Post "Episode 19: Pitch-accent patterns for non-heiban conjugations of heiban verbs" by "Dogen" from patreon

Dogen

Hi, Mike. JP here again. I checked with Dōgen, and I think we figured out the source of your confusion here. Where Dōgen is saying “heiban-specific” in the wrap-up, he means “heiban verb-specific”, in that he is discussing the downstep patterns for conjugations of heiban verbs. I hope this helps. We apologize for the confusion.

Mike McCarthy

In the Wrap-Up at 12:35, Dogen states: " The plain, negative-past conjugation－なかった, the ‘if’ conjugation－れば, the command conjugation－ろよ, the ‘even if’ conjugation－ても, & the ‘such as’ conjugation－たり all follow heiban-specific [not downstep-specific?] pitch-accent patterns which can take a bit of time to remember. " How can all these conjugations "follow heiban-specific pitch-accent patterns" when, in fact, as I detailed above, they all follow downstep-specific pitch-accent patterns? Indeed, the title of this episode is: "Pitch-accent patterns for non 平板 conjugations of 平板 verbs. Addressing the less common, non 平板 conjugations of 平板 verbs." I offered in my previous post an explanation in response to my own question. Is my explanation correct -- if not easily understandable -- or is Dogen's final statement of the Wrap-Up in error?

Dogen

Hi, Mike. JP here. I'm not quite sure if I understand your question. Can you rephrase or clarify this using simpler language? Thanks!

Mike McCarthy

Re. Clarification of Confusing Summary of Conjugation Set #2, in Wrap-Up at 12:35 While the five DOWNSTEP pitch-accent patterns are not “HEIBAN-specific”, as I found confusing for Dogen to state; they can be understood, rather, as heiban-VERB-specific. Unless I'm mistaken, in the following sense : Although the five pitch-accent patterns, themselves, are downstep-specific (specifically nakadaka for the past negative, and odaka for the remaining four conjugations); all five pitch-accent patterns are, indeed uniquely ! , heiban-verb-specific conjugations. That is, they are heiban-verb conjugations not shared (or duplicated among) the conjugations of either nakadaka or atamadaka verbs. Thus, although these five pitch-accent patterns are nakadaka and odaka in form, i.e. in pitch-accent pattern; these albeit DOWNSTEP pitch-accent patterns are nonetheless employed uniquely as HEIBAN-verb-specific conjugations.

Dogen

Hi, juliandpeter. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. We've been having some problems with notifications, and I found your question while reviewing some posts. My sincere apologies for not seeing this sooner. I ran your question by Kimi sensei, to get her thoughts. She said that both Wiktionary and OJAD are correct. However, the bar notation they use shows which part should be said in a higher pitch, but it doesn't always match up with the four regular categories (atamadaka, nakazaka, odaka, and heiban). She also said if we look at 遊ぶ (あそぶ), the pitch-accent for the dictionary form is aSOBU, and the imperative/command form is aSOBE. However, the particle よ is often attached to the imperative/command form of a verb for emphasis, and it usually attaches low which puts the downstep on the mora before よ. I hope this helps. Thank you for your question!

juliaandpeter

For the imperative/command form, OJAD (and wiktionary, which just cites OJAD) gives the heiban pitch accent as heiban. Example: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%81%8A%E3%81%B6#Japanese https://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/search/index/sortprefix:accent/narabi1:kata_asc/narabi2:accent_asc/narabi3:mola_asc/yure:visible/curve:invisible/details:invisible/limit:20/word:%E9%81%8A%E3%81%B6 Is OJAD wrong? Is there free variation about this?

Dogen

Hi Strange. Sorry for not making this clear in previous lessons; there is indeed a bit of overlap here and I agree that it would be good to clear things up in the future in a lesson. I have a few other things on my plate at the moment, but I’ll try to get to this when things calm down a bit. Cheers!

