1:36 *When you get taught by a foreigner about your own language*

As a native English speaker speaking in pitch stress instead feels very unusual, the pitch change can change the entire word

Really glad English, though less effectively, can be spoken near absolute monotone.

“All languages fall into one of two categories”, no, some languages have a stress accent and a pitch accent (eg: Swedish, and Norwegian), some have neither (I couldn’t find any but in theory it’s possible, although some like French have stressing but it doesn’t add any meaning to it)

Now I can kind of understand what it's like to try to figure out stress accents by a native pitch accent speaker

It's not either stress accent or pitch accent since it's not really a one or the other thing. In swedish we use both pitch and stress, for example. And most tonal languages work differently. That being said, this was quit useful. Thank you for taking the time to explain.

This was really helpful, Thanks!

Very, very cool. Love how different languages works and I actually learned a lot from this short video. Thanks!

Very well explained.

"Demmit" lmfo

Last year, I lost a grade on pitch-accent, even though we'd never spent any time learning it in class. It's SO hard to be concious of pitch change in your own speech with long sentences oh my goshhh

Fascinating video, thanks for making

Brilliant man! I really learned something today! I'm a native English speaker, and I didn't even know about the difference in accents changing the meanings of words, until you mentioned it. I realized that if I say CONtract, I'm referring to a binding agreement between two people. But if I say conTRACT, then I'm referring to something shrinking together. Of course, I've always spoken these differences, but I didn't even notice that I do it. So Japanese isn't the only one in which pitch changes the meaning. Good to know, thanks!!

Thanks for this video. Not trying to learn japanese but I am trying to learn a pitch accent language. As a native English speaker, I keep trying to use stress which is not right. Still struggling with it but this helped me understand why I’m not getting the pronunciation right haha

I am just comming from another video about pitch and I am amazed how similar swedish and japanese are.

Thanks

I’m Swedish and we have pitch accent but oh god I’m not good at it, honestly mostly context for me...

Norwegian and Swedish have pitch accent AND stress.

はい、わかりたした。 教えてくれた、ありがとう。

I think I finally get it…in languages like English stress on a syllable makes a word sound “right” or even changes the meaning. In languages like Japanese that’s done by changing the pitch :) I hope I finally got it 😭

This perfectly explains why a lot of folks in my language class years ago would mispronounce Japanese syllables so often and struggled to break out of these habits (they were obviously monolingual English speakers, which accounts for a vast majority of the US population).

conTRACT, CONtract!!!

lol, can't really spot the difference despite the examples. I feel like increasing loudness & length in English is mostly optional so, stressing a word/syllable still seems to depend predominantly on raising pitch in both languages. Or maybe I can't distinguish between raising pitch and raising volume at such a low level of increase.

I'm not sure if the 'research' example counted. I've never heard the word research differ as a verb or noun depending on pronunciation, to my knowledge the two are just varied pronunciations of the same word. If anyone can provide evidence where the two pronunciations are differed as verb and noun would be great.

Is there a study that measures how much the pitch is raised in Japanese and if the length of the vowels is affected at least slightly?

I could barely hear a difference.

Japanese: pinch accent English: stress accent Me: tones african: click and smooch

But in English we have rising pitches which change meaning for things like questions. When asking questions we raise pitch at the end of the sentence. A question without that rise can just sound like a statement. Does this mean English is both a pitch and a stress language? I'm confused.

So actually both languages change pitch but the difference is English ALSO changes loudness and length. Right?

handsome

Is pitch accent the same for men and women?

English is also kind of distinct like Spanish, the placement of the stress can change the meaning of a word or even an entire whole sentence, most other languages aren't like this, though this doesn't apply for writing because the most known examples are differenciated by different spellings like e.g. incite vs insight, though this doesn't happen at a very high or medium rate but rather medium-low, unlike spanish which has a normal concentration of stress placement changing the word's meaning like any other *stress phonemic languages* (implying languages that if the stress is placed somewhere else but the pronounciation is the same, the meaning could change)

If the difference is only on tone, why don't we just say tone language and intonation language? Since pitch is also an important indicator of stress, pitch rising also means that the syllable receive prominence/stress.

Pitch stress is how you speak Californian

言葉は難しいもんだな

Heh.......(hjelp meg)

I am against this obsession with accent. There is no need to study accent. Because there is no such a thing as correct accent. Let's think about English. Which accent is the correct one: American, British or Australian? The answer is that all accents are perfectly valid and none of them is wrong, none is them is the correct one. Because there is no such a thing as correct accent. In Japanese the accent the foreigners usually hear the most is the Tokyo accent. That is the accent you hear in films and TV and anime. But that is just simply the Tokyo accent. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the most powerful region, politically and economically. So its accent is usually what you hear the most. But it is not the correct one, because there is no such a thing as correct accent. Each region of Japan has its own accent, even its own dialect or language. So the pronunciation and accent is different. And none of them is wrong, none of them is the correct one. Foreigners will always speak with a very characteristic accent. From Arnold Schwarzenegger to Sofia Vergara, they speak English with a very characteristic accent. And that is completely fine, there is no need for them to dominate a certain accent. There is no need for an American to learn British accent. As long as he is able to communicate with native British people, he can continue to use his own American accent. Foreigners who come to Japan and learn Japanese usually speak with a very strong accent. But as long as they can communicate with the locals, there is no need to change their accent. And even if you could dominate a certain accent, different regions of Japan use a completely different accent. What are you going to do? Learn all accents of all regions of Japan? What for? It is completely useless, pointless, unnecessary and stupid. And accent is something you learn automatically, unconsciously and effortless. All you need to do is interact with the native locals and you will end up assimilating their accent. Americans who have lived a long time in the UK end up assimilating the British accent. It is a natural and automatic process. Nobody goes to school just to learn the British accent.

I don't understand how japanese is NOT a tonal language if clearly, the same exact word pronounced in two different inflections means two different things..

oh no i'm learning japanese rn and i thought japanese won't have pitch accent like chinese T-T

0:44 not all languages, e.g. french and chinese

just like how every native can tell this guy has an obvious asian accent or way of pronouncing words, its pitch accent for us in japanese lol.

I think Malay and English speakers have the same problem.

hahaha chinese has no difficulty for that XD

今まで見た日本人の中で一番英語完璧

Somebody forgot the entire category of languages: Tonal Languages…

this is completely not true FYI you can use only stress to accentuate japanese words . unless you can point me to where in your alphabet there is a particle with a pitch accent what you are saying is completely false.

Sorry! Japanese is a semi-tonal language or simply tonal language, because İ hear the sound that silmilar to tonal language. (All language have pitch speaking. Please! change your thinking.)