Does anyone know of a good, thorough online site about Japanese tones?

I found a few sites, but they tend to be quite superficial, or else they concentrate on the same few pairs in isolation like hashi or ame, and tend to avoid considering pitches within phrases and in context. I can’t say I found anything on Youtube either.

As far as I can tell, no one has an authoritative site on the topic of Japanese accents or pitches. It’s up for grabs, if anyone wants that spot ;)

http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/doc/accentl.html
I was quite curious about the topic but this is actually the only thing with a bit more than 3 examples I found.
There seem to be some books, anyway…. :)

Thanks, Marzia, this is a site a lot of other sites point to. But again, these are just a few examples out of context, outside of a sentence.

The Wikipedia article on Japanese phonology is more complete, but still, something’s missing.

… If I will ever find something better about it, I will try to remember to share the news….
There must be some Japanese vocabulary with a function to see the pitches, but my Japanese is not good enough to use them…. :(
Maybe some native Japanese could help us! :)

Would this help? http://www.shiawase.co.uk/2009/05/13/pitch-accent-in-japanese/

I once attended a forum where the speaker said that Osaka and Tokyo accents are different. And while looking around, I even found a paper who discouraged teaching japanese accents since it differs with people anyway.
http://www.jpf.go.jp/j/japanese/survey/globe/05/06.pdf

http://www.limsi.fr/MIDL/actes/session%20V/Kamiyama_MIDL2004.pdf

I tried looking around in Japanese sites too, but most point to buying published books. A new friend is doing her phd on it, and she told me if she got the chance she’d show me a good book on it. I found it strange that she didnt recommend a website. So there must be none then.

Angela, I hadn’t read the last one yet, thanks.

That article discouraging from teaching accents presents rather weird arguments. In essence, he claims that because students are likely to misunderstand accents, they will screw up and it’s better not to mention anything. Uh, what?

It appears that no one online has attempted to paint a clear picture of pitches with the student in mind.

I’m surprised that no Japanese teacher has commented on this issue after 2 days….

Well, I’m in no way an expert, I’m a very beginning student, but I remember being told a couple times that Japanese is not really a tonal language.
Most words don’t have a obvious accent to any of the syllables, although there may be exceptions, I think each syllable gets the same emphasis.

I don’t know if this is the kind of tones you meant though. It looks like the first site listed maybe some of the exceptions. Interesting topic though, I would also like to hear more about it.

Specifically about not really being a tonal language: I used to hear this in the context of, in comparison to other Asian languages in which tone was a critical element. One could even argue that the lack of tonal difference is a hindrance. Having said that, I assure all concerned, the Japanese language works very hard to throw all sorts of other curve balls our way.

While Japanese isn’t based on tones as much as say, Chinese, knowing them and practicing them help your Japanese sound more natural. For example, “ame” means both “rain” and “candy”—in areas of Japan, there is a tonal difference. Now, most likely, the Japanese you are speaking to will know whether or not your are talking about candy or rain, depending on the context of your sentence—which is why a lot of Japanese classes don’t stress the importance of tones. But again, to be the best Japanese speaker you can be, it’s best practice to imitate the tones you hear (once your hear is trained enough to recognize them!).

Alexandre-san, do you have a copy of the Genki textbook? I suddenly remembered these resources: The ONCHO manuals:
http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/reso/onchou.html
First link: MANUAL: pages three and four explain how to use the two guides in English
Second link: GENKI I guide
Third link: GENKI II guide

I hope this is more what you were looking for. If you have questions about using it, where to find Genki, or the audio files, don’t hesitate to message me! I teach Japanese to high schoolers in Michigan and am happy to help any students—and feel that it helps me become a better teacher. ^_

Ganbatte ne!

Awesome link Katie! Thanks a bunch!

As Angela said earlier, the “tones” and accents of Japanese people differ by region. There are a few that tend to be the same, which are the examples that are found on the sites you can look up (ame and ame, hashi and hashi, etc.)

