4 ms·

In Japan/ese, the pitch/stress thing is overrated, and so are regional language differences. When natives point it out to me, it strikes me a little more than

• Muromec 11mo ago
  >How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar It confuses the hell out of me when non-natives misplace stress in Ukrainian and use wrong cases. It's that I want to gatekeep, but above certain rate of mistakes it's just difficult to follow what is being said.
  • BlaDeKke 11mo ago
    Since the war, we have a lot of Ukrainians at our Flemish school. We just make it work, no time for gatekeeping.
    • throwaway2037 11mo ago
      > We just make it work, no time for gatekeeping. This is nice to hear. A real win. Real question (because it took me, sadly, too long to learn it as an adult): Why don't they gatekeep? Do you think there is compassion for those who fled war in Ukraine, so people are more forgiving about linguistic and cultural differences?
      • kjs3 11mo ago
        Does "I'm just not going to be a dick to these people for ultimately trivial reasons" really need an explanatory framework in your world?
        • throwaway2037 11mo ago
          The GP wrote: > at our Flemish school I assumed this meant high school or earlier (18 and under). Most kids I grew up with (including myself) wouldn't be mature enough to do this without explicit instruction (and some policing!). That is why I want to understand more. Example: Did they have a big school meeting where they explained to local kids: "There are bunch of war refugees coming. Here are some things we can do to make them feel more welcome. First: Don't criticize their accent when they are speaking Flemish/Dutch." It is also interesting from the lens of Belgian linguistic culture, as the country is broadly divided north is Flemish, south is French and a tiny part is German.
          • kjs3 11mo ago
            So "not being a dick" really does need an explanatory framework in your world (and an elaborate one, with mostly irrelevant detail). That's.......a shame.
        • jdminhbg 11mo ago
          The problem here is just that upthread Muromec said “it’s that I want to gatekeep” when surely they meant “don’t,” and now there’s a whole chain of misunderstanding.
    • jack_tripper 11mo ago
      You're comparing apples to oranges. Kids learn foreign languages much faster than adults, plus get a lot more support and less judgement on mistakes from adults since school kids don't operate in a highly competitive environment. But good luck reaching proficient fluency in a foreign language in your 30s where you'll face a lot more gatekeeping especially on the jobs market. Many western nations still gate-keep careers and opportunities based on regional accents alone, let alone not being a native speaker. And before I get assaulted in the comments with the "umm acksually I could do it just fine it never was a problem for me exceptions, YES I know it's possible, it's just much much harder, especially when you've got a full time job and adult responsibilities, compared to doing it when you're 5-15 on the school playground, playing videogames with mates or watching cartoons.
      • michaelscott 11mo ago
        You're conflating 2 issues here: judgement of adult attempts at a new language and the time required to learn it. The first is just a cultural thing, although it is sometimes valid for understanding a speaker (cases in Slavic languages, pronunciation in a homonym-heavy language like French, tones in Asian languages). Problem is that it's oftentimes more "cultural" than "valid" critique, which helps no one. The second problem is more practical and it's not the only difference between child and adult speakers; the vocabulary required in most day-to-day settings for a child is considerably easier to master than the adult equivalent, regardless of language (describing symptoms to your doctor or getting through a bank or tax appointment will be much more difficult than describing the weather or what you want for lunch). Adults in general are just as good as children at learning new languages, it's just that life has different requirements from that age group. Edit: that said, I actually am agreeing with your general sentiment
        • jack_tripper 11mo ago
          Sure some few adults can learn languages as fast as kids, but you completely missed my main points around gatekeeping that language skills always has on adults and less so on kids. Because statements like the original I was replying to of "no time for gatekeeping" are simply not true, but more like the poster doesn't notice it because he (or his kids) are not affected by that gatekeeping.
  • jacquesm 11mo ago
    We have the same in dutch, but, surprise twist: it is often the dutch that get it wrong. And indeed, it is confusing, but then again, it is just a bit of noise injected into the bitstream and easily worked around once you attune to that particular speaker. Note that for people not attuned to a language some differences that are clear as day to the natives are absolutely inaudible. The difference between 'kas' and 'kaas' in dutch is obvious to me and if your language uses stressed vowels it probably is obvious to you too but if your language skills do not yet include that difference you will not even hear these as two different words.
    • throwaway2037 11mo ago
      Why is this downvoted? This is a nice addition to the conversation. I see the same with Cantonese speakers. If you ask native speakers from Hongkong, Macao, and Guangdong, all of them will say "the other sounds weird"... but they work it out. And all three groups are happy to listen to a foreigner speak Canto (yes, there are a few). All will probably say: "Weird accent, but I understand what they are saying." Plus, Canto language communities probably exist in over 50 countries in the world. All of them will have slight tonal differences.