Strange Guy

Hi there! I think it would be interesting to learn about cases where you have kinda contradicting rules. For example, ~ます forms tend to be dominant, i.e. ignoring accent of a verbs. On the other hand seems like ~ています form depends on a verb accent (TA'beteimasu). Another example is ~する verbs. While する tend to keep accent of original noun, I'm not sure about pictch accent of polite ~します forms (返事します, コピーします etc). Another thing that I'm wondering about is ~くる, ~いく combined verbs (持ってくる etc). Nihongo wa muzukashii :(

Dogen

Yep!

Paco

Ahhhh I see, thank you for the answer! I wish I could read those appendixes from NHK and 新明解 :D I feel there´s written everything that I´m still searching for. But it´s frustrating if you can´t read it

Dogen

Hi Paco, according to the NHK Accent Dictionary (2016, appendix 1, page 234), the accent occurs on the な in 平板 verbs, as in shiNAide, and the mora before the な in downstep verbs, as in noMAnaide, MInaide, KOnaide, etc. Cheers!

Paco

Hi Dogen, short question: Does the ～ないで form always has its Downstep on the な no matter of the accent of the verb? ( kaKANAide, taBENAide, shiNAide )

Dogen

Hi Kusterdu! I don’t believe that I’ve covered this form before—might make a good topic for a future video! Sorry for not being able to help more here!

kusterdu

Hi Dogen, I can't remember if I asked this before, but is there a video where you discuss the pitch accent of the past form for the たい form (たかった)?

Strange Guy

Do you mean -saserareru? OJAD gives -1 for kifuku verbs, and heiban for heiban verbs, though I don't know how trustable that site is. People say that it may contain outdated information. http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/kouzokugo

Clare Kappenman

Hi Dogen, in Lesson 18 we learned that potential, passive, and causative all remain 平板. Does Causative-passive (-asareta form) stay the same too? I know it's not a very common form, just curious :)

Dogen

For 平板 verbs, yes! In other kinds of verbs the downstep will occur one mora earlier for this conjugation. For example in a 平板 verb such as 行く then the past negative form is iKANAkatta, while in a 中高 verb such as 食べる it is taBEnakatta. Cheers!

Markas

It's always low for かった、am i right? So it will always drop at な

Dogen

Hi Joe. This is correct, both pronunciations are acceptable (if I'm not mistaken the お*しえ*ながら is the newer pronunciation). I purposely taught this as 平板, however, as I thought learners would have an easier time grouping the various 平板 conjugations into one large '平板 conjugation group'. Sorry for not stating this in the lesson! Cheers!

Joe Fox

Great job researching! I've been playing around with the verb conjugations from the video on Prosody Tutor ( http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/phrasing/index) and they all match. There is just one exception. When 平板 verbs end in ながら, according to the OJAD site, consistently have a downstep on な。As in, お*しえな*がら。I've asked two Japanese people (one from Osaka and one from Nagoya, both women in their 30s) and they both say this version of 平板 verbs with a downstep. Maybe this is a case where multiple pronunciations are possible, or maybe the book you took this from was put of date. I appreciate your videos. So nice to have a concise summary of Japanese accent rules!

Dogen

Hi Kiet. I'm not sure what went wrong; here is a link to the lesson: https://www.patreon.com/posts/japanese-episode-11107372 All lessons can be found on the index page, here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/16489306 Thank you for your support.

Kiet Ma

Hi Dogen, I couldn't find the 18th episode. Is it missing?

Dogen

Hi Jokin. It is indeed constant--it always occurs on the しょ! Hope this helps! Cheers!

Dogen

Hi Andrey, thanks for the question. It seems that you have a pretty good intuition for where the pitch-accent downstep should occur. It took me, and many people I know a long time to memorize these because to me the downstep didn't feel intuitive in many cases (for example the past-negative form), but if you can already accurately hit the correct downstep location for each word then it shouldn't be an issue! Hope this helps! Cheers!

Jokin Pedreño Alcolea

Hi Dogen, I don't know if you cover it in other lesson, but what is the Pitch-accent pattern for the ましょう conjugation? Is it constant between verbs (like ます) or varies with the pattern of the verb? Thank you in advance!

