Do learners of Japanese who learn to pronounce all the sounds well necessarily also get pitch right or do some people get all the sounds right, yet still get the pitch wrong?
I tried to think about this question again…I think learners who learn to pronounce all the sounds well get the pitch wrong.
Since my first language is not English, I still need to read your discussion more carefully…
hope I got all the questions correctly.
Azusa, I am curious, why would you assume that learners who pronounce the sounds right will get the pitch wrong? I would assume that learners get the odd sound wrong and the odd pitch wrong.
Alexandre, I will assume that you know much more about pitch than I do, and that you are right about my wrong pitch in the recording. I have no idea if I get the pitch wrong all of the time, most of the time or just some of the time. Whether I get some words wrong all of the time, or just some of the time.
I am not at all motivated to deliberately work on pitch. I can imagine that others might be, but to me it is a distraction, and not a form language learning that I would enjoy. That is just me.
If I wanted to improve my Japanese, without being in Japan, I would read more, and listen to audio books. It is quite possible that if I spent more time listening to Japanese, my pitch would naturally improve, without thinking about it. But it is not something I would want to focus on.
When I hear a non-native speaker of English who uses the language well, I am impressed and would not be put off by an accent, and would not dream of correcting the accent.
The pursuit of perfect pitch may be of interest to some, but I do not think it is important, and that is my major area of disagreement with you.
Alexandre, you ask me how I know that my accent, or that of certain other non-natives, is good, certainly good enough. The answer is that I see them operating very effectively and I know that I have no trouble communicating in all kinds of situations in Japanese. That is good enough. It is good enough for my Japanse, and good enough for most of the non-native English speakers who master English.
I understand your point of view. But if being aware of pitch, and working on it in the beginning, can pay dividends later on, then why not do it? For myself, I just took the attitude that I’m not going to have the pitch accent of a native speaker even if I pay attention to it. After all, pitch is different all around Japan. But for people who want to use the language professionally, it’s probably good to work on it
I was discussing this topic with my gf, who is from Okinawa, and she said that when she first moved to Tokyo, people were constantly correcting her for using the wrong pitch.
If you watch tv dramas, you’ll probably eventually see a character from the countryside who wants to be an actor or announcer or something, and they’re struggling with trying to adjust their pronunciation. There was a drama called まっすぐな男, which I watched recently, that had a character like this. They’re not mispronouncing the consonants and vowels, they’ve got nonstandard pitch patterns.
But, for me, since lots of Japanese speak with nonstandard pitch patterns, it’s not a big deal if I do as well.
@Jeff, it’s clear as day as a concept, but it’s another thing when people are speaking normally. Pitch accent produces a kind of terracing effect. With each downstep (ie after an accent) the pitch is lower (obviously). Then it begins to rise again, but falls after the next accent and is now lower than it was before. It’s like a road that gently rises, and then suddenly drops down, and then gently rises, and suddenly drops down. The end effect is that, at the end of the road, you’re at a lower point than when you began.
It’s easy to grasp as a concept, but difficult, I find, to always hear. I’m not music master, but I’m trained in music, and I think I have ok hears, and I still find it difficult to hear sometimes.
@Azusa, I’m curious, how do you teach your students about pitch? Do you use some of the same techniques that they use at schools for announcers? I wonder about my own pitch. In the beginning, I chose to try to speak with basically flat pitch. I wonder if that was a wise choice or not.
Steve said: “I don’t sound like a native, but natives have no trouble understanding me.”
Which is great! Being understood is not a bad thing. However, I don’t think it’s unusual that natives understand non-natives who don’t have perfect accent. I think that Chinese people will understand the non-native who has a few tones off here and there (as long as they WANT to understand), I KNOW that Swedes understand anyone who has the wrong pitch (they’re manifested differently all over the country, and just like somebody said regarding Japanese (here or at HTLAL), regional accent depends mostly on pitch), English speaking natives will understand Germans despite the question intonation at the end of each clause and so on.
Most of us 2nd language learners are happy with being understood, but still, no language sounds right unless it sounds right.
First of all, I’d like to congratulate you on your video, Alex. I found it to be very interesting even though (as I wrote in my comment on your youtube site) it made me aware of how poor my own Japanese is with regard to pitches. It almost made me take down my Japanese video 
However, I will have to content myself with being comprehensible to native speakers hoping that the way I sound will improve as I expose myself to more content spoken by native speakers or by simply practising Japanese more often.
Somehow rather complex explanations (even though you did an excellent job in presenting the contents of the video in a clear manner) tend to scare me off. I’ve never paid any attention to theoretical explanations of pronunciation, pitches, intonation etc. in any of the languages I speak. I simply try to imitate what I hear - with varying degrees of success. In some languages I sound better than in others. I mostly attribute this to the fact that I have been exposing myself to more input in some languages than in others.
I guess personally I will benefit most from your video by keeping in mind that I should listen more carefully to how native speakers of Japanese speak and that pitch can make quite a difference (if not with regard to comprehensibility than with regard to sounding more pleasant to the ears of a native speaker).
Your Japanese sounds beautiful to me and I guess this has to do with the fact that you care about pitch. I don’t know if one has to know all the theoretical background to get the pitch right. One might also get there by paying a lot of attention to how native speakers speak. I must admit, however, that I have not (yet). I also think that we might not get the pitch right all the time even if we know what we are aiming for.
As I have said in my own videos, I mostly strive for the ability to have a conversation in the languages I study. I have to meet much higher requirements in my working languages but even there a “native-like accent” or intonation is not on top of my list of priorities. I prefer spending more time on increasing my vocabulary and feeling at ease using the language. The more I actually use the language and the more I listen, the better my accent and my intonation will get (hopefully).
I am sure your videos will be extremely beneficial to lots of people and even if I mostly pursue a different approach when it comes to learning languages I’ll try to keep in mind some basics you mentioned in your video.
Thanks again.
As a bit of a side note, I’m watching the television drama 日本人の知らない日本語 which is about the adventures of a Japanese language teacher. Episode 9 begins with her trying to teach the difference between high and low pitch using “hashi” bridge and “hashi” chopsticks as an example. She is not very successful 
Hi, another Japanese native here.
I’m aware of my accent(Nagoya dialect) but not my pitch.
Reading this thread reminded me of Northern England accent.
Well if you don’t know, they sound really FOREIGN to me!
(For your information, I lived in London for four years.)
intonations are different, accents are different.
Eventhough, I enjoyed it because it was unique.
Another thing I recall is, someone actually said “foreign accent is cute”.
I agree, it gives color and character as long as it is understandable.
We are not robots after all.
Well slightly (or completely) off the topic, but this is what I think.
It is impossible, to me, for the average learner NOT to be aware of pitch. It is like being unaware of the color blue. Unless you happen to be color blind, there it is. Nothing to say. I did not know the details of pitch rules in Japanese until I read about them in Wikipedia prompted by Alex’s video. But I, and most learners are aware of pitch.
Reproducing pitch is just a matter of imitation. Imitation, a matter of overcoming the inhibition of wanting to “become” the nationality of the language, like an actor becoming a character.