Episode 13: Pitch accent in heiban i-adjectives
Added 2021-01-16 07:54:09 +0000 UTCBibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page
Note: This video has a slightly different presentation style due to some knee pain I was experiencing at the time of recording. The content and value of the lesson remain unchanged. Thank you for your understanding.
Good evening Patrons!
In this lesson we begin to explore pitch accent in heiban i-adjectives. Apologies for the titles that appear on the right side of the screen twice in the video; I messed up the gesture for this bit and moving the titles to the right, rather than leaving them in their normal place, felt more natural. I will do my best to be careful of this in the future.
Please note there are some minor exceptions to the information presented in this lesson, many of which involve overriding particles and suffixes such as ぐらい and すぎる.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns with regard to this lesson, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below. Thank you very much for your continued support, and good luck with your Japanese studies!
Best from Beppu,
Dōgen
Comments
Hi, Trey. JP here, Dōgen’s business partner. I’m helping manage the messages here on Patreon. Thank you for your question. Dōgen originally intended to make a video on heiban i-adjectives. However, like to a few other topics that came up in the series, the more he researched the subject the more he realized there were too many rules and exceptions to fit the spirit of the series, where he tries to find simple rules that cover the majority of the cases one might encounter. His advice for this now is, "it's actually better to simply improve your general phonetic (pitch-accent) awareness as much as possible, to try and be conscious of what natives use, and then let the pieces fall as they may. Naturally, this is due to the very high number of exceptions and changes based on speaker variation and circumstances." Our apologies for not covering this (at least so far), and thank you for your understanding and continued support! Good luck with your studies! — JP
Dogen
2024-08-19 05:39:08 +0000 UTCThe video says that the common heiban adjectives are next, but the next lesson is na-adjectives. Are the 20 common heiban adjectives listed somewhere else?
Trey Smith
2024-08-18 02:17:36 +0000 UTCHi NinKendo! Apologies for the late reply. I think I understand your question, which Michael below seems to have asked as well. I'll leave my reply to his question here, as again I think it's the same question. Let me know if you need me to clarify this! Hi Michael. Sorry for the ambiguity here! To clarify, the traditional dictionary (non-conjugated) form of the heiban adjectives do not have downsteps, but the traditional conjugations I mention in the video (besides the く and さ forms) do. Thus, the 'newer' pronunciation only refers to the dictionary form—the conjugations I mention in the video have not changed from their 'traditional form'. That is to say, besides the く and さ conjugations, the common conjugations I mention in the video always had the downsteps in the locations that I mention, and still do, which is why I recommend using the 'newer' pronunciation for the dictionary forms—because this way, for both the dictionary form as well as the conjugations (besides the two exceptions), the downstep stays on the same location. Again, apologies for the confusion! I'll also briefly note that in researching this to clarify my answer for you, I found that longer 平板 い adjectives such as 難しい are likely to have downsteps in their さ form, as in muZUKAshisa. So while 暑い becomes aTUSA 重い becomes oMOSA 固い becomes kaTASA, etc., 難しい becomes muZUKAshisa. This is a bit difficult for me to expand on, however, because some resources list 難しい as a 中高 い adjective (which could account for this) and on top of this, devoicing is likely affecting the accent in the final example with muZUKAshisa, so forgive me for not being able to talk on this at greater length. Hope this helps and please let me know if you have any additional questions.
Dogen
2024-05-09 00:58:57 +0000 UTCHi Michael. Sorry for the ambiguity here! To clarify, the traditional dictionary (non-conjugated) form of the heiban adjectives do not have downsteps, but the traditional conjugations I mention in the video (besides the く and さ forms) do. Thus, the 'newer' pronunciation only refers to the dictionary form—the conjugations I mention in the video have not changed from their 'traditional forms'. That is to say, besides the く and さ conjugations, the common conjugations I mention in the video always had the downsteps in the locations that I mention, and still do, which is why I recommend using the 'newer' pronunciation for the dictionary forms—because this way, for both the dictionary form as well as the conjugations (besides the two exceptions), the downstep stays on the same location. Again, apologies for the confusion!
Dogen
2024-05-09 00:42:35 +0000 UTCI had the same question as NinKenDo with if/how the downstep differs in the conjugated forms when using "traditional" pronunciation. A traditional heiban pronunciation has no downstep, so "the downstep stays in the same position" is unclear here. The rest of the video makes me think that there is no difference between the "traditional" and "downstep" pronunciation when using a conjugated heiban い-adjective? So, for example, 赤かった would always have the downstep on the か?
