dude i thought the same thing!

haha I've been there! ^^ If you'd like to learn more please consider signing up for the series! There is cool trick that covers most words such as 学校、銀行、交番, etc. They all fall into the same pattern so to speak. Let me know if you have any questions! ^^

A few hours earlier but in the same boat 🚣‍♀️

3am, in bed, drunk af,

1:45am

I only study Japanese or Russian while drunk and/or high for some baffling reason.

3:16 It's saturday. The ceiling is rotating together with the vape smoke

Yes, this is THE reason Japanese people don't always understand you. I can guarantee that once you get the basics of pitch-accent down your communication abilities will immediately improve, and that the number of fake compliments you receive will also drop off dramatically. Progress! :D Thanks for the support!

That explains why foreigners are depicted as speaking in katakana (the hiragana parts being replaced by katakana) in manga.

@@Arkanthrall That's a good point. In Kinmoza, Karen speaks with a "Japanese voice actor pretending to be an American" accent, tagging along desu at the end of too many sentences, but in the JP subtitles it's written with デス instead.

This is what’s strange because changes in English pitch is usually understandable. Accented words like read vs read to depict tense are a bit different I think. But it indeed sounds strange if done wrong.

@@Mrbluefire95 This is a bad example actually. Read and read use different sounds rather than pitch to communicate that difference (R-ee-d and R-eh-d). A better example is the word 'present'. If you it is a noun as in "I am getting you a present' the emphasis is on 'pres'. In the verb usage, as in 'You are going to present your work tomorrow at 9 a.m.' the emphasis is on 'sen'. It's the same pronunciation but the distinction comes from what syllable gets emphasized.

I love "stress different words in the same sentence" exercises, because man is it fun to make completely different scenarios just from stress

Awesome, thank you so much Nerketur! ^^ See you over there!

Getting nervous can definitely affect speech! Do you ever record yourself? I feel that this is one of the best ways to get rid of the gap between mental fluency and conversational fluency :) good luck with your studies!

I couldn't agree more. When I think of the words, it sounds like a native speaker in my head, the main reason I found out to be is that we have been exposed to these words and heard it before but haven't practiced speaking very much. Not only this but when you are aware of the mistakes you are doing you feel like it's too much effort to talk perfectly hence it becomes overwhelming to think all of these "Did I tell the word correctly?" or "I made a mistake but it's too late." and bonus point you are aware that the person in front of you judges your language abilities without thinking/expressing it to you. Then you think to yourself and want to improve, but still there are many gaps you have to fill in and simply watching mixed videos put you under stress since you are now more aware of your capabilities so looking at the big picture becomes overwhelming and depressing when you start to think that you haven't improved and will (almost) never talk like a native speaker; even if you manage, you will never be seen Japanese (goes same for every country really) but the gaijin. The more you look into it, the more it feels like impossible to learn the language. Sometimes you will feel unmotivated and depressed, sometimes the opposite: you will feel like it's the perfect time to start again however it will be complicated for that since you know a bit already and the loop begins. Being native-like is a very hard task and not many people achieve it, mostly we see the motivated people who have achieved it. To be honest I am thinking the same of never starting to learn Japanese because now everything is too complicated, depressing and confusing whereas 10-15 years ago we didn't have many sources and had a book or a two to study from. Overall I hope you are doing better.

Have you ever tried language shadowing?

@@NoriMori1992 yup record urself as what dogen said and shadowing is the key for introspection

So glad to hear that you are getting a lot out of the series! If nothing else I'm sure you'll improve your listening abilities a lot with the knowledge from these lessons. Even just knowing about the different types of patterns can completely change the way that you hear Japanese. Thanks again--truly appreciate it!

Thanks for the feedback Diana ^^ I'm currently restructuring my Patreon page; I'll be sure to make it clearer on version 2.0! Thanks for signing up and I hope that you find the lessons useful!

