All about Japanese phonology
English stress accent
English stress accent refers to the emphasis placed on certain syllables in words and certain words in sentences. The stressed syllables are pronounced louder, longer, and with a higher pitch compared to unstressed syllables. This pattern helps distinguish meaning and structure in English.
There are two main types of stress:
Word stress
In multi-syllable words, one syllable is stressed more than the others.
For example: - REcord (noun) vs. reCORD (verb) The placement of stress can change the meaning of the word.
Sentence stress
In sentences, content words like nouns, main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are stressed, while function words like articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions are typically unstressed.
For example: - I am GOing to the store. (stressed: "going")
Japanese pitch accent
Japanese pitch accent refers to the way the pitch (high or low) of syllables in a word can change its meaning. Unlike English stress accent, which focuses on loudness and duration, Japanese pitch accent is about the relative pitch of syllables within a word.
In Japanese, the duration of each sound that makes up a word (known as a 'mora') is the same, and only the pitch varies.
To exemplify
| Japanese | Romaji | English |
|---|---|---|
| 箸 | hashi | chopsticks |
| 橋 | hashi | bridge |
| 端 | hashi | edge |
Stress modifies
- volume
- length
- pitch
Pitch accent modifies
volumelength- pitch
All about morae
When you read about Japanese pitch accents, you will often encounter the term 'mora', which is a linguistics term used to refer to a single 'unit' of sound in a language.
In English we use the term 'syllable' for the sounds that make up a word, and although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they are slightly different.
Both syllables and morae refer to the sounds that make up words in a language.
In a language such as English, which is not rhythmic or timed, the sounds that make up a word may have different durations, so the standard 'unit' of sound is a syllable.
Japanese, however, is a rhythmic language, with each consecutive sound having the same duration, so the standard unit of sound is a mora.
Analogy
In phonology, syllables are like cars and morae are like people.
Every car on the road must contain at least one person (the driver), but a car can also contain multiple people. Likewise, every syllable contains minimally one mora, but it may contain two or even three.
In order to understand morae better let's have a look at hiragana:
While it is common to refer to hiragana and katakana as syllabaries, a more precise characterization would describe them as moraic scripts.
Counting morae
| Hiragana/Katakana | Romaji | Mora Count | Syllable Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| ないよう | naiyou | 4 | 2 |
| ようかい | youkai | 4 | 2 |
| さべつ | sabetsu | 3 | 3 |
| モーラ | mōra | 3 | 2 |
| エラー | erā | 3 | 2 |
| はい | hai | 2 | 1 |
| さけ | sake | 2 | 2 |
Pitch patterns
First, the good news: all Japanese words use one of just four pitch accent patterns! If you ensure that your speech always uses one of the four patterns, you will sound natural 90% of the time even if you occasionally get the wrong pattern.
The most 'unnatural'-sounding Japanese comes from using a pitch pattern that does not actually exist in Japanese, because it is a mistake that no native speaker would ever make. Let's take a look at these patterns one by one.
平板 - heiban
The word 平板 literally means 'flat board', so this accent pattern is generally held to mean 'accentless' - i.e., flat intonation.
In fact, in any 平板 word with more than one mora, the first mora is pronounced with a slightly lower pitch, and then all remaining moras are pronounced with a high pitch. Any particle following the word is also pronounced high.
| Word | Romaji | English |
|---|---|---|
| 時間 | jikan | Time |
| 卵 | tamago | Egg |
| 友達 | tomodachi | Friend |
| 日本語 | nihongo | Japanese(language) |
| 学校 | gakkou | School |
頭高 - atamadaka
頭高 means 'head high', so in this pattern, the first mora is high, and then all subsequent moras are pronounced with a low pitch.
The drop in pitch is larger than the small rise in pitch we saw at the beginning of 平板 words. Any particle following the word is also pronounced with a low pitch. Essentially, 頭高 is the opposite of the 平板 pattern.
| Word | Romaji | English |
|---|---|---|
| いつ | itsu | when |
| 天気 | tenki | weather |
| 毎日 | mainichi | every day |
| 猫 | neko | cat |
中高 - nakadaka
中高 means 'middle high', and the key characteristic of this pattern is that the pitch starts low and drops from high to low somewhere within of the word.
The first mora is low, and any particle following the word is also pronounced with a low pitch.
As with 平板 words, the rise in pitch at the beginning of the word is smaller than the drop in pitch that occurs later. All 中高 words have at least three moras.
| Word | Romaji | English |
|---|---|---|
| 一つ | hitotsu | one |
| スポーツ | supōtsu | sports |
| 工場 | koujou | factory |
| 喜ぶ | yorokobu | to be delighted |
尾高 - odaka
尾高 means 'tail high', and in this form, the first mora is low (unless the word only has a single mora), then goes high and remains high to the end of the word. Any particle following the word has a low pitch.
| Word | Romaji | English |
|---|---|---|
| 川が | kawaga | river(subject) |
| 二つが | futatsuga | second(subject) |
| 妹は | imoutowa | younger sister(topic) |
| 橋で | hashide | bridge(context) |
Simple rules for determining pitch accents
- 1: if the first mora is low, the second is high, and vice versa
- 2: once you go low, stay low TIP
If you are not sure of the correct accent of a word, this rule will be the most useful! Among the 10,000 most useful words in Japanese, the 平板 pattern is used about 55% of the time.