Re: Another pronounciation question - hotaru ga ike

On 2006-12-02 06:12:55 +0900, "John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

muchan wrote:

here "Stress pattern", seems me indicating you are hearing "Stress accent"
that doesn't significant in Japanese... that means, whatever you hear
as a speaker of a stress-accented-language, Japanese people don't care.

I have experienced the truth of what you say; it seems to make no difference to Japanese people whether I say, in terms of stress, A-rigatou, a-RI-gatou, ari-GA-tou or ariga-TOU, though they might find it odd if I said arigato-U (?).

And I think you are partly right; my ear does generally tend to register high pitch as carrying a stronger stress, and I do sometimes have difficulty hearing pitch properly.


I think this is common (and a problem) for native English speakers; our own language tends to pronounce stressed syllables at a higher pitch, so we hear non-existent stress depending on the pitch pattern of Japanese words.

The general rule for Japanese pitch, if I recall correctly, is that one key syllable in a word carries the accent*; and every syllable from the second one up till that one is "high", and after that is "low". This means that the pitch pattern of a word can change if it's turned into a compound word, because the second word can "pull up" the syllables of the first.

Example: I live near an intersection called Oshikiri. The "shi" seems to be the "key" syllable, so the stress pattern is LHLL. However, the nearby bus stop is called Oshikirichou. The "cho" in the added bit takes over as the key syllable, resulting in a new pattern: LHHHHL.

To my ears, at least. :)

* I'm ignoring the case where there is no accented syllable, such that the whole word from the second syllable onward is high, including the particle that follows.

Paul

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Another pronounciation question - hotaru ga ike
    ... have difficulty hearing pitch properly. ... own language tends to pronounce stressed syllables at a higher pitch, ... we hear non-existent stress depending on the pitch pattern of Japanese ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: pudding and de v. di
    ... like PUDEiNGU for pudding instead of PUDINGU? ... That is the basic set, ... These are formed by adding a small YA, YU or YO to syllables from the ... The difficulty with adopting loan words into Japanese is that some sounds, like "DI" don't actually exist naturally in the language. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Senryuu
    ... 17 syllables arranged in three lines 5-7-5. ... The poem looks like this: ... My surmisal that Japanese text would be proportional was obviously ... 'suru' as a present tense verb but as a non-past form of the verb. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Language and SPM
    ... normal English ... What, if anything, do higher or lower SPM ratings day about a language ... I wonder if the fact that Japanese syllables are on the average shorter than English ones has anything to do with the perception. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Another pronounciation question - hotaru ga ike
    ... as a speaker of a stress-accented-language, Japanese people don't care. ... And I think you are partly right; my ear does generally tend to register high pitch as carrying a stronger stress, and I do sometimes have difficulty hearing pitch properly. ... There is certainly confusion about this in the mind of my wife, who is Japanese, but not from Tokyo, and sometimes calls it Tana. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)