Michael Welsh
2024-05-06 05:47:16 +0000 UTCIn this lesson it's mentioned that the rule should be that the accent doesn't move, so does this means that in heiban i-adjectives, when speaking with the more traditional pitch accent, the downstep will occur some time in "the conjugation", or does it mean the downstep occurs where it does in the unconjugated new forms? The explanation is a little ambiguous, but seems to suggest the former, yet Dogen's emphasis on how neatly the newer pronunciation fits with this rule leads me to think maybe the downstep occurs in the same place in both the traditional and more colloquial habits when the i-adjective is conjugating. Hope my question is clear enough, thanks.
NinKenDo
2024-04-27 08:37:49 +0000 UTCHi, Jacob. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. I discussed your question with Kimi sensei, and she shared her thoughts: “The phenomenon of pronouncing heiban i-adjectives as LHL is kind of new. It has quickly spread, especially among younger speakers. People used to hear only so-called ‘trained’ pronunciation on TV and in other media, but nowadays so many regular people from all over the world are uploading videos daily to their YouTube channels or other social media, and as a result I feel like their pronunciations affect viewers’ pronunciation quite a bit. Incidentally, most trained newsreaders still pronounce words in the traditional way, and they still pronounce 赤い as LHH.” I hope this helps!
Dogen
2024-03-12 01:39:31 +0000 UTCI've listened to a bunch of heiban i-adjectives, but they all just pronounce them as heiban, and nothing like with the downstep... I also talked to a native who knows about pitch accent and they said they've never heard LHL in a heiban i-adjective such as 赤い. I'm not really sure who to believe...
koiyakiya
2024-02-07 23:26:34 +0000 UTCHello, Pierre. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. My apologies for replying to your question so late. The additional information Dōgen mentioned about heiban i-adjectives was intended for a future video, but similar to a few other topics the more he researched the subject the more he realized there were too many rules and exceptions to fit the spirit of the series. His advice for this now is, "it's actually better to simply improve your general phonetic (pitch-accent) awareness as much as possible, to try and be conscious of what natives use, and then let the pieces fall as they may. Naturally, this is due to the very high number of exceptions and changes based on speaker variation and circumstances." Our apologies for not covering this (at least so far), and thank you for your understanding and continued support! Good luck with your studies! — JP
Dogen
2022-10-14 11:27:17 +0000 UTCHi Antoine! Apologies for the very late reply! This is a great question, and something that I actually can't answer with 100% certainty, as I've never seen this specific case covered in an official pitch-accent resource, but both the Todai online resource Suzuki-kun (which is generally—though not always—accurate) and my wife both said toOkute. That said, I feel like there may be people that say TOokute as well, but that's just my gut instinct, so please take it with a very large grain of salt. TOokute is certainly the safer option from the information I have on hand!
Dogen
2022-10-14 10:56:27 +0000 UTCHi John! Apologies for the late reply. This is hard to say as it really depends on the resource, but yes, sometimes newer dictionaries will list both the older pronunciation as well as the newer. For example, the dictionary built into Apple computers lists both 明るい as nakadaka and heiban. Thus, I would say try and be on the lookout for multiple listings, but know that it is really dependent on the resource. My gut instinct is that most official pitch-accent dictionaries wouldn't include only the newer pronunciation. Hope this helps!
Dogen
2022-10-14 10:52:51 +0000 UTCQuick question with this lesson, even though the heiban I adjectives are starting to be pronounced with a downstep will they still be labeled as heiban adjectives in pitch accent dictionaries? Especially because the Japanese to Japanese dictionary I use came out in 2021
John McNairy
2022-09-12 19:37:46 +0000 UTCHey Dogen, first of all great video! Currently the next episode (14) is about na-adjectives. Is the content (additional i-adjective information) you mentioned at the end of this video in a later episode or is it still being made?
Pierre Lindenstrauß
2022-03-30 19:10:15 +0000 UTCHi Dogen, At 05:49, you mention the 〜くて form. What about the 〜くて form of 遠い? It is a heiban adjective (toOI), so it should become 遠くて (toOkute). But you mention in lesson #12 that there are special moras as in 多い. Does the special mora treatment applies also for 遠い, as in TOokute? Thanks.
Antoine Contal
2021-12-10 01:55:42 +0000 UTC(Kimi and JP are helping Dōgen respond to comments and questions.) Hi Sekai! Thank you for the comment! Yes, ぐらい is pronounced as GUrai by itself and when it attaches to 甘い(aMAI), it becomes 甘いぐらい, pronounced as aMAIGUrai. But if you choose to pronounce 甘い as aMAi(中高), you might pronounce 甘いぐらい as aMAigu\rai, adding one more downstep on ぐ（so らい is pronounced really low). Though it’s not listed in the accent dictionaries, I believe that there are people who use this pronunciation, since many people pronounce 甘い as a 中高 word in recent years. As for すぎる, it is pronounced as suGIru by itself, and when it attaches to 甘い, it becomes 甘すぎる, and it’s pronounced as aMASUGIru with the downstep occuring on ぎ. But just as Dogen said in this lesson, don’t worry about minor things and exceptions too much. Just memorize the main rules, and keep at active listenings, so they will come naturally to you! Good luck with your studies! (^^) -Kimi
Dogen
2021-08-20 02:56:41 +0000 UTCRegarding Gurai and Sugiru, when I think about them I imagine the pitch accent to be like "aMASUgiru" or when I think of gurai alone, I imagine it to be atamadaka. Is what I am picking up correct (I am assuming it's more complicated than that) but I want to make sure I am not going in the opposite direction with the two, thanks.
