Nakadaka (中高): The Middle-High Japanese Pitch-Accent Pattern
Nakadaka pitch accent is the Tokyo pattern where a single high-to-low drop falls inside the word, somewhere between mora 2 and the penultimate mora.123 It is the only one of the four standard patterns whose accent number tells you something the label alone cannot. That is why learners keep mispronouncing nakadaka words even after the four-pattern grid feels solid.23
Overview
What "nakadaka" (中高) literally names
中高 (nakadaka) compounds 中 (naka, "middle") and 高 (taka(i), "high"); rendaku voices the second element from /taka/ to /daka/.12 The full term is 中高型 (nakadaka-gata, "middle-high type").12
A wider cover term, 起伏型 (kifuku-gata, "rise-and-fall type"), groups 頭高型 (atamadaka), 中高型 (nakadaka), and 尾高型 (odaka) together, in contrast to 平板型 (heiban). The defining property of an 起伏 word is that it has a place where the pitch drops abruptly from high to low.4
The phonologist's name for the same class is medial accent: accented words in which the lexical H→L fall lands strictly inside the word rather than at either edge.5
One-line definition
Nakadaka is the pattern with exactly one H→L drop. That drop lands after some mora k, where 2 ≤ k ≤ N − 1 for an N-mora word.123
Mora 1 is L by the Tokyo initial-rise rule, morae 2 through k are H, every mora after k is L, and an attached particle joins the L tail.53
Where nakadaka sits among the four Tokyo patterns
Tokyo Japanese has four noun accent patterns: 平板 (heiban, unaccented), 頭高 (atamadaka, initial accent), 中高 (nakadaka, medial accent), and 尾高 (odaka, final accent).53 Kawahara 2015, working with three-syllable words, frames the split as four distinct types: "accent can fall on any of the n-th syllables, and there can additionally be an unaccented word."5
Nakadaka is the only one of the four whose drop position is variable. Atamadaka is always accent 1, odaka is always accent N, and heiban is always accent 0. Nakadaka spans the integer range 2 through N − 1 inclusive.123 Like heiban and odaka, nakadaka obeys the Tokyo initial-rise rule, so mora 1 is L.53
How nakadaka sounds: the LHH...HL...L contour
The initial low mora
Mora 1 of a nakadaka word is L. The initial-rise rule (sometimes called initial lowering) says that the first two morae form an LH sequence unless the first mora is itself accented. In nakadaka, the accented mora is always mora 2 or later, so the rule applies.53
The sci.lang.japan FAQ states the operational consequence directly: "The first mora is low, then two or more high ones follow, then the pitch falls again. This is called rising and falling type, nakadakagata (中高型)."6
The rising plateau up to the accented mora
Morae 2 through k are H. This is the H plateau in the LHH...HL...L contour.13 The plateau grows with k: L-HꜜL for accent 2 (one H mora before the drop), L-H-HꜜL for accent 3 (two H morae), L-H-H-HꜜL for accent 4 (three H morae). The mark ꜜ shows the downstep.3
Tonally-unspecified syllables get their pitch by copying tone from the rightmost specified syllable, which is the mechanism that fills the H plateau leftward from the accented mora to mora 2.5
The drop and the low tail
The H→L transition between mora k and mora k + 1 is the lexical accent. Kawahara 2015 formalises it cleanly: "an accented vowel is assigned a High tone followed by a Low tone on the following vowel, resulting in an abrupt H(igh)-L(ow) fall in F0."5
Every mora from k + 1 to the word edge is L by the same rightward tonal spreading.5 Wikipedia's gloss (pitch "drops suddenly on any following morae") is a useful cue for an English ear: the fall is a discrete step between two morae, not a glide.3
The accent integer pins the drop position
The dictionary integer k for a nakadaka word means the drop falls after mora k.123 In a four-mora word, k can be 2 or 3 for nakadaka. The other values are reserved: 0 for heiban, 1 for atamadaka, and 4 for odaka.
