Is Japanese a pitch language?

Its commonly known Chinese has tones, (it can be one of the larger struggles of learning the language). While Japanese doesnt use tones, there is however a stress or pitch accent. Pitch accent is where stress is placed in a word. For instance, using English as an example, the stress on the word insurance is inSURance or INsurance, depending on your accent.

Pitch accent isnt commonly taught in Japanese as its generally considered non important the context of a sentence reveals the meaning even if the stress of the word is wrong. As an example, the word for both bridge and chopsticks in Japanese (romanized) is hashi. Even without using the proper pitch accent, those two words should be far enough apart in concept to be understandable. I got stuck in traffic on the chopsticks, and Could you grab bridges out of the drawer? dont make the most amount of sense. With that said, a word by itself could be mistaken in English for that matter. Based solely on pronunciation and completely out of context, if someone were to say the word their, theyre, or there, it might be impossible to know which one it was.

While it might not be important to study pitch accent in Japanese, it will definitely make you sound more native!

If you have been studying along with audio or with a native speaker, you likely have some of these pitch accents embedded without thinking about them. Which of these pronunciations is correct: KAnojo or kaNOjo?

There are also different inflections with sentences, much like how English works.

For instance:

• MY name is Jeremy. (Someone else was being called that, but its my name).
• My NAME is Jeremy. (Someone was calling me by another name).
• My name IS Jeremy. (Someone claiming its not my name, when it is).
• My name is JEREMY. (Cant stand being called the wrong name and its the last straw).

While this is the way it generally works in English, you unfortunately cant directly apply this directly into Japanese. If you start putting English intonation when speaking Japanese, its going to sound odd and accented. Its a bit of a cliche to recommend trying to sound as robotic as possible when you first start practicing speaking Japanese, the voice inflection will come naturally as you progress in your studies and absorb it.

Here are examples of Japanese pitch accent:

• 日本 (niHOn) (Japan)
• 二本 (NIhon) (Two long cylindrical things)
• 橋 (haSHI) (Bridge)
• 箸 (HAshi) (Chopsticks)
• 神 (KAmi) (God(s))
• 紙 (kaMI) (Paper)
• 今 (Ima) (Now)
• 居間 (iMA) (Living room)
• 雨 (Ame) (Rain)
• 飴 (aME) (Candy)
• 酒 (saKE) (Alcohol)
• 鮭 (SAke) (Salmon)

Like the mention earlier about the pitch accent of the word insurance changing depending on what sort of accent you have, the pitch accent in Japanese can change depending on which part youre in, both for words themselves and the general intonation of a sentence, (without getting into dialects here)!

Tokyo (Standard Japanese) : ARIgatou
Osaka: ArigaTOu
Nagoya: AriGAtou