WanderingDoc

Hey Dogen! I'm curious, is there a point to systematically study everything in this lesson, because the downstep seems to occur at a straightforward and intuitive part of the word, ie. exactly where you would expect it to. Pretty much occurs on the second to last mora with every conjugation in Set #2, exactly where you would expect it to.

Dogen

Hi Walt! I don't believe that Strawberry brown has done any examples for this form in particular. And sorry, I didn't mean that the downstep should be on the TA for all conjugations of the たい form, simply that for the standard たい form (as in 行きたい or 飲みたい, etc.) the downstep is always on the TA, again regardless of the pitch-accent family a word belongs too. Sorry for not being able to comment more on this just yet—I'm trying to play catch up with my schedule as I was real sick for a week or so. Will definitely address these forms in a future video however. Thank you for your continued support and good luck with your studies!

Walt Poor

I understand that you haven't found the details for the rest of the so-called たい conjugation. Furthermore, if StrawberryBrown has ever recorded some examples, how could we ever find them? Unless you suggest a better idea, I will try to learn the entire たい conjugation with the downstep on た for all verbs. For example: 食べる -> taBETAkunai, taBETAku, taBETAi, taBETAkereba 飲む -> noMITAkunai, noMITAku, noMITAi, noMITAkereba 教える -> oSHIETAkunai, oSHIETAku, oSHIETAi, oSHIETAkereba 行く -> iKITAkunai, iKITAku, iKITAi, iKITAkereba The alternative, as you suggested, would seem to be to make the たい conjugation 平板 for actual 平板 verbs: 行く -> iKITAKUNAI, iKITAKU, iKITAI, iKITAKEREBA Comments? In any case, I hope you find my questions amusing!

Dogen

Hi Walt, sorry for the late reply! The たく form is actually not listed in isolation in either of my main pitch-accent dictionaries, but in the たい form the downstep always comes on the た, as in taBETAi, noMITAi, iKITAi, etc. That said, in 平板 verbs it's also ok to pronounce this form with 平板 pronunciation, as in iKITAI, kaETAI, etc. This is considered to be the 'older' pronounciation of this form. Hope this helps! Cheers!

Walt Poor

OK, thanks. I guess I will have to wait for all the details. However, since both the たい and たく forms are in my latest grammar lesson and I want to start with the correct pitches (as you strongly recommend) rather than having to fix problems later, I hope it won't be too much trouble for you to clarify briefly the pitch patterns for these two forms. For example, at least one verb in each of the following verb-pitch groups would be much appreciated. 平板 verbs: 教える, 買う頭高 verbs: 飲む, 見る中高 verbs: 歩く, 話す By the way, since I cannot reproduce the graphics in your lessons, I use the following simplified romaji trick to show pitch on my flashcards: -- Upper case for high pitch moras. -- Lower case for low pitch moras. For example: -- taBEru, taBEnai, TAbete, ... -- NOmu, noMAnai, NOnde, ... And when it is necessary to distinguish between 平板 and 尾高 words, I append either ^ or _ to the romaji. For example: -- 勉強 --> beNKYOU^ -- 足 --> aSHI_ -- 使う --> tsuKAU^, 使わない --> tsuKAWANAI^ Thanks, Walt

Dogen

Hi Walt. Sorry for not being clear about this. By たい conjugation I was referring to the standard 'want to' form of verbs, such as: 飲みたい, 行きたい、食べたい, etc, and not the various conjugations of this form, as you've listed here. Naturally another one of these forms would be 飲みたくて, the more colloquial version of 飲みたく. I didn't cover these conjugations as there are further complications. For example, you can combine 飲みたい with なければ in the form 飲みたくなければ. In other words, because there are many conjugations within the 'tai' form, I decided to only cover the standard, stand alone form, and save these various advanced conjugations, many of which also show up in adjectives for a future lesson (these will be covered in the new advanced pitch-accent sub-seires). I apologize for not being clear about this, and thank you for you understanding.

