Heaven? - Vol. 3 Ch. 22 - The Origin of the Word 'Frog'
- Thread starter MangaDex
- Start date
@ciurrb
That's correct. Japanese (at least most of its dialects) is a pitch-accent language, while Standard Chinese is a fully tonal language. Essentially, a pitch accent in a Japanese word determines where you place emphasis when saying that word. Most non-native speakers of Japanese don't have any idea of pitch accents, but they play an important role in distinguishing words that are otherwise written (and pronounced) the same.
Here's an example from Wikipedia:
You can think of a mora as the space between the kana (syllables) in the words. When a pitch accent occurs on a mora, this generally means that you pronounce the syllable that come before it with increasingly higher pitch, peaking at the mora with the accent, then shift down to a lower pitch for the rest of the word. It can be a lot more detailed than that, but just googling "japanese pitch accent" will give you plenty of information about how an accent can affect a word.
Going back to the examples in this chapter, "to return/return home" has a different pitch accent structure than "frog". They are both written the same way (in kana, not in kanji) - かえる, since they are pronounced the same - kaeru. However, the pitch accent for "to return" lies on the first mora (KA-eru), while there is no pitch accent for "frog" (kaeru, flat pitch for the whole word).
Usually, non-native speakers of Japanese have no idea about pitch accents, and they are often not taught to pronounce them. It isn't that big of a deal, though, since generally people can infer about what you're trying to say based on the context and where in the sentence you're saying the word.
Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
That's correct. Japanese (at least most of its dialects) is a pitch-accent language, while Standard Chinese is a fully tonal language. Essentially, a pitch accent in a Japanese word determines where you place emphasis when saying that word. Most non-native speakers of Japanese don't have any idea of pitch accents, but they play an important role in distinguishing words that are otherwise written (and pronounced) the same.
Here's an example from Wikipedia:
Code:
For instance, the word for "now" is [iꜜma] in the Tokyo dialect, with the accent on the first mora (or equivalently, with a downstep in pitch between the first and second morae), but in the Kansai dialect it is [i.maꜜ].You can think of a mora as the space between the kana (syllables) in the words. When a pitch accent occurs on a mora, this generally means that you pronounce the syllable that come before it with increasingly higher pitch, peaking at the mora with the accent, then shift down to a lower pitch for the rest of the word. It can be a lot more detailed than that, but just googling "japanese pitch accent" will give you plenty of information about how an accent can affect a word.
Going back to the examples in this chapter, "to return/return home" has a different pitch accent structure than "frog". They are both written the same way (in kana, not in kanji) - かえる, since they are pronounced the same - kaeru. However, the pitch accent for "to return" lies on the first mora (KA-eru), while there is no pitch accent for "frog" (kaeru, flat pitch for the whole word).
Usually, non-native speakers of Japanese have no idea about pitch accents, and they are often not taught to pronounce them. It isn't that big of a deal, though, since generally people can infer about what you're trying to say based on the context and where in the sentence you're saying the word.
Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
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