|
 |
Pitch accent vs. stress accent | ||
Tags: Accent | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Kyle Groupie United States Joined 7075 days ago 49 posts - 49 votes | Message 1 of 21 15 July 2005 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
|
Since I started studying Japanese, I always knew that it didn't have certain stressed syllables in words as we do in English (a dynamic or stress accent). But later after reading Gene Nishi's "Japanese Step by Step," I learned that Japanese has a pitch (or musical) accent instead.
It's not like Mandarin Chinese where there is a system of 4 tones that are integral to the meaning of a word. Instead, in Japanese, there are two levels of pitch (one 12% higher than the other) that alternate similarly to how we alternate between stressed and unstressed syllables in English. Throughout the book, in addition to Japanese script, he includes romanization with the tonal accent included. He write in all caps for high pitch, and lower-case for the lower ptich. for example: oHAYOO goZAIMAsu, haJIMEMAsh*te, oGENki desu KA? The author says that this accent is usually maintained unless the utterance is "fraught with emotion such as joy, anger, surprise etc." At first I thought this wasn't very important, but then I imagined what it would be like if someone learning English mixed up the stressed syllables. Maybe, instead of saying: "I'm feeling -con tent'- today," with stress on the second syllable of content, they say "I'm feeling -con'tent- today," with stress on the first. This would certainly create a big misunderstanding. Similarly, the author says that sometimes, the pitch accent in Japanese in necessary to distinguish between two words, like "HAshi" (chopsticks), and "haSHI" (bridge). I just thought this was very interesting because no other book that I have ever read about Japanese has mentioned this aspect of the language. I suppose it is possible to pick it up through listening, but reading about it has made speaking so much easier. Has anyone else ever heard of it? In Japanese or otherwise Doesn't Italian have a similar type of accent? or is it a mix of both stressed syllables and pitch? Edited by Kyle on 15 July 2005 at 12:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7183 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes  7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 21 15 July 2005 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||
My native language Swedish is a pitch accent language. Some words are contrasted only by the pitch melody. E.g. "stegen" can mean the ladder or the steps just depending on the pitch melody. I don't know much about Italian but as far as I know very few european languages have pitch accent.I only know of Swedish and Norwegian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 21 15 July 2005 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Maxb, thanks so much for the MP3 file example of pitch accent in Swedish you just uploaded! This is a highly interesting example of the topic at hand and by a native speaker, no less.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7183 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 21 16 July 2005 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Does anyone know if Italian is a pitch accent language? I think I've read that most european languages are stress timed languages like english. Only Swedish and Norwegian and one or two more european languages have pitch accent.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7105 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 21 24 July 2005 at 7:31am | IP Logged | ||
|
Maxb, for me the most striking feature of Swedish always has been the pitch as used in the very first word of your sound file: anden. Here in Holland we often say that such words sound as if the speaker is a little bit surprised. In English you could also say something like "this is really UNbeLEAVable" :) I am learning Swedish and pronouncing such words "surprisedly" gives a reasonable approach to this kind of accent.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7105 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 21 24 July 2005 at 7:39am | IP Logged | ||
I don't think it is a real pitch accent language but what I sometimes noticed that every word is accented as if it were pronounced seperately i.e. many languages have a stressed syllable but you can hear the stress much better in the most important word of the sentence. This seems not always true in Italian. So in "Una visita alla Capella Sistina" I often hear the same stress on both syllables : "La caPEL-la sisTINa" . In Dutch, although the second syllable of sixTIJNS is stressed we would say "een bezoek aan de sixtijnse kaPEL" and Sixtijns would be pronounced much more indifferently. I think Spanish has more or less the same stress pattern as Dutch but in Finnish I often hear how every stressed syllable of every word is equally stressed. BTW I am not a professional phonologist so I am just describing how these languages sound to me :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| thinkbluecollar Newbie Joined 7198 days ago 13 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 21 24 July 2005 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||
|
No, Italian isn't pitched. I just finished a short introductory course to Italian, and words are stressed, not pitched.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| screamadelics Newbie United States Joined 6987 days ago 34 posts - 35 votes | Message 8 of 21 15 October 2005 at 9:00am | IP Logged | ||
|
I know this thread is very old, but Ancient Greek and Lithuanian are also pitch-accent languages. Nobody pronounces Greek that way, though; nobody knows how the pitch system worked and it changed to a stress accent by around 200 B.C. (I think). Lithuanian does have a pitch accent similar to that of Classical Greek, and Swedish has the vestiges of one (for Swedish speakers: there isn't a rising, falling, or up-and-down pitch on every stressed syllable, is there? It's just in certain places, or am I wrong?). I'm also 95% sure that Sanskrit had a pitch accent.
Those are the only that I know of, but I think it's hypothesized that the original Indo-European language was pitch-accented, and all of it has become stress-accented except for a small vestige (Swedish) and in a very archaic/conservative language (Lithuanian). Pitch-accent and tonal are NOT the same thing. People make that mistake all the time: Ancient Greek was not a tonal language. It was pitch-accented. They're completely different. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