Walt Poor

In this lesson you mentioned the "tai conjugation" with few details. As a beginner struggling with verbs, pitch and other basic stuff at the same time, I respectfully request a bit more information. I'm really not sure, but by "tai conjugation" perhaps you mean the following pattern (which I may be misquoting from a vague textbook): negative: 飲みたくない conjunctive: 飲みたく dictionary: 飲みたい conditional: 飲みたければ If this pattern is what you mean by "tai conjugation", then the following questions probably apply: Question 1: Are there any other pieces in this conjugation? Question 2: I think you said that for everything in this conjugation, the downstep is on the た. Have I garbled what you said? But if this pattern is not what you mean by the "tai conjugation", then please correct my misunderstanding.

Dogen

Hi Walt. This is correct. In any instance where the particle attaches low to a conjugation that ends high, like the て form as you pointed out, this means that the form is 尾高 (the pitch accent is high throughout the end of the word, but the particle attaches low). Incidentally, I used empty circles, rather than filled in white circles to indicate particles in this lesson. I hope that this helps!

Walt Poor

You said that the non-平板 conjugations of 平板 verbs are 中高 and 尾高. At first glance, everything looks like 中高. But after watching the lesson a 3rd time, it finally seems that the ろ and ても forms might actually be 尾高. Is this correct? In any case, please provide details on the 尾高 conjugations.

Dogen

Hi Jonathan! That is correct, 平板 verbs stay 平板, and downstep verbs exhibit a downstep immediately after the そ. I'm not currently aware of any phonetic shift currently going on with this particular set—could be an issue with that particular site. If you have any other questions feel free to let me know! ^^

Jonathan Malcolm

Thank you for your wonderful lessons - they've helped me start to enjoy studying Japanese again! I've been wondering about the [ます形]そうform of verbs (particularly heiban verbs). According to a source I've been looking at (<a href="http://accent.u-biq.org/doushi2.html)," rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://accent.u-biq.org/doushi2.html),</a> hieban verbs conjugated in the sou form, remain as heiban, while as nakadaka and atamadaka verbs conjugated in the sou form, have the downstep on so. Is this correct? If it is, is there any phonetic shift currently happening like there is with the tai form? Many thanks :)

Dogen

Hi Crysenly! Interesting question—I've never encountered this phenomenon before, but it sounds like you're very aware of it, so I bet it will go away with some time and practice. If I were you I would try recording myself saying each; in doing this you may find out something about how you're perceiving the sound! With regards to emotion, I talk about this in a future lesson (#29), so try not to worry about it too much until you get a chance to watch it. Incidentally I wouldn't recommend skipping too 29—take your time ^^ Cheers!

Crysenley

These last few lessons were heavy. @_@ I think I'll stop taking notes for now and spend the next month or so reviewing, practicing listening and speaking, and desperately trying to correct my many bad habits. I still keep adding stress to things! With that, I got a question: I'm at a dilemma with properly distinguishing pitch. To me, certain sounds usually sound higher or lower than others, so it's hard for me to tell when or if there's an accent sometimes. For instance, i sounds "light" to me while o sounds "heavy." So, say はしを. If it's 平板 edge (端を), を can trip me up into thinkings it's 尾高 bridge (橋を). And either of them can make me doubt myself that it might actually be 頭高 chopsticks (箸を) because し more often sounds high to me anyway. And vice versa for all of them, and many other sounds. :'P This is a random example, but it's the best I can come up with. Also, sometimes it seems like there's a stress added through emotion or some sorta wordplay, yet not where the accent actually is. So that trips me up a bit too... I know I need to practice tons more, but these quirks make me worried that I may be listening out for the wrong things. I guess I've improved a lot since I first found your videos some months ago when I couldn't distinguish any pitch at all, but I guess I still feel a little frustrated with my progress. ^^;

Dogen

Hi Dolores! したかった does indeed have a downstep on the た! I hope that this helps! ^^

Dolores Derksen

Are the rules for the conjugated forms of the to want form of verbs the same as i adjectives or as the original form of the verb? For example, would したかった have the down step on the ta or would it be heiban? Thank you very much!