One example of the difference between areas that I’m guessing won’t be on a site…. Where I lived in Japan, Gunma Prefecture (100~120km north of Tokyo), the capital was Maebashi. On television stations and such it would always be pronounced as “maEbashi”, and many people who were natives to the area would always say “No, no, that’s wrong! It’s maeBAshi. That’s how we say it here, so that’s what’s right.” Even in that small distance there was a difference.

It’s not exactly about tones, but Japanese itself is supposed to be spoken ‘flatly’, I suppose, where as even in English the meaning of a sentence can change depending on where or what word you put emphasis on. One of the main reasons a Japanese person will think someone’s Japanese is ‘bad’ is because they talk “like a roller coaster”, the tone in the sentence going up and down. They say people who speak English naturally are especially bad at it.

I don’t really know how to wrap up what I’m saying, but…. Did it help you a bit?

This is all very interesting!! Roller coaster, yeah that is a good explanation. I guess the slight differences in pronouncing of a word to change the meaning is probably why the Japanese like puns so much, eh?

I realize there are regional differences. There are also many dialects in Japan. Nevertheless, I’m trying to learn one of them right and the fact that pronunciation changes from region to region won’t stop me from trying to do it right….

Thanks to Katie for the Onchou link. Thanks Shelbi for the anecdote. Will definitely incorporate it in class.

I guess being a Filipino, tonal change isn’t really our problem because Tagalog is also flat-ish. But that’s not to say we don’t have any pronounciation problems. People from the Visayan islands tend to interchange e and i, o and u. So just imagine when I asked a Visayan girl to say in nihongo, “I eat meat.”

Neko o tabimas’.

Well, here’s some more food for thought: a lot of Japanese puns are with words that are pronounced 100% the same way, at least in basic, standard Japanese. There are meanings that only a total weirdo would think of without very strong context – this is why many anime pun tellers are the ‘total weirdo’ type. More normal people default to obvious meanings, making it easy for other characters to play the “straight man” role.

If I was teaching Canadian English, I’d aim to teach the standard version of it, not ‘Newfie’ (Newfoundland dialect of a folk, uneducated-sounding nature). The regional differences exist, but it’s not something that a non-fluent speaker should be especially worried about. In fact, I’d encourage people to file away regional differences in their heads for comprehension but not to go out of their way to speak that way…. except for place names like Maebashi above, if you’re actually there. Place names have an unfortunately large degree of local variability but, that’s nothing unique to Japan; I don’t know of a single country where it doesn’t take place (yet).

http://www.japanesepod101.com/2009/07/27/all-about-4-learn-japanese-pronunciation/

First the twitter and facebook thing, now this. I may be paranoid but anyone else get the feeling pod101 is spying on edufire?

They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Speaking as someone who was in the trenches rather than relying on websites to learn more advanced Japanese, I don’t know how to judge this, but I stand by my earlier point, that dialect is not something generally taught in the classroom, and this includes non-standard tonal usage. There’s a place for it – particularly for comprehension purposes – but it’s not something I’d try on less than advanced students in general. That’s my understanding of the best practices of experienced teachers.

It’s a lovely language and I wish the best to everyone hoping to learn more of it and enjoy the process.

Hello. I just checked all the comments and links, and I realized that there are many Japanese learners who are concerened about their accents. It’s interesting to know from a tutor and a native speaker’s point of view. Japanese language is, indeed, a complicated language and many things to learn, but it’s very possible for everyone to be able to speak like native people do. In terms of the speech, I think that some of the basic important keys to speak like native peolpe are; correct use of consonants and vowels, intonation, tone of each letter within a word, and its lenghth. You should know how to use those elements. Native speakers use those unconcioiusly. In reality, it’s a technical matter, and not many Japanese tutors offer a help on this. As a new registered Japanese tutor here, I’m considering this issue to be one of my teaching subjects as I come up with an effective methodology.

In my experience, most language teachers are not very efficient at teaching pronunciation, simply because they don’t understand it. Most teachers come from a literary, rather than linguistic, background. It’s one thing to recognize something is wrong, but it’s quite another to put exact words on what it is and how to change it.