• bugglebeetle 11mo ago
  Japanese actually has a much smaller set of phonemes (~half as many as English), resulting in extensive homophones. When combined with its greater tendency toward ambiguity, correct use of pitch can actually have a larger impact on intelligibility, as compared to many other languages.
  • throwaway2037 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • bugglebeetle 11mo ago
      [flagged]
    • gosub100 11mo ago
      People are allowed to disagree with you. Your caricature of them doesn't add to the conversation.
    • CorrectHorseBat 11mo ago
      Nice theory, but my experience is exactly the other way around. Even after several years of learning Chinese I still had trouble communicating with Chinese people, especially those who had no experience talking to foreigners. When I arrived in China and asked the way to the university I was going to (which was close by and very famous) they just didn't get what I was saying. In the end I had to show them the written word. I don't speak Japanese, but when I arrived and said the name of the city and they immediately understood where I wanted to go. After my experience with Chinese I was flabbergasted that that went so smooth. I blame the tones in Chinese (which I admit I'm not very good at)
      • adrian_b 11mo ago
        I think that you are right that your problem must have been caused more by the Chinese tones than by any other characteristic of Chinese, and perhaps also from some of their consonants that do not have a straightforward English equivalent. On the other hand, the Japanese pronunciation is one of the easiest in the world to learn, even taking into account the subtleties of pitch.
• wahnfrieden 11mo ago
  Says it’s overrated and non semantic… on authority of what? Being foreign to it and not knowing the language, naturally
• Greduan 11mo ago
  Well imagine somebody was talking about "bass" the fish, in a context of "bass" the instrument. If they pronounced it like the fish, certainly for a moment your language processing would stop, figure it out, fill in the gap, and continue. Every time the wrong pitch accent is used, a similar process takes place. Especially in highly complex conversations, where a lot of processing power is going towards the semantics itself, and hopefully the person shouldn't have to worry about figuring out which word the other person is saying. It's unclear if you yourself have native-level (or close to) pitch accent yourself. But if you don't, how can you know whether it's actually important or not?
  • roughly 11mo ago
    Just remember, you can tune an instrument, but you can’t tuna fish.
    • dredmorbius 11mo ago
      <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can_Tune_a_Piano,_but_You_Can%27t_Tuna_Fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can_Tune_a_Piano,_but_You_...> (originally by Groucho Marx: <https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kevin-cronin-reo-speedwagon-tuna-fish-album/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kevin-cronin-reo-speedwagon-...>). Or perhaps more HN-appropriate: <https://unixhistory.livejournal.com/1808.html https://unixhistory.livejournal.com/1808.html>.
    • saltcured 11mo ago
      Eh, in a discussion about homophones, homonyms, and ambiguity, I prefer the variant, "you can tune a bass, but you can tuna fish". Right up there with "fruit flies like a banana, but time flies like an arrow".
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• bamboozled 11mo ago
  Strong agree
• danielscrubs 11mo ago
  I correct my kids when they do mistakes, how else would they improve? Calling people racist when they try to be helpful might say more about you than them. I mean what I say and say what I mean is also something worth striving for.
  • ryan_lane 11mo ago
    Other adults aren't your kids, and it isn't your place to correct them, unless they ask for help.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• omaewabaka 11mo ago
  As a Japanese, I will mention that I've seen Japanese people correct each other on this, both in private and in public. Its because we might get the meaning by context, but if you pronounce it wrong, it sounds very strange in that context where its clearly wrong... To default to an assumption that this is due to racism / cultural gatekeeping says a whole lot about your world view and perception about Japanese people and culture than it does my people. For example, examine your own words when you say that where you come from its a subtle form of discrimination. Well, you are saying it yourself that an action is deemed discriminatory according to the standards of your own culture, not to the standards of the other culture. You realize that could be cultural misunderstanding? There is a word for evaluating another culture by the standards of one's own culture: ethnocentrism. If you are actually living in Japan, you should self-reflect a bit about what problems you face that you attribute subconsciously in your head to malicious intent, rather than cultural misunderstanding. Anyways, I'm often disappointed by the comment section on this website when its anything about Japanese people. This is just another reminder for me to avoid the comments.
  • tanjtanjtanj 11mo ago
    I mean there are widely spoken regional dialects that make no pitch distinction between the pronounciation of 橋 and 箸. You may get looked down on for not speaking the Queen's English (I mean standard Tokyo Japanese) but you are still speaking fully correct Japanese.
    • throwaway2037 11mo ago
      This is exactly why I say it is nothing but cultural/linguistic gatekeeping. Even natives between regions disagree on the "correct" way to pronouce these terms. This further proves to me how little Japanese varies throughout the country. It is freakishly regular for the size of Japan. Consider a place like UK with four constituent countries: England, Wales, Scotland, and North Ireland (not to mention the channel islands and other oddities). They range of accents (without huge mountain ranges!) is wildly different. And the change in vocabulary for vernacular speech is far larger than the United States, which Google AI tells me is 40x larger(!).