4:15 pm on February 18th, 2009
Even if I screw these up, would I still be pretty understandable?
5:53 pm on January 20th, 2009
reading this one is easy for me
I had fun
arigato
5:12 pm on December 24th, 2008