3 ms·
In my experience the Japanese don’t refer to this as a change in pitch, but as you say, they consider it an emphasis. The Japanese Wikipedia page for pitch acc
by wodenokoto 2y ago
In my experience the Japanese don’t refer to this as a change in pitch, but as you say, they consider it an emphasis.
The Japanese Wikipedia page for pitch accents simply call it “Accent for Japanese dialects“.
That is to say, I don’t think this is pitch as in musical pitch perfect.
- vunderba 2y agoyeah I was wondering the same thing. I'm only marginally familiar with Japanese, but studied mandarin in Taiwan for years and Chinese is considered a significantly more "tonal" language in terms of pitching up, pitching down, etc. I'd be interested to see if there are any studies around any correlation between absolute pitch and a tonal native language though.
- laurieg 2y agoIt is not referred to as a change in pitch, usually people call it intonation or accent, but the actual change in sounds is a change in pitch. The closest thing in English is "uh-oh" (said when you make a mistake). It goes high-low. If you reverse the pitches it sounds completely wrong. The pitch change in Japanese words is smaller than "uh-oh" but it's the same basic idea.