Pitch issues

[maffa]

Hello everybody

I have an issue with pitch. I am saying it out loud to hear that i am wrong and why, so please bear with me and give me a hand...

I am a total newbie, and now i have done all newbie S1 and i am about at lesson 15 of S2, where ther eis a great, GREAT amount of stress about pitch. But i dont seem i cant care about pitch (i am also a little bit annoyed by it). I cant understand whats the importance of pitch, what's the use and so on. I would understand the importance of pitch with Chinese which is a tonal language, but i cant with Japanese, where instead pitching the whole phrase to convey a sense or another has more meaning.

What would happen if i dont care about pitch in single words? would i be misunderstood? would i sound weird?

thank you in adavance

[QuackingShoe]

You may be misunderstood, as it distinguishes some words from others, but mostly I think you'll sound really weird. Pitch gives Japanese sentences their flow.
You know when you hear certain foreigners speaking your language on the news or something? And they're incredibly hard to follow, because instead of saying a sentence, it seems like they're just giving you a list of words that aren't connected at all (which makes multiple clauses REALLY hard to follow)? And for English, sometimes the stress is so wrong on particular words that you have to think for a second to even recognize them? People who don't read well sound a bit like this as well.
Well, essentially you'll probably sound something like that.

But, you don't have to study-study pitch. More than anything you just have to keep your ears open and emulate how people speak. Or so I believe.

[Javizy]

I think if your general pronunciation and intonation are correct, you'll be easily understood. There are instances where pitch determines words of the same pronunciation, but since they're usually quite different, e.g. hemp and rain, now and living room, most Japanese people should be able to understand from context.

Like Quack said, you don't really study pitch as such, although you might want to learn the pitch-determined words like those I mentioned. You'll pick it up naturally after hundreds and thousands of hours of listening.

There's also a technique called shadowing, which develops your pronunciation, intonation, and pitch accent, as well as helping you speak more fluidly. You just repeat straight after native speakers while listening, usually focusing on one set of audio for a couple of weeks. You might need something with a transcription in the beginning, then you aim to do it just by listening.

As much as 10 minutes a day is apparently very effective. If you have the dialogue only files for the jpod lessons you're studying, make a playlist of them on your mp3 player, and they'll be ideal, since you have PDF transcriptions, and you'll be drilling in the vocabulary and grammar.

[jkid]

There's also a technique called shadowing, which develops your pronunciation, intonation, and pitch accent, as well as helping you speak more fluidly. You just repeat straight after native speakers while listening, usually focusing on one set of audio for a couple of weeks. You might need something with a transcription in the beginning, then you aim to do it just by listening.

That's how I am trying teaching myself. Glad to hear it's meant to be effective.

[KikoSoujirou]

listen and repeat
it sounds really strange and kinda funny if you don't get it right, but like quack said, it's the same as in english, you'd have a hard time understanding sarcasm if the person didn't show it in their voice. I'm really a stickler for accents and pronounciation so... really I just suggest listening and repeat. it's not harder then that. then also every once and awhile think about how you would normally say it. Japanese and english are about the same in my opinion. for example desune can be translated sometimes as just saying "right" in a confident matter at the end of an english statement the more I think about it though, the more complicated it gets. Just dont worry about it so much, but keep a listen to how people say things, think about the situations, possible translations, and try it on your own. pitch could be the differences in words that sound the same, the flow of a sentence, the difference between question and statement....all depending on the situation

the main thing is, language learning should be enjoyable. don't stress about stuff so much, it will come to you when it does, in good time. Everyone is different. take it easy and have fun ^-^

~KikoSoujirou