A five-step decoding recipe converts any integer into the per-mora pitch contour:
- Read the bracketed integer k from OJAD, NHK 2016, or a Jisho entry surfaced through Yomitan.78
- Mark mora 1 as L.
- Mark morae 2 through k as H.
- Mark every mora from k + 1 to the word edge as L.
- Mark the following particle as L.
Worked side-by-side on a four-mora word X = m₁m₂m₃m₄:
| Accent k | m₁ | m₂ | m₃ | m₄ | with が |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | L | H | L | L | L H L L L |
| 3 | L | H | H | L | L H H L L |
What nakadaka is NOT
Nakadaka is not a fall over a single syllable: the fall is a discrete step between two successive morae.53 It is not first-mora prominence, because mora 1 is L by the initial-rise rule.5 It is not the same shape every time, because the H plateau length depends on where k sits.13
It is also not English stress. The H mora before the drop is not louder, not longer, and does not have a different vowel quality from the surrounding morae: the only acoustic distinction is F0 height.5 The stress-vs-pitch article in this section explains why an English-speaker reflex to add length and intensity is exactly the wrong move.
The accent-number range: 2 through N − 1
Why nakadaka starts at accent 2
Accent 1 is atamadaka by definition (drop after mora 1, mora 1 H).13 So the smallest legal nakadaka accent is accent 2 (drop after mora 2). Because the drop must be "strictly inside the word," at least one mora must follow it. Nakadaka therefore requires N ≥ 3.23
The corollary is simple: two-mora words cannot be nakadaka in the strict four-way split. A two-mora accented word can only be atamadaka (drop after mora 1) or odaka (drop after mora 2, audible only on a following particle).53
Why nakadaka stops at accent N − 1
Accent N is odaka by definition: drop after the final mora, with the fall audible only on a following particle.13 Nakadaka caps at accent N − 1 so the drop is strictly inside the word.123
Wikipedia formulates the same bound operationally: any accent position between the second and the penultimate mora is nakadaka.3
Some pedagogical writing uses a merged convention: anything that is not heiban or atamadaka is called "nakadaka," and odaka becomes a sub-label for the drop-on-final-mora case.4 J-Compass follows the strict four-way split, after NHK 2016 and the standard academic phonology, so odaka is its own pattern here.57 If you see ともだち called "nakadaka accent 4" in another source, you are seeing the merged convention, not a contradiction.
The range table by word length
| Word length N | Nakadaka slots (2 ≤ k ≤ N − 1) | Count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 mora | none | 0 |
| 2 morae | none (range is empty) | 0 |
| 3 morae | k = 2 | 1 |
| 4 morae | k = 2, 3 | 2 |
| 5 morae | k = 2, 3, 4 | 3 |
| N morae | k = 2, 3, …, N − 1 | N − 2 |
The count of nakadaka slots is N − 2, so it grows linearly with word length. Heiban, atamadaka, and odaka each contribute one slot regardless of length.123 This is the structural reason longer Sino-Japanese (kango) nouns skew nakadaka so heavily.59
How to identify the drop from OJAD, Jisho, or NHK
OJAD displays the accent locus as a bracketed integer. The Suzuki-kun prosody tutor visualises the per-mora pitch curve, including the downstep position, for arbitrary input text.8 NHK 2016 marks the fall position with "＼" placed immediately after the accented mora: for a nakadaka entry tagged accent k, "＼" sits between mora k and mora k + 1.7 Jisho with the Yomitan extension shows the same integer, sourced from the NHK and OJAD data.8
The recipe is identical across the three: read k, apply the five-step decoding from the previous section.