@diana rz: yo estudio japonés desde hace más de un año y me profesora japonesa me dice que las vocales del español suenan muy parecidas a las del japonés. Sin embargo, como no tengo con quien hablar japonés, se me han olvidado muchas cosas. Pero yo quiero seguir aprendiendo japonés por que de verdad adoro la cultura e idioma de Japón. がんばって。👍😊

@@Dogen uP

Thanks Charlo! That really means a lot! ^^

Dogen Not to be rude or tasteless, but I think your insights in to Japanese language far exceed both most foreign students and some native Japanese as well. Your numbered Japanese lessons are great. I can't tell you how many times I've watched them. It's like you acting out thoughts I've had about Japan. Hillarious!!!

Charlo J Into*

Appreciate that as well Charlo!

record

もう解決済みでしょうか？ 例えば単語の発音時間を意識されてはどうでしょうか。例「私(watashi)」のそれぞれのaの発音時間はほぼ同じです。アクセントだと英語(母語)の影響を受けて語頭を強く発音しがちです。watashi→WAtashi or WAT ashi。 日本の単語には英語の連続子音発音がないのでここも確認されてはどうでしょうか？springやstrikeは日本語でスプリング(supuringu)、ストライク(sutoraiku)になります。発音時間はどうでしょうか？

上手？

Most textbooks do not try to teach native-level pronunciation; in fact many believe this is not achievable after 12 years old but that's not true but one needs the methodology that Dōgen teaches to achieve it. Japanese: The Spoken Language is well known for it's focus on achieving such a native-level quality and starts pitch accent from the start.

Text books also try to teach japanese as if it's a European language (it's so very much far from it) or as English in disguise so that adds extra to the confusion, they also misrepresent the particles, a particle doesn't exist in the english language so it can't be explained with english grammar. Only one source that I've found on youtube that can tell things that textbooks don't talk about and misrepresent. They also leave out important pieces of information, I wouldn't have known that a zero pronoun exists in japanese nor wouldn't have known that が is the core of every japanese sentence even when you don't see or hear it; the zero pronoun works like the word "it", say in this example sentence of "it" in english. "Mary had a ball, it fell down the hall, it hit the wall then it bounced off and in to the other room." Just take that "it" out and the context will still be the same. The zero pronoun is an invisible "it" in a sense. It's things like this that helps out.

@@user-hf6jm4tv2v "Text books also try to teach japanese as if it's a European language (it's so very much far from it) or as English in disguise so that adds extra to the confusion" => Not sure what you mean by that. All European languages I speak are accentuated, whether stressed (as English is) or pitch-accentuated (like French). "they also misrepresent the particles, a particle doesn't exist in the english language so it can't be explained with english grammar" => Well, it can be explained, pretty easily by grammatical function. The real issue is most English-speakers do not have a solid grammar foundation nowadays. I also think the sudy of a case language (Latin, German, Russian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrite, etc) helps a great deal in that regard: Particles for the most part then simply become declinaison suffixes "broken off" the end of the word they're modulating. "_(w)o" simply becomes a universal accusative case suffix. "Only one source that I've found on youtube that can tell things that textbooks don't talk about and misrepresent." => Very much interested. "They also leave out important pieces of information, I wouldn't have known that a zero pronoun exists in japanese nor wouldn't have known that が is the core of every japanese sentence even when you don't see or hear it; the zero pronoun works like the word "it", say in this example sentence of "it" in english. "Mary had a ball, it fell down the hall, it hit the wall then it bounced off and in to the other room." Just take that "it" out and the context will still be the same. The zero pronoun is an invisible "it" in a sense. It's things like this that helps out." => I think of your explanation as a very convoluted and strange way to say that verbs, explicit or not, are at the core of any sentence. And that any verb, has a subject, explicit or not. "What a lovely day!" => "What a lovely day (IS) (TODAY/THAT/THIS DAY)" But this idea being true of pretty much any natural language, I guess it is to a large degree subconsciously ingrained in almost every mind. Sentences allow you to say anything, but they only allow you to say anything about SOMETHING. Which is always the subject, if in a grammatically hidden way.

It's definitely an eye opener! Thanks for watching :)

Yes, that is what I recommend. People tend to grow close to the dialect of the places they live, but people move, and dialects are not usually 100% understandable to everyone, so I think making a push toward 標準語 would be a good idea. Good luck with your studies!

Not that surprising. Ancient Greek was tonal, but Modern Greek pronounces all the old pitch accents as stress accents.

@@SpectatorAlius Ancient Greek was not a tonal language. Greek used pitch accent, not tone.

