Japanese Phonetics Episode 24—Live, now with native recordings!
Added 2017-08-05 16:37:03 +0000 UTCBibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page
Good evening Patrons! The twenty-fourth episode of Japanese Phonetics is now live with native recordings! In this episode we test our knowledge of the adjective and verb pitch-accent. Answer sheets may be found attached to this post. Please note that the content of these two files is the same—I decided to use two file types for convenience/accessibility.
One note on pitch-accent graphics: In this series, particles and conjugations of the verb です are typically indicated with an open circle instead of a solid dot, but in this lesson, ‘でした’ in the verb ‘食べませんでした’ is marked with solid dots in order to maintain consistency with other lessons on verbs.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free leave a comment below. Thank you very much for your continued support, and good luck with your Japanese studies!
Best from Beppu,
Dōgen
Comments
Anki screwed up this test for me. For most words I just _know_ the correct pitch pattern instead of _hearing_ it. Damn you, brain! Couldn't you forget that information just for 10 minutes?
Strange Guy
2022-01-16 19:02:56 +0000 UTCHi Julian! This is a great question. If you've already been studying pitch-accent for a few years then I honestly wouldn't worry too much about that score when it comes to at least your listening abilities—it means that you probably have a very good understanding of how Japanese sounds. That said, because your ears are quite good at this point, I actually think that recording yourself and beginning to analyze said recordings would be a truly effective exercise for you. When I began recording myself consistently I wasn't able to pick up on much of my mistakes because I had also been studying Japanese pitch-accent for a long time, but I found that if I recorded myself, then came back to the recording after a day or two with a fresh set of ears I was usually able to pick up on at least one or two things. I think even a simple vlog about what you want to do that day, or what you did the previous day (something maybe around five minutes max) would probably do the trick! I imagine that in addition to minor pitch-accent errors you could also probably pick up on any other strange quirks of your speech, such as how often you use 'filler-words', etc. This is what I'd recommend while continuing to immerse yourself in as much native-speech as possible (without burnout, obviously). Three recordings a week would probably work well for you, and even better if you can use a service such as iTalki to get a native to check one of the recordings! Hope that this helps!
Dogen
2020-06-23 05:54:49 +0000 UTCHey Dogen, I feel like I'm in a bit of a weird spot with pitch accent and wanted to get your thoughts. I got 44/55 for the test, but 0/10 for part 3 as I haven't been doing the recording/listening practice (This is not including the MIA-style immersion I do throughout each day, where audio tracks are sometimes repeated.) I've admittedly been slacking on those exercises due to a feeling that, after a few years of studying Japanese with attention payed to pitch accent, I'm usually able to distinguish/produce the different pitches fairly consistently (although I'm sure the exercises would help to hone those skills). I guess what I'm wondering is, how would you recommend I structure my day-to-day speaking/listening practice, and which intermediate level exercises do you feel provide the best ROI at an intermediate level? (On a side-note, what kinds of exercises do you currently find most useful in your own pitch accent training?)
Julian Bentham
2020-06-22 08:44:36 +0000 UTCI was also wondering if their was any rule for katakana noun, as nothing is indicated on the Mac Dictionnary. Cheer
Pierre-Alexandre Pons
2020-03-10 11:43:16 +0000 UTCHi Dogen! I would like to thank you a lot for your phonetics course. It has completly changed my way to listen to japanese and I take great pleasure to implement those new rules while working on my Assimil. Going through Assimil, I have noticed that - If I am not mistaken - nothing has been said on the "mashou" form. I assumed that the downstep is between sho and u. Is that correct and universal?
Pierre-Alexandre Pons
2020-03-10 11:33:21 +0000 UTCNo worries Jokin! Congratulations on the very high score--that's definitely something to be proud of! Good luck with your future studies and thank you for the continued support!
Dogen
2019-05-11 00:11:41 +0000 UTCHi Dogen! Thank you for the series so far, i found it really usefull and in these two and a half months i've been studying phonetics I've changed the way I hear japanese and my thoughts about pitch accent, which to be honest I considered not to be important for the 4-5 years i've been studying japanese. Anyway, eventhough I've noticed some improves on my speaking habilities, I think I have a long way to go on this point, but at least now I'm more aware of my mistakes and I've started implementing the general rules we've learned so far. Anyway I'm really happy with the results on this one, on the first one I got a 41/55 (without listening to any movie) and now i got a 49/55, failing 3 on listening and 3 on Knowledge application (I can't believe I failed the 選ぶ exception haha). Also know I've been wathing トウキョウソナタ as a reference movie, with I enjoyed (and suffered 笑) Thank you for everything and for answering every question and I'm really looking forward to continue with the sentence-level lessons and the pronunciation part. Cheers!