Behaviour under particle attachment: the particle stays low
The "particle joins the low tail" rule
When が, は, を, の, に, or で attaches to a nakadaka word, the particle is L. The L tail that begins after the accented mora continues across the word boundary onto the particle, by the same tonal-spreading rule that produced the tail inside the word.5
Wikipedia frames it as the contrastive case to heiban: "This high pitch spreads to unaccented grammatical particles that attach to the end of the word, whereas these would have a low pitch when attached to an accented word."3 Nakadaka is the accented branch.
Why the particle test does not distinguish nakadaka from atamadaka
Atamadaka also drops the particle to L: the L tail begins on mora 2 and extends across the particle.36 The particle test cleanly separates heiban + odaka (particle high vs low depending on accent locus) from atamadaka + nakadaka (particle low either way). But it cannot tell those last two apart.3
The word-internal contour is what distinguishes nakadaka (LHH...HL...L) from atamadaka (HL...L): nakadaka opens with the LH initial rise, while atamadaka opens with the HL fall.53 The atamadaka article in this section drills the contrast at length.
The が-attachment audit, repeated
The same が-test used in the heiban and atamadaka articles applies here as a consistency check: a nakadaka word plus が yields L H...H L...L L; the が is unambiguously L.536
Side-by-side contrast on four-mora words:
| Pattern | m₁ | m₂ | m₃ | m₄ | + が |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heiban (accent 0) | L | H | H | H | H |
| Atamadaka (accent 1) | H | L | L | L | L |
| Nakadaka accent 2 | L | H | L | L | L |
| Nakadaka accent 3 | L | H | H | L | L |
Limits of the test
For an unknown word, the contour declares itself before the particle is reached. The audit is really a consistency check, not a discovery procedure.53 The particle test cannot distinguish nakadaka from atamadaka directly, as already noted. It does, however, distinguish nakadaka from odaka: both drop the particle to L, but for odaka every word-internal mora is H, while for nakadaka at least one word-internal mora is L before the particle.13
A dedicated minimal-pairs treatment is the natural home for that confusion. It drills nakadaka against atamadaka on short words, where the contour difference is easiest to miss.
How to identify the drop position from a dictionary
Reading the bracketed integer
OJAD, Jisho (with Yomitan), and NHK 2016 print the accent locus as a bracketed integer like [2] or [3]. For nakadaka, that integer is at least 2 and at most N − 1.783 The integer is the count of high morae before the drop. Equivalently, it is the index of the last H mora.123
The full decoding tree:
- Read the integer k.
- If k = 0 → heiban (no drop); stop.
- If k = 1 → atamadaka (drop after mora 1, mora 1 is H); stop.
- If k = N → odaka (drop after final mora, audible only on a particle); stop.
- Otherwise → nakadaka. Mora 1 L; morae 2…k H; morae k + 1…N L; following particle L.
Reading the overline-and-down-arrow diagram
NHK 2016 renders the contour with the fall-mark "＼" placed immediately after the accented mora. For a nakadaka entry, the "＼" sits between mora k and mora k + 1 inside the word, not at the word edge.7 OJAD renders the same information as an overline that drops between two specific morae. The drop position in the diagram is the same k that appears as the bracketed integer.8 Wiktionary uses the IPA-style ꜜ downstep mark: お菓子 is rendered "[òkáꜜshì] (Nakadaka – [2])" with ꜜ marking the H→L transition after か.10
The notation article in this section walks the three representations side by side.
The Suzuki-kun and OJAD sentence-level renderers
OJAD's Suzuki-kun prosody tutor synthesises the pitch contour for a full sentence and visualises the drop position. It offers four selectable speaker voices and three speaking-speed levels.8 The site catalogues approximately 9,000 Tokyo-dialect noun accents and 3,500 predicates across basic conjugations, with arbitrary-text accent prediction layered on top.8
Suzuki-kun's predicted contour for a phrase will not always match the citation-form contour of the nakadaka word inside it. Compound-accent rules, the rules that apply when two nouns fuse into a single accentual unit, can shift the drop position or delete it entirely. For single-word lookups, stick to citation form.58
When sources disagree
Different dictionaries occasionally tag the same word with different accent numbers. For nakadaka-adjacent words, the disagreement usually shows up as a one-position shift.711 The working standard for this article is NHK 2016 and OJAD. When an older textbook or pedagogical site tags a short native noun differently, defer to NHK 2016 for any single-word lookup.78
The next section uses ともだち as the worked illustration of exactly this kind of disagreement.