Sekai
2021-08-15 01:35:47 +0000 UTCFixed, thank you very much!
Dogen
2021-02-01 12:52:56 +0000 UTCHi, FYI it looks like this lesson isn't linked from the phonetics index page currently: https://www.patreon.com/posts/16489306
Guillaume Martres
2021-01-31 18:07:48 +0000 UTCHi Nadja. I'm not sure if this will answer your question correctly, but the downstep will essentially always occur on the second to last mora of the word for the dictionary or standard form of i-adjectives, both in downstep i-adjectives and heiban i-adjectives, regardless of how many mora they have. Thus, if it is a 5 mora word like むずかしい then the notation will be [4] to indicate the forth mora from the beginning, し, which is also the second to last mora of the word. Note that pitch-accent dictionaries, unless they have tables that show conjugations, will typically only denote the pitch-accent of the dictionary form of the word. Hope this helps, cheers!
Dogen
2021-01-21 03:00:23 +0000 UTCHi Dogen, thanks for the update. Since I am quite new to phonetics I wanted to ask a question regarding the notation. The standard is to use numbers as the indication of where the DS occurs. - So now: how to tackle such a phonetic shift notation-wise? Is there a standard somehow? Or do you (or any other patreon :) personally have a style how you make a note of this shift? Hm, I like the idea that these heiban-i-adjectives are 'fluid' since it shows that it is a language that is alive and changes over time. On the other side.. tricky to keep track of these changes as a learner. Thanks for not only blindly following the textbook-style but picking up on those shifts.
Nadja Niemann
2021-01-18 09:21:45 +0000 UTCHi Nathan! I'm actually planning on suggesting a similar rule in the next lesson (albeit I will encourage learners to remember the く and さ form of 平板 verbs), as there are many similarities, as you pointed out. I think you'll be able to learn from the one exception, I plan on covering, however! Cheers!
Dogen
2021-01-18 07:31:45 +0000 UTCThanks so much for updating this great lesson, Dogen! I recently took a crack at coming up with my own heavily simplified pitch accent rules, following the "80% rule" philosophy. The idea is that I, personally, don't have a goal of sounding especially native at all, but I'd nevertheless like to put in minimal effort to sound okay. One of the simplifications I made, inspired partly by this lesson, was to just say "all い-adjectives are downstep い-adjectives, including all conjugations". That way I just never have to memorize anything about い-adjectives on a per-word basis. I ran this by one of my Japanese friends, pronouncing various 平板 い-adjectives and their conjugations this way, including ~く, and she said she wouldn't have noticed at all if I hadn't specifically pointed it out (and, in fact, asked me to repeat a couple of times so she could listen again for the difference). She is on the younger side, which may partly account for that, but I am in an area that mostly follows Tokyo pitch accent. I thought that was interesting. Sample size of one, of course, so not good data. But still interesting. (Edit: to clarify, I still plan to listen for pitch accent and adopt it organically as I notice it. But using over-simplified minimal rules like this as a starting point, and just not worrying about trying to be perfect.)
Nathan Vegdahl
2021-01-17 05:09:30 +0000 UTCHi Claes! In the next lesson we will be comparing and contrasting downstep and heiban i-adjectives a bit more, covering the one good to know exception to heiban i-adjectives, and also drilling the 20 or so remaining heiban i-adjectives that weren't covered in this lesson. Incidentally, I mention this (what I'll be covering next) at the end of each lesson, including this one. Thank you!
Dogen
2021-01-17 00:58:55 +0000 UTCHi Fluffeh! I apologize for that; this wasn't supposed to be in the final version. I've since deleted that section and re-uploaded the video. Thank you for pointing this out!
Dogen
2021-01-17 00:57:21 +0000 UTCHey Dogen, great video as usual! The outtakes between 6:08 and 6:58 are hilarious, but I'm wondering, were they intentional inclusions?
aoiuewrhfksd
2021-01-16 15:07:56 +0000 UTCWhat lesson are you planning on making next?
Claes Wächtler
2021-01-16 12:42:31 +0000 UTC