Jokin Pedreño Alcolea
2019-05-10 21:03:04 +0000 UTCHi Thorn! Great score! I've actually found out that recording oneself is the best way to improve listening, though I was in a slightly different situation than you. I couldn't really hear the difference between nakadaka and heiban, or odaka and heiban, until I finally met a teacher that forced me to say English words with heiban pronunciation. Once I started doing this the way I began hearing things changed dramatically. Do you record yourself on a regular basis? Thank you for the support!
Dogen
2018-06-22 10:49:37 +0000 UTCHi Dogen. I scored a 44/55 and yet obtained a mediocre 11/20 in listening. There is something I must be doing wrong T_T I listened to the 12-23 videos 3 times each and took notes, but it looks like I'm still tone-deaf. So I was wondering, when you are listening to a word, how do you determine if the pitch goes up/down/stays constant ? I'm really struggling with Nakadaka/Atamadaka words in particular. When it comes to listening to a word, is it a good strategy to compare the mora you're hearing to the previous one in order to determine "what has changed", so to speak ? At least, I improved greatly my accent, so thank you again for your amazing work.
Thorn
2018-06-21 15:58:24 +0000 UTCKeep at it! The first twenty four lessons literally came out over the course of an entire year, so it's almost unreasonable to expect to get a high score when you've just started your phonetic studies. Again, it took me almost two weeks before I was able to say the 平板 pattern with any reasonable accuracy! Thus I'd encourage you to spend a bit more time on the fundamental ideas from episode 1-10 before testing again ^^ Good luck!
Dogen
2018-04-21 00:56:26 +0000 UTCWell, that was depressing. I did this first thing in the morning but maybe should have done it late at night so I could have a night's sleep to recover instead of spending a day of じこけ↓んお・・・(苦笑い). 31 our of 55, but that counts the 10 points for study habits which are basically "effort" marks, so I'm in the always-ironic position of getting an A for effort and a D for attainment, as in "you tried really hard and STILL failed..." To breakdown, the listening was a completely rubbish 6/20. I can mostly hear the change, and when I see the diagram answers it seems perfectly obvious, but I can't for the life of me distinguish whether the change goes up or down (and seem to guess uo/down wrongly with amazing consistency...) I've never learned any music (until recently) so there's an amount of simple tone-deafness going on. I gather ("studies show....") this can be improved with practice, I may have to investigate music ear training to help with this. The theory section was better, 15/25, including 4 that were only out by a mora (ie I wrote the change down correctly but not in quite the right place) and 2 where I'd forgotten that you can have a second pitch change on ない. This may be simply denial but my impression is that I'm often saying these correctly, at least while studying (conversation is a different question), since when self-recording I don't have much trouble getting my pitch accent to sound like Dogen's. My problem is that I can't actually say whether any given pitch change went up or down even as I'm saying it correctly.... Anyway, long comment sorry to ramble, feeling a tad discouraged, tho of course the answer is more practice (including assess my practice strategies to look for improvements), が↑んばりま↓す・・・
tensaimon
2018-04-20 21:52:10 +0000 UTCHi Kaytlin, Thanks so much for your support—I really appreciate it! If you've never studied phonetics intensively before I can guarantee this series will change the way you hear and speak Japanese ^^ I hope to make the transition to full time soon—perhaps in the next two months, if things go well. Thanks again for the support, and good luck with your studies!
Dogen
2017-08-18 08:26:01 +0000 UTCHi Edwin, Thanks for the question. I'll be addressing this in the upcoming lesson a bit, but my go-to advice for this right now would be to concentrate on the pitch accent of the question-word (何時, in this case), rather than the rising intonation at the end of the sentence. I can almost guarantee that this will make your pitch-accent in both statements and questions sound more natural. I also plan on making an advanced lesson about this specific issue later on. Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!
