pitch accent?

[kinoko]

This thread is a discussion about whether or not the pdf notes [or anything else, really] should have pitch accent markings. Please read it before you vote, especially if you don't know that much about pitch accent!

I think that even if the majority doesn't want them, an option would help a lot of people.

PS
The reason this isn't in that thread is because that forum doesn't let me make polls...

[kinoko]

This post is pretty much just to bump the topic up so David Hallgren or someone will see it.

But it looks to me like the people want pitch accent markings.

[Liz21]

Sorry, but I'm a beginner and I'm not entirely sure what "pitch accents" are. Is that part of some kind of alternative romaji system that I have seen (forgot the name of it...)??

[Liz21]

OK, I found the romaji system. It's called the Kunrei system. I really don't like it because most text books use the Hepburn/Hyojin system and I like it better. Anyone else?

[kinoko]

Pitch accent isn't just part of a romaji system; it's as important to Japanese pronunciation as stress/emphasis is to English. You can be pretty much understood without using the proper pitch accent, but it sounds funny if you don't.

I already posted a link to a thread that explains it. There's a nice Wikipedia link somewhere there, too.

[Bueller_007]

This post is pretty much just to bump the topic up so David Hallgren or someone will see it.

But it looks to me like the people want pitch accent markings.

The fact that there are three "yes" options and only one "no" option, which is worded such that it is a straw man, might have something to do with that. Plus, from your first post, I assume you will interpret the "I don't care" option to mean "yes" as well. And probably the "I don't want them" option too.

--

United States National Referendum on the War in Iraq, circa late 2002:

Note, George W. Bush says "I think that even if the majority don't want a war in Iraq, it would help a lot of people."

Should the United States lead a Coalition of the Willing to go to war in Iraq?
Please check one:
1. Yes! Free the Iraqi people and get those WMD.
2. Sure. I guess it would be good to kill Saddam, maybe.
3. I don't care. Doesn't matter to me at all.
4. I don't like war, but sure, go for it. I just won't watch CNN.
5. Absolutely not! Saddam Hussein is my uncle!

Gee, everybody answered that they want the war...

[kinoko]

Dude... jeez. We're not talking about a freakin' war, we're talking about a few lines above a few characters on a little website to help some people learn Japanese. And you're assuming a whole lot more than you should be. If you actually look at the poll, there's one "neutral" option, two yes options and two no options. Since when did "I don't care" mean "yes"? If you're so afraid of me manipulating the votes with strange options, just bundle up all the positive options in to one and do the same with all the negative options. It's completely fair. After you do that, reread my post, too. I didn't say, "ZOMG EVERYONE WANTS THE PITCH ACCENT MRAKINGS SO GIMME L0Lz!!!11" I just made a comment on the votes, and I just meant that most of the people are in favor of the pitch accent markings.

Also, this thing is VERY easy to do, and also VERY easy to make just an option if there are people who don't want them. If you would be so kind as to take a few seconds out of your search for irrelevant quotes to help make you look intelligent by making other people look dumb, you could look at the poll again and see that 54% of the people clicked a "yes" option. If you don't warp the comment I made, like you probably will, it was true; most people who voted are in favor of pitch accent markings.

Seriously, read more closely.

[Liz21]

Now, now boys!! Calm down

Would someone show me what the accent marks look like? Is it possible to show it in the Forum? I'm quite aware the pitch accents are very important. That's one of the reasons I like to listen to jpod.....

[kinoko]

There are lots of different accent marking methods that could be used.

For romaji, you can get rid of the macron altogether, or just when the accent falls on it, and double/add vowels where needed, and place the accent mark on the vowel, like this:
Róomaji OR Róumaji
Tsugí no kiiwáado wa kore.

For the kanji part, accent marking isn't possible unless there is kana for each kanji. I don't think that would work out very well.

But it's really easy to do with just kana. You can just mark the accented syllables with underlines or highlights, which I think is the best method, because you can tell the difference between stuff like hashí and hashi even if they're at the end of a sentence...
つぎの　キーワードは　これ。
...or you can mark all the low and high syllables (which is more traditional, but harder)...
つぎの　キーワードは　これ。
...or you could mark just the low- or high-pitched syllables.
つぎの　キーワードは　これ。

It's really not that hard to write or read, is it? Hope that helped.

[Jason]

I still think it's more trouble than it's worth. And personally, I do find accents over my rouma-ji and underlines under my kana to be quite distracting. In 3 years of Japanese class, we never once actually studied pitch accents. It's much easier to just pick it up from listening.

[kinoko]

I really disagree, Jason. If you set your keyboard to the United States-International setup or something similar, it takes just an extra fraction of a second to type anything like this: áíúéó. And underlining anything just takes a few clicks. That's not much trouble at all.
The distraction factor is much more understandable to me. But this can also be easily avoided, since making pdf's optional could be as easy as going to File<Save As... just a little before you start to mark accents. And I know that you can change an accented dialogue in the lesson transcripts into an unaccented one with a few lines of PHP or Javascript code, and it would be really easy to have a checkbox there for making the accent marks dis/appear.

[davidhallgren]

Hi, so I finally managed to read this thread, even though I'm actually not involved in creating the PDFs

I totally agree that learning the correct pitch accent for words and sentences probably would be a good way to improve your japanese pronunciation. I do think it's much more work than it seems at first though. Not actually inserting the marks but finding out where to put them. By the way, if this would be done, do you think one should mark the dialog they way it is said, i.e. not standard dialect if the speaker doesn't say it like that, or mark it they way it "should" be said and live with the fact that it doesn't match the audio?

What probably would be doable though is to insert these marks in the vocabulary lists, not in the actual dialog. I'll forward this idea to the team and see what can be done.

What I will suggest to team though is a lesson on this topic to spread the knowledge about this phenomenon and let them hear various words that are spelled the same but actually pronounced differently.

Maybe not the answer you, or anyone else who voted yes, wanted but maybe Jonas or Takase can come up with some ideas on how to actually do this.

(BTW, most dictionaries and word lists seems to mark ups and downs in pitch accent with brackets like in this picture: http://members.hellug.gr/adia/m/marks.png)[/url]

[metablue]

I'm with Kinoko. It'd be very useful. Some people, like me, are visual. I'll pick up the pitch accent eventually if I listen to the same words for long enough, but being able to see the markings would make learning much faster. And I'm sure there are people out there who are totally oblivious to pitch accent, or who have a lot of trouble hearing it.

Just having it in the vocabulary lists would be great, if it's difficult to put it in the transcripts.

A lesson on it would be wonderful.

My vote is for putting in the accent that "should" be there, rather than the regional variation of the speaker. Perhaps in the lesson about pitch accent the different speakers could talk about their own accent and where it's from, so we can learn about the differences and watch out for them. I know that might be hard. My own English accent is a mix of New Zealand, Canadian, and Californian US, so I know accents can be hard to pin down, but they don't have to be super-precise. Just give us an idea.

[Jason]

I think putting them only in the vocab lists would be a great compromise. Personally I'd prefer them to not be on the kana/kanji, though.

[Jonas]

We'll see what can be done.
I'm working on redoing the old PDFs, but I'm not sure if I should put this on hold until we get a good sollution/decision on this. We'll talk here at the office, and get back to you guys later. Having markers in the transcripts is a definitely "No", but maybe we can have something in the vocab (I don't really see the need to have them in the transcripts, since you would practice pitch when you practice words, and so it is more natural to have them in the vocab too.) As for a timeframe, we'll hopefully have some kind of decision within the month, and if we are going to do this, no sooner than june.