Japanese Pitch Accent - Examples of Words Which Differ Only in Pitch

Examples of Words Which Differ Only in Pitch

In standard Tokyo Japanese, non-compound native nouns are accented about 30% of the time. Most of the time the accent falls on the ante-penultimate mora, or on the first mora for shorter words. A smaller number of nouns are accented on other syllables. (I-adjectives, however, are usually accented, and always on the penultimate mora.) Phonemic pitch accent is indicated with the phonetic symbol for downstep, .

In isolation, the words hashi /hasiꜜ/ "bridge" and hashi /hasi/ "edge" are pronounced identically, starting low and rising to a high pitch. However, the difference becomes clear in context. With the simple addition of the particle ni "at", for example, /hasiꜜni/ "at the bridge" acquires a marked drop in pitch, while /hasini/ "at the edge" does not. However, because the downstep occurs after the first mora of the accented syllable, a word with a final long accented syllable would contrast all three patterns even in isolation: an accentless word nihon, for example, would be pronounced, differently than either of the words above.

This property of the Japanese language allows for a certain type of pun, called dajare (駄洒落, だじゃれ?), combining two words with the same or very similar sounds but different pitch accents and thus meanings. For example, kaeru-ga kaeru /kaeruɡa kaꜜeru/ (蛙が帰る?, lit. the frog will go home). These are considered quite corny, and are associated with oyaji gags (親父ギャグ, oyaji gyagu?, old man/uncle, terminally uncool).

Since any syllable, or none, may be accented, Tokyo-type dialects have N+1 possibilities, where N is the number of syllables (not moras) in a word, though this pattern only holds for a relatively small N.