Page 13 - Easy Japanese - Learn to Speak Japanese Quickly! (TUTTLE)

syllables
(The syllabic n is indicated by the capital here.)

Pitch Accent
Japanese speech has a rise and fall in pitch, changing from syllable to syllable in
order to distinguish meaning. For example, there is a fall in pitch in hai “yes”,

while there is a rise in hai “ash”, distinguishing these two words. This is called
pitch accent, and this can be represented using capital letters as follows:
HA-i “yes” as compared to ha-I “ash”
On the other hand, in English a difference in volume, i.e., loud vs soft serves this
function. This is called stress accent. Compare the following (the capital

indicates the louder syllable).
INsult (noun) as compared to inSULT (verb)

All Japanese words have one of the following three pitch patterns:
Falling: JAa “well then”

DŌmo “thanks”
Rising: maTA “again”

saYONARA “good bye”
oHAYŌ “good morning”

Rising then aRIgatō “thanks”
Falling: suMIMASEn “sorry”
If a word has only one syllable, a fall or a rise occurs with the following word.
HA desu. “It’s a tooth.”

ha DEsu. “It’s a leaf.”

In the rest of this book, pitch accent is not provided in either romanization or
Japanese scripts. Please refer to the audio for correct pitch.
A note on the cultural significance of pitch is in order. As you learn Japanese,
pay attention to pitch at the sentence level as well as the word level. A slight
change in pitch may indicate a subtle but significant change in meaning or mood.
It is observed in many, if not all, languages that speakers tend to raise their pitch
when talking to babies or when trying to sound gentle. Japanese is no exception.

Talking in a high pitch is generally associated with politeness in Japanese.
Women tend to talk in a higher pitch, but regardless of the gender, sales and
customer service personnel, receptionists, waiters, etc., speak with an overall