Worked examples
お菓子 (okashi, "sweets", accent 2)
お菓子 is a three-mora native noun meaning "sweets" or "confectionery." Wiktionary records "[òkáꜜshì] (Nakadaka – [2])"; the ꜜ downstep sits between か and し, confirming the drop after mora 2.10 Per-mora pitch is お(L) か(H) し(L). With が attached, the full contour is L H L L L. NHK 2016's fall-mark notation writes おか＼し.710
This is the minimum-length nakadaka word (N = 3, k = 2), and the only nakadaka slot a three-mora word has.23
The を is L, joining the L tail that began after か. This is the が-style particle test in action: the drop has already happened inside the word between か and し, so tonal spreading carries L across the particle.510
The contour on お菓子 is preserved in mid-sentence position. Only compound-accent rules in tight nominal compounds would alter it, and a particle attachment is not a compound.58
ともだち (tomodachi, "friend"): an honest treatment of the disagreement
友達 is a four-mora native noun. It is the canonical "your dictionary disagrees with your textbook" word for nakadaka.711
Two attestations sit in the widely-cited references:
- NHK 2016, OJAD, and Wiktionary agree on heiban [0]. Wiktionary records "[tòmódáchí] (Heiban – [0])"; the contour is と(L) も(H) だ(H) ち(H), and with が the full string is L H H H H.11
- Older descriptive tradition lists nakadaka [3]. Some older pedagogical materials, and the older Tokyo dialect-survey tradition, list ともだち at accent 3, with contour と(L) も(H) だ(H) ち(L) and particle が → L H H L L. Under the strict four-way split this contour is squarely nakadaka, because the drop sits inside the word.53
Both pronunciations are attested in fluent Tokyo speech. NHK 2016 reflects the current reference-dictionary judgment, not a single universal fact about the spoken language.711
The honest framing is this: derive both contours mora by mora, treat NHK 2016 and OJAD as the working standard for any single-word lookup, and expect occasional one-position drift between sources on short accented native nouns.
Under NHK 2016 (heiban [0]), per-mora pitch on 友達 is と(L) も(H) だ(H) ち(H), and the が is H: the contour continues across the particle. Under the older nakadaka [3] tagging, 友達 would be と(L) も(H) だ(H) ち(L), and the が would be L. The が is the disambiguating mora: H under heiban, L under nakadaka.5113
The same logic applies to と: H under the NHK 2016 reading, L under the older nakadaka [3] reading. Use NHK 2016 as the worked standard. Flag the alternative in your own production only if you have a specific reason.
Reading the two together
A single recipe holds for every nakadaka word: mora 1 L, morae 2 through k H, every mora after k L, particle L. The only variable across nakadaka words is k.123
This is why nakadaka is the "hard to guess from the label alone" pattern: heiban means k = 0, atamadaka means k = 1, and odaka means k = N. But the name "nakadaka" does not tell you k.23
A clean comparison table closes the loop:
| Word | Morae N | Accent k | Per-mora pitch | With particle (が) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| お菓子 (okashi) | 3 | 2 | お(L) か(H) し(L) | L H L L |
| 友達 (NHK 2016) | 4 | 0 | と(L) も(H) だ(H) ち(H) | L H H H H |
| 友達 (older tradition) | 4 | 3 | と(L) も(H) だ(H) ち(L) | L H H L L |
| ひらがな (illustrative) | 4 | 3 | ひ(L) ら(H) が(H) な(L) | L H H L L |
The two 友達 rows are deliberately retained because they honestly illustrate the disagreement. Use the NHK 2016 row for your own production. The ひらがな row is included as a clean four-mora nakadaka [3] anchor. Cross-check on OJAD before relying on it for a specific recording.84
Why two-mora words have no nakadaka slot
A two-mora word has only one word-internal position for a drop: after mora 1. That position is atamadaka by definition.53 The next available drop position, after mora 2 where mora 2 is the final mora, is odaka, not nakadaka.13 The range 2 ≤ k ≤ N − 1 is empty when N = 2.