I’m assuming this situation is even more so in Japan where contact with other languages is limited.

Hideyuki, I’m glad to see someone put some thought into how to explain Japanese pronunciation to foreigners. I’d be happy to serve as a guinea pig if you want recordings to analyze!

I am a linguist (but not a very talented language learner) who spent ten years living in Japan. Japan is NOT a tonal language and there is usually no stress at all. You’ve seen the exceptions here, but that’s about all there is, which is why you can’t find any good websites on the topic.

What IS a challenge in learning Japanese, especially for English speakers, is to try to STOP using stress the way it is used in English. I knew an Australian woman in Japan who absolutely butchered the language by trying to put stress on every single word. She then took a class where the teacher took her through the pronunciation of hiragana and katakana. In two weeks, her pronunciation was very clear and natural sounding. All she did was give equal stress to every syllable.

Trying to get even stress on every syllable is the big challenge. A funny example I heard was when a Japanese baseball player, named Nomo, went to the U.S. to play. For a year or two he played for my favorite team in New York, but he never succeeded in teaching the TV announcers how to say his name correctly. The problem was that he tried to emphasize the vowels and the announcers, being American, added stress as it is used in English. They never did get it right.

The solution is actually quite simple. The name Nomo is easy to pronounce. There is no stress added to any syllable, but you must realize that the name Nomo has THREE syllables. Easy, right? Well, maybe not, until you figure out where the three syllables are. The first one is “no”. That’s easy. The second one is “o”. Not so easy! And finally “mo”. So, it’s “no” + “o” + “mo”. Give each of those three syllables equal stress, and you can say it like a Japanese native speaker. If you learn hiragana and katakana from a native Japanese speaker, you’ll get this without even trying.

Good luck.

Joe, Japanese does not have tones, but pitches. I wish I could change the title of the post. (EDIT: I just figured out how to change it ;)

While it does not have stress like English, and while every vowel, long or short, is possible in every position of the word, syllables (well, morae actually) are marked for low or high pitch. The same type of system is found in some West African languages. To make things more complicated, the following particle sometimes also has high pitch carried over from the previous high syllable. And of course, none of this is indicated in writing. That’s why it’s so hard to learn.

Hideyuki, best of luck helping people with this issue. I think it’s very valuable assistance for anyone trying to communicate effectively. A foreign speaker who can speak Japanese without distracting the listener from the content of his or her thoughts is doing very well.

Not everyone learns a language for the same purpose or with the same intention or goal.

As Jeremiah points out, most people are only concerned with reducing their accent to the point where it does not overly distract the listener. Out of this group, you may find it harder to recruit students for a pronunciation class unless their problems are intense and they need to communicate with the public. However, simple methods should yield reasonable results.

But there are also people who wish to sound as close to a native speaker as possible. I’m one such person. For this kind of student, precise analysis of (even subtle) problems and clear solutions are a necessity.

Yeah, I think Alexandre has a point that not all the people who learn a new language aren’t concered about the pronunciation, but most people are simply interested in making themselves understood. However, there are, indeed, some people who want to perfect their pronunciation, also. I was also one of them who wanted to perfect my pronunciation with the languages I’ve studied. It’s really neat to be able to have a natural, perfect pronunciation as native speakers. I also think that some native speakers perceive people differently if they have an obvious, foreign accent, or neat, native pronunciation. I think my motive to have a good pronunciation as native speakers is also to have a closeness with them. You could eliminate such a presumption of native speakers that some of them would be reluctant to speak with you because they would have a difficulty understanding foreign people for incorrect pronunciation, which is difficult to understand. I think more native speakers are likely to act naturally if you speak with natural pronunciation, and this could be even more true if people are not used to speaking with foreign people. Well, I’m just sharing it from my own experience with my background and environment which I grew up with, where there were not very many foreign people living – I’m from Osaka, by the way, comparing to cities with so many immigrants such as Toronto, NY, etc… What do you all think on this point?