Dogen

I think it's OK, but there seems to be a fair amount of 'down-time' between conversation. That being said I think it's on netflix so if you have access to it go for it! Just be sure to watch the same episode on repeat :)

Dogen

Hi Caitlin ^^ Thank you very much for signing up! I'm glad to hear that you're finding the lessons useful. I'll be sure to let you know if I ever become interested in Russian! Thanks again!

David Flanik

Awesome thank you everyone for all the help. I know you recommend orange days for source material and shadowing practice, but what do you think about the series terrace house? The whole show is full of everyday conversations.

Caitlin Quintero Weaver

Hi hi! I studied linguistics in undergrad and now I'm studying Japanese seriously on my own. I really appreciate your approach. I found out about you thanks to Tofugu and I'm excited to learn from you. ありがとうございます！If you ever get an inexplicable urge to learn Russian, I'm happy to share my learning resources & give back.

Dogen

Thanks Jeff ^^ Tofugu helped a ton! 今後ともよろしくね！＾＾

Jeff Bernstein

Congrats on the big spike in patrons! It's definitely well-deserved!

Dogen

Hi Gilbert ^^ I think 1-2 weeks per lesson is adequate! I usually recommend an intense 3 months for a phonetic concentration period, so if you spend a week on each lesson (or a little bit less), then the timing will probably work out well ^^ Thanks for coming over, and let me know if you have any other questions in the future ^^

Dogen

Thanks for all the great posts Neeson ^^

Gilbert Y

Hi Dogen, came to your channel via the Tofugu post and was so instantly captivated by the quality of your spoken Japanese that I had to support you on Patreon! I have a question in regard to how much time a learner should spend or should expect to spend at each set of phonetic "chapters" i.e. nouns, then i-adjectives, etc. I have completed 2 classes of Japanese at University and have also read half way through Genki 2 on my own, but now I am worried that I have picked up many bad speech habits along the way. My current plan is to focus on my first week of phonetics (nouns) and to only maintain older knowledge of grammar until I return from my summer internship to my fall classes, where I am enrolled in a 3rd Japanese course. Is it suitable to move from reviewing noun phonetics to adjective phonetics in say, 1-2 weeks?

Neeson Champion

Shadowing, is listening to native Japanese material (podcasts, audio from films, anime, series etc), and repeating what your hear directly after it is said. Not at the exact same time of course, there will always be a slight delay. Initially it's kinda tricky but even if you just get a few words out every now and then, you'll gradually improve and become able to catch whole sentences/everything! I usually shadow whilst going for a walk, with an episode of anime or podcast (that I've already watched/listened to). What you're doing is different from shadowing, but I think also important. In order to practice shadowing properly, it helps to know whether you're doing it correctly or not (pitch accent/pronunciation). If repeating individual words is learning how to recognise the puzzle pieces, then shadowing will help put them all together. Though you'll (likely soon) get to a point where it's more efficient to just listen/shadow, and not be so focused on individual words.

David B

Shadowing is listening to native speech and copying it

David Flanik

Thank you guys for the advice, I have one more question. Im going though and mapping out the pitch accent pattern for individual words and I practice saying them, and record myself saying them. I plan on doing this over and over again until I say it "perfect" (I've been using forvo as a reference), is that what you mean by shadowing?

Dogen

Exactly what I normally recommend ^^ thanks for posting Neeson!

Dogen

Thank you for pledging ^^ Neeson left the advice I was going to give, but I'll add on by saying that having more than one native listen to you can be very beneficial. Try contacting multiple people on a platform such as Hi-Native; this usually works very well!

Dogen

Thanks Johannes ^^ Things are certainly looking bright! I'm hoping to address this in a video soon! Always appreciate your kind support.

Neeson Champion

David, if I can possibly prempt Dogen's reply... Listen more, shadow more and, record your voice and listen to where it differs from that of native Japanese. (oh, and time!)

David Flanik

Hey thanks for the lesson as always. Do you have any advice on making your pronunciation shaper and just better? My teacher says my pronunciation is good, but I still don't feel like its good enough.