I’ve been writing about pitch accent lately and wanted to hear from you all—how do you learn and practice it? I often find that my students know a lot more about study resources than I do, so I was curious to ask you all.
One thing I’ve been curious about is finding text resources that explain how pitch shifts across conjugations. For example, how a verb like かく (to write) changes pitch when conjugated to かかない, かいた, かける, かかれる, etc.
Another example:
読む (to read) changes to 読んで (よんで), and
呼ぶ (to call) changes to 呼んで (よんで).
Even in sentences like おわったらよんでください, the meaning depends entirely on the pitch accent—and they have different pitch accents! It could mean:
"Please read it when you're done," (終わったら読んでください) or
"Please let me know when you're done." (終わったら呼んでください)
I haven’t found any materials that clearly break down how these pitch shifts happen in different forms. Does anyone know if there are any textbooks or guides that cover this?
I’ve been working on my second textbook, Japanese For Dogs 2, which focuses on the plain form and explores pitch accent shifts in different verb conjugations. The first book primarily covers the です・ます form (with pitch accent, yes!). Are there any textbook resources that explain pitch accent shifts? It’s been challenging, but I'm excited that I’ve found some reliable rules! I’d love to hear how others approach learning and understanding pitch accent.
Looking forward to your insights. Thanks! 😊
by Ok_Teaching1522