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Pitch accent vs. stress accent | ||
Tags: Accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7028 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes  5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 9 of 21 15 October 2005 at 10:02am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, to be correct, "oGEnki desu KA?" And the "KA" is really a different subject, which is rising instead of just high. Think of it as in English, where you would normally raise the pitch at the end of a question.
Maybe this isn't so important to getting understood (except for some parts, of course, like the example you gave; those are not exactly rare), but it's surely very important to "sounding" like a native. I think it is not so important to know the difference between "stress accent" (English), "pitch accent" (Japanese), and "tonal accent" (Chinese), but instead how to use it. Actually, you can think of it as two simple tones as well, one high flat and one low flat. And I think every language has stress...... Edited by epingchris on 15 October 2005 at 10:08am 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 10 of 21 15 October 2005 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
The pitch accent in swedish is most noticeable on two syllable words. The most famous example being the word "anden" meaning "the spirit" or "the duck" depending on pitch accent. So you can at least say that every word of two syllables in Swedish has one of two possible pitch accents. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| boaziano Triglot Newbie Italy Joined 6960 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, Sanskrit, English Studies: Hindi, Tibetan, Tamil | Message 11 of 21 05 November 2005 at 7:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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In italian almost evry word has one stress accent. But in a word like "càsa" (house), in the first syllable, both kinds of accent coexist because, in italian, open* and stressed syllables are also pitched. Anyway the pitch accent is secondary because no couple of words is distinguished# by it, vice versa "àncora"-"ancòra" (anchor-again) are distinguished by the stress accent.
ciao! * ca-sa: "ca" is open; gat-to (cat): "gat" is closed; an-co-ra: "an" is closed. # The debate about which is the goal of accents (to create opposition or neutralisation between "words") is still open. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6890 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 12 of 21 18 January 2007 at 8:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sorry to revive such an old thread but...
I've been wondering how important pitch accent is in Japanese. By this I mean...while I be understood if my pitch accent is wrong? I know that pitch accent helps differentiate the meanings of words which have the same pronunciation and I make every effort to mimic spoken Japanese as closely as possible but I've noticed that few (if any) elementary courses or textbooks deal with pitch accent. As I don't live in Japan and have limited access to Japanese speakers, how would I go about learning pitch accent? Would my spoken Japanese suffer badly from incorrect or pitchless accent? I'm not likely to have much of a chance to use my spoken Japanese in everyday life for the time being but I would like to make sure I don't make any glaring errors when I *do* get to speak it. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 13 of 21 18 January 2007 at 8:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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Lady Skywalker:
Pitch accent isn't important for most words in Japanese, but it's one of those things that can push you over the "line of comprehensibility" and let people understand you without straining. And there are quite a few words where people might misunderstand you if you get the wrong accent — oysters and persimmons, both popular foods here, are a typical example. They're both "kaki" with differing intonation. That said, you can always fall back on monotone pronunciation and be understood. It's foreigners (especially anglophones and Chinese) who speak with erratic pitch that confuse Japanese. In Japan, they even have a "stereotypical foreigner accent" that schoolchildren will tease foreign language teachers with. Surprisingly, so long as one gets chances to shadow audio material or copy native speakers, the correct intonation tends to sink in on its own. It's too bad English-language materials rarely address intonation. Monolingual Japanese teaching materials almost always do. Edit: Another way to look at it is that intonation in Japanese is about as important (or slightly more so) as volume stress in English. Not many words really depend on it, but it sounds rather strange if you get it totally wrong. Edited by Captain Haddock on 18 January 2007 at 8:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nhk9 Senior Member Canada Joined 6804 days ago 290 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English* | Message 14 of 21 09 August 2007 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sorry for reviving the old thread, but recently I have just started picking up Swedish again (after stopping for half a year). I am just wondering if a Swedish learner is not able to pronounce words like "anden" in the way that it should be pronounced in a given context, would a native speaker somehow still manage to understand what is being said? More extremely speaking, if a person speaks in a monotone, would that monotone Swedish be understandable? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| karuna Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6334 days ago 47 posts - 46 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Latvian*, Russian, English Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 15 of 21 09 August 2007 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that Latvian has kind of both. With few exceptions the stress is always on the first syllable. But additionally there are three tones: level, falling and broken. The words zÄle can mean "grass", "hall" or "drug" depending on the intonation. The broken intonation are gradually being phased out and not all speakers use it anymore, especially among younger people but some dialects use it predominantly for almost everything.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 21 09 August 2007 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sure, any native speaker would understand it from context, especially as the "word pairs" aren't related at all. No real risk of making a fatal mistake as in Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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