Japanese people mostly originated from other Asiatic areas, like Korea, China, etc. Along with the jomon/ainu people that originally inhabited japan

@@pawel198812 Of course it was a tonal language… You can even see it in the diacritics that were used in literary Greek up to the XXth century. You were one google search away from confirming if you’re publicly misinforming people. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia proving that not only did Ancient Greek have tones on their own but they were also used to differentiate meanings of minimal pairs. λύσαι lúsai 'he might free' - λῦσαι lûsai 'to free' οἴκοι oíkoi 'at home' - οἶκοι oîkoi 'houses' φώς phṓs 'man' (poetic) - φῶς phôs 'light'. If that’s not enough, then there’s also a tonne of Roman records that describe Greeks’ speech of their time as very different in melody than that of Romans - being much more ‘melodic’.

@@Miriarim A language being described as melodic by speakers of another language is no evidence that the language in question has lexical tone as a distinctive feature. Americans often describe European varieties of English as more melodic than American English varieties. Lithuanian (and to a lesser extent Latvian) is described as more melodic than the geographically close Polish and Belorussian. Kansai Japanese is thought of is more melodic than standard Japanese. Italian is more melodic than Spanish, French, or Catalan. Milanese Italian and Lombardian are considered less melodic than Neapolitan or Sicilian... The reason for these impressionistic judgements is that the languages or dialects in question employ a wider or more complex pitch contour in their intonation patterns on the level of words, phrases and/or sentences than the languages or dialects they are compared to. Virtually all experts who study Ancient Greek (classical philologist, language typologists, historical linguists focusing on PIE) analyze it as having pitch accent, not lexical tone. Within the PIE language family, pitch accent is also reconstructed for Balto-Slavic (Baltic languages and Serbo-Croatian have pitch accent to this day) and proto Indo-Aryan (Panini's grammar describes Vedic Sanskrit as having pitch accent). What is less certain, is whether pitch accent is a conservative feature of PIE (later lost by Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Anatolian, etc), an innovation. shared by Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, and Hellenic (and probably others), or a case of parallel development. No reconstruction of PIE that I know of features lexical tone (like in many of the languages of SE Asia or West Africa), and most reconstructions feature pitch accent. If I understand correctly, the difference between a pitch accent language and a tonal language is as follows: In the phonology of a tonal language, every syllable (or mora) of a word or phrase carries a distinct pitch pattern that can be either level (e.g high, low, mid) or a contour (ie starting at one pitch and ending at another). These pitch patterns contrast with each other in a way that is analogous to different phonemes in a syllable/mora (ie using different vowel or consonant sounds). Unlike consonant or vowel sounds, tones are not assigned to only one position within a syllable (onset, nucleus, coda), but to the syllable or mora as a whole (suprasegmentally) as its toneme. By contrast, in a pitch accent language, one (or rarely two) syllables or morae in a word or phrase are marked by a certain, noticeable change in pitch, while the remaining syllables or morae of that word or phrase are left unmarked or neutral. This pitch accent is realized most of the time through an audible drop or rise in pitch of the following syllable, while the pitch of preceding syllables is seemingly less important. Good examples of these would be Welsh, Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, and standard Japanese. A pitch accent may be accompanied by stress (ie an increase in loudness), just like a stress accent may be accompanied by a change in pitch in stress accent languages (like Italian), and it can even be difficult topinpoint exactly whether one language primarily uses pitch or loudness to mark the accent or it can vary from dialect to dialect. Sorry for the wall of text. Have you watched videos of Luke Ranieri (Polymathy, ScorpioMartianus) or Found In Antiquity on the reconstruction of Ancient Greek pronunciation? They cover vowel quantity, and consonant quantity and quality, but they also speak about how to interpret the acute, circumflex and grave tonoi and how to implement them in pronunciation.

Yes, this is a very large part of Japanese and no being aware of it can completely change you hear and speak the language! If you have never studied pitch accent I'm sure you will be able to learn a lot! Hope that you are able to sign up on Patreon! If not feel free to wait a few months to save money. Will also have samples from all videos on KZfaq as well :) thanks again and good luck with your studies!