Dogen
2017-08-17 13:28:04 +0000 UTCHi Kenny, Thanks for the reply. Anki works great, though I never used it for pitch-accent studies. I personally recommend memorizing the rules first and supplementing later with anki, assuming that you will somtimes botch pitch-accent but maintain your conversational abilities. Memorizing 1-2 example verbs in each class, as you mentioned, is also a great practice. Be sure to concentrate on the more common conjugations, such as present and past—I've found this to be very effective! I hope that this helps, and please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!
Dogen
2017-08-17 13:23:25 +0000 UTCHi Mat, Thank you very much for the comment—apologies for the very late reply; I've been out of the country for a while to attend a family member's wedding. To answer your question, I believe that 新明解 is more comprehensive, but that NHK is more accessible/practical. Thus, if you are very confident in your Japanese reading abilities 新明解 is probably the better option. Alternatively, if you want a resource that will give you a lot of useful lists without long explanations, then NHK is probably better. In my next lesson, which I am writing right now, I will be introducing sentence level pitch-accent. Thank you for the support and let me know if you ever have any additional questions!
Dogen
2017-08-17 13:15:13 +0000 UTCI would've paid double for this, I think you could do a tiered system where it's $10/month for the first few, then gradually up it. You're worth it!!! I've been scouring the web for ages for Japanese phonetics videos and you're the only person I've seen with something like this - like what I wanted. You have worked so hard and I think if you explain that you're looking to go full time - kinda like a kickstarter you get something for (I get videos) then you could get more funds. Thanks for all of your hard work and sacrifice. I recently moved to Tokyo in 2016 (now here long term) and I am really excited to see how this will help my accent (which other courses don't cover). Thanks!!
ケイトリン Kaytlin
2017-08-16 01:11:51 +0000 UTCHey Dogen, I am having trouble with rising intonations at the end of a sentence (questions). For example, saying 何時ですか？ the か？ part is really throwing me off. Do you know any way I can make the sound?
Edwin
2017-08-15 03:00:05 +0000 UTCHi Dogen, I've been using my existing decks in Anki to memorize pitch accents for my vocabulary, in dictionary form. (This has worked very well for internalizing them.) How would you suggest memorizing the accents of their conjugations, since there are so many? In your experience, is it sufficient to really internalize the conjugations for 1-2 example verbs from each class, and use these as anchors to map the correct accent onto all other verbs when speaking?
Kenny Song
2017-08-14 04:26:22 +0000 UTCI found that finishing up some elementary Japanese grammar (Genki I-II) made these lessons more approachable. (At that point, you can understand all of the conjugations that are mentioned.)
Kenny Song
2017-08-14 04:18:40 +0000 UTCHi Dogen. I'm not sure if you've addressed this and I just missed it, if so I apologize. I know you've mentioned that it's easy to acquire bad phonetic habits, so you suggest taking a break from kanji and grammar studies to focus on pitch accent. But when I first started watching this series I was a BEGINNER beginner and I felt completely lost. I'm further along now and more of your videos make sense to me but I guess my question is, at what point in one's Japanese studies do you recommend starting this series (or studying pitch accent in general)? ありがとうございます。
Lisa Williams
2017-08-11 17:39:43 +0000 UTCHey, Dogen. Thanks for this lovely series. I have two questions. Which one do your recommend 新明解 or NHK dictionary? Also, what do you intend to cover in the next part of the series? Keep up the good work.
Mateusz Biszczak
2017-08-11 12:31:15 +0000 UTCHB, it's absolutely my pleasure! Thrilled to hear about the progress that you're making. If you ever end up changing your chosen anime / Japanese audio sample, another movie I recommend is 12人の優しい日本人. A bit difficult to get hold of, but extremely beneficial for listening / shadowing practice, as the entire movie is essentially dialog. Thank you for your support, and keep up the great work!
Dogen
2017-08-09 08:15:47 +0000 UTCThanks so much for these self-assessment tests. I don't know about everyone else, but I find them very useful. I did very poorly on the Episode 11 test (21/55, including zero points for listening to the same thing over and over and speech practice), which helped me realize that I really did need to make your advice a higher priority in my language skills. I'm on iteration 70-ish of my chosen anime, and scored much higher this time--36. I still need to spend more time recording myself, but I can attest that your method really is helping, and that these self-assessments really help me hone in on areas that need work. Thank you!
HB
2017-08-05 19:03:12 +0000 UTC