So nakadaka requires N ≥ 3, and any two-mora accented word you meet will be atamadaka or odaka. The atamadaka article and the odaka article cover the two-mora cases in detail.
Good to know
Nakadaka is the only pattern whose accent integer is doing real work
For heiban, the dictionary integer is always 0. For atamadaka, it is always 1, and for odaka it is always N. Only for nakadaka does the integer carry information you cannot reconstruct from the pattern name.123 A learner who has memorised the four-pattern grid can still mispronounce nakadaka words because the grid gives the contour shape (LHH...HL...L), but not where the drop sits. On a four-mora word, the drop location is the difference between L H L L L and L H H L L.23
Nakadaka dominates longer Sino-Japanese (kango) nouns
For an N-mora word, the count of nakadaka slots is N − 2. Heiban, atamadaka, and odaka each contribute one slot regardless of length.123 The slot count for accented patterns grows with word length, and most of that growth lands in nakadaka.
The aggregate corpus split (Kubozono 2008, reported in Kawahara 2015) gives a baseline: in a corpus of 4,939 Sino-Japanese nouns, 51% are unaccented (heiban), and the remaining 49% are accented and subdivide across atamadaka, nakadaka, and odaka.59 Among the accented slice, especially at longer mora counts, nakadaka takes a disproportionate share as a structural consequence of the slot arithmetic above. State this as a tendency, not a rule. Accent on specific compounds is governed by its own rule system, treated in the compound-accent article.59
English-speaker pitfall: do not put English stress on the accented mora
The H mora before the drop is not louder, not longer, and does not have a different vowel quality from the surrounding morae: it is only higher in pitch.5 An English-stress L1 tends to add length and intensity. That can make the word sound foreign even when the F0 contour is correct. The pitfall is most acute on the H mora immediately before the drop, because that is exactly where English would place primary stress.5 The stress-vs-pitch article in this section unpacks the four cues English bundles and the flatten-first habit that fixes the problem.
Correct production keeps every mora at near-equal length and intensity. The only audible difference between morae is F0 height. For example, on お菓子, all three morae are roughly the same duration and loudness. か is simply pitched higher than お, and し steps back down:
ともだち is the canonical "your dictionary disagrees with your textbook" word
NHK 2016 and OJAD list 友達 as heiban [0]; older pedagogical materials and the older Tokyo dialect-survey tradition list it as nakadaka [3]. Both contours are attested in fluent Tokyo speech.711
Use NHK 2016 as the working standard for single-word lookups. Expect occasional one-position drift between sources for short accented native nouns. The drift is not a contradiction: it is the visible trace of accent change in progress, and it is most common on the short native words a beginner meets first.
The accent integer is mora-counted, not syllable-counted
A long vowel, a geminate consonant (doubled consonant), and a moraic ん each count as one mora for accent purposes.53 A "four-mora" word may surface in continuous speech as a three-syllable string, but the accent integer is read against the mora count, not the syllable count.
The practical consequence: apply the decoding recipe mora by mora, never syllable by syllable. The mora-vs-syllable article in this section is the canonical treatment of the distinction.
See also
- Should You Learn Pitch Accent? An Honest Cost-Benefit Analysis
- Pitch Accent for Japanese Verbs and Adjectives: The Binary Class Rule and Conjugation Shifts
- Regional Pitch Accent in Japanese: Kansai (Keihan), Tohoku, and the Accentless Dialects