I tried to join Patreon, but my Paypal account has technical difficulties at the moment, so I'll have to sort that out first. However I forwarded this video to my Japanese teacher and she said she was delighted and will try to teach this more!

Wow, this is great news! It would be so cool if your teacher became a Patreon lol. I hope that the service works out such that you are able to get access as well. Thanks again!

thank you very much for your support! ^^

Not a problem ^^ I plan on covering pronunciation (voiced and voiceless consonants) in the future as well ^^ thanks again for the support!

Hi Afroman, thanks so much for the reply, really appreciate it! :D I know a lot of people that have become completely bilingual with any formal grammar training; if you have troubles with it I encourage you to continue down the path that you are on :) With regards to く, yes the う tends to disappear between unvoiced consonants, just as in the う from です。Having a pair of good ears is definitely a huge help as well; a lot of people (myself included) are unable to hear the distinction without first going through phonetic training, so being able to make that distinction from the beginning is incredible. Good luck with your studies, and I hope that you enjoy the upcoming content. Thanks again for the support! :)

awesome! I really appreciate the exposure! Yes, the consistency is something that a lot of people tend to overlook. I suggest putting your efforts completely into 標準語, as this is what I'll be covering in detail :) thanks again for the support!

頑張れニート

Bridge Chopstick and . . . . . .

Well, just found this: www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/pages/home Wish I had it 9 years ago.

Hi Cantacarallada! Thanks for the comment. I had a similar realization around the same point during my studies, which is actually why I began to study Japanese phonetics in detail. If you haven't already, I highly suggest signing up for my series on Patreon-you might not be able to tell if you're only looking at my KZfaq, but I've actually made 56 video pronunciation lessons already, and they all include useful tips and tricks for improving your spoken Japanese. Check it out if you can! ^^ www.patreon.com/dogen

Hi Straw! Yes, I actually think you're in a great position to study phonetics, as it sounds like you have a good base understanding of the language, as well as a good set of ears! Incidentally I didn't study very much grammar while doing my phonetics concentration period either, but I believe this was the correct decision, as many of the more advanced grammar patterns and vocab are relatively easy to pick up with just a bit of ANKI study. Hope this helps and thank you for the support!

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm relieved to hear that, I'll keep trucking on then. (I've binged watched the series up til the test and I have to say, it's really blown my mind... I have internalise it now, but whoa. Great work!!)

start now, for sure! the faster you sign up for phonetics the more of an impact they will have! ^^ please let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns! 👍

haha it's my pleasure. hope that the lessons are useful for you :D

I'll watch out of interest in linguistics, but I don't know how useful it'll be since I'm living in the Kansai region right now. Thankfully that dialect is fairly well-documented so self-study is easily doable. Side note: I'm teaching English here and I wonder if it would be helpful to dispel that myth for the sake of my students who have trouble with pitch accent/intonation in English; sometimes it helps to have a familiar analogue in your native language.

I don't think it would hurt to try! ^^ good luck with kansai-ben!

I will! but this will most likely happen in stages as I expect to be making phonetic lessons for over a year (the bulk of the content will be finished in about 6 month). Expect an initial package deal around February :)

Hi Willionaire ^^ it's best to know a bit of grammar and vocab before starting phonetics, though I won't stop you from becoming a supporter! haha I usually tell people that have just started to wait until the their third month if they want to get the most bang for their buck :D

Alright, thanks my man. I wouldn't mind becoming a supporter immediately under other circumstances because I love your content, but I just recently graduated highschool, so I'm using only graduation money and I'm trying to make every dollar count.

Sounds good. Hope you can become a supporter soon! :)

勉強になったようで何よりです。アメリカ人です！

Hello Nuria Trillo! Sorry for the late reply. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me? 1. How long have you been studying Japanese? 2. Did you study any Japanese before coming to Kyoto? 3. How long have you been living in Kyoto? 4. Do you have any kind of JLPT certification? 5. Do people typically understand 100% of what you are saying?

Thank you! 1. About 4 years 2. No 3. A bit more than 4 years 4. I haven't taken any exam 5. Yes, they do

Thank you for this information. This is going to be somewhat tricky. Can you answer a couple more questions? 1. Did you use a lot of Japanese based listening resources when you were studying Japanese, or was it primarily textbook grammar / vocabulary? Anything like Japanesepod101? 2. Did you learn a lot from Japanese movies? 3. Do you intent to live in Kyoto for a long time?

1 no, I went for a year to a language school here in Kyoto, and then it's all from daily life 2 not at all 3 I think so ;)

Awesome, thank you! Based on this I would imagine that your spoken Japanese is actually quite unified and not as fragmented as the typical speaker. I think that my series would definitely make your Japanese sound more like standard Japanese, and help your overall knowledge in terms of Phonetic knowledge. In other words, I think this series would give you a bit of playroom with Japanese, rather than making you sound more understandable. Does this answer your question? :)

Hi there Rodolphe. Apologies for the high entry fee-I'm actually doing this such that I can eventually pump out videos at a faster rate in the future. If you'd like, you can also save by waiting to sign up :) From what I understand French is not a tonal language :)

It’s out for free now! :D

Cheers!

What do mushroom farmers sound like?

@@seneca983 12:37

Hi Flambergian! Thanks for the comment. I usually tell people to study holistically for six months before beginning a three month phonetic concentration period. Hope this helps!

Dogen oh I didn’t expect such quick reply! Thank you very much, of course it is helpful, you’re the best. Thank you! I quit my job and I have no regrets, I’m enjoying this, I hope this would be a nice change of career. Please wish me the best, I think I need one. Thank you!

No worries! Good luck with your future endeavors!

Hi Phil, sorry for the terribly late reply. Pitch accent is really case by case, so I can't guarantee that you will get a native accent in any set amount of time, but I can guarantee that you will improve dramatically. In other words, studying pitch accent is a good way to fulfill your specific phonetic potential :) I know that my series will help tremendously, but it's important to remember everything I present is simple information; what's more important is how you apply what is presented! I never studied pitch accent alone for more than 2 hours a day, so my short answer would be, yes, you are likely to make incredible strides in phonetics with that kind of determination and study plan! Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!

It's all good :). You're a busy guy so it's understandable haha! Yes, it certainly is hard to guess the amount of time you need to put into something even for the person themselves, I feel. I'm definitely going to set the 6 month goal for myself and at the very least I'll know I've improved from where I started. Thanks for being honest with me :). I plan to apply it as much as possible to get the results I want haha. I have two questions. Should I speak slower than I normally do to obtain perfect practice for perfect pitch? My second question is, should I go back and double check the pitch for my current vocabulary? If these are points you're going to cover in your following videos, I'll patiently wait ^^. Thanks for your time and as always awesome videos :D

Yes, I do recommend speaking slowly during the learning phrase, and yes, definitely definitely definitely record yourself and juxtapose it with native speech of the same word!

more on this in the upcoming video :D

more on this in the upcoming video :D

Absolutely, if anything you're in a better position than most! That being said, because you are an absolute beginner I would recommend going 50% phonetics 50% grammar / vocab for the next 6 months. Please let me know if you have any other questions, and be on the lookout for another video in the next hour or so :) Cheers!

Yes I will definitely consider it! I actually didn't know about this platform until now-will definitely try to learn more about it! ^^

Cheers!

Yes, the pitch-accent (or location for downstep) for gairaigo words in Japanese is often very different from that of the original English word. 'TAble' vs 'teEBURU' is a prime example :)

Thanks -- I guess I was referring more to how these words differed from other native JAPANESE words. Clearly, they'd be different from their English origins.

Np! In that case, yes, they usually follow different patterns from other native Japanese words.

didn't know that about Russian. Interesting!

I'm russian and I didn't know that:D Whaat?:D

Well they say it's more flat than other languages like english for example. I find that french does have stress accent, especially at the final sylable.

Pitch in language means the same as pitch in music. Pitch is measured in Hertz. A higher tone means higher in pitch. Stress and the other hand is the same as volume (loudness) and is often measured in dB. A syllable or a musical tone can be high in pitch but low in volume or vice versa so pitch an stress are indeed different concepts.

Yes! Though it's typically best to study about six months or so using a resource such as Genki to develop a fundamental understanding of the language. Cheers!

@@Dogen ok, I'll do that first. Thank you.

Unfortunately no. That said you could download the tutorials in my paid series using youtube download software.