Odaka (尾高): The Tail-High Japanese Pitch-Accent Pattern
Odaka pitch accent is the Tokyo pattern where a noun sounds like LHH...H when said by itself. The pitch drops to L only on the particle that attaches after it.123 Of the four Tokyo patterns, it is the only one whose lexical accent lives outside the word itself. That is why it is invisible until you hear a particle.
Overview
Odaka (尾高型, odaka-gata) is one of the four standard accent patterns of Tokyo Japanese, alongside heiban, atamadaka, and nakadaka.43 What sets it apart is structural, not acoustic: the H-to-L fall that defines an accented word is positioned after the final mora. The word said alone never carries the drop. A learner who relies on isolated audio will mistake every odaka noun for a heiban one.
This article defines the term, derives the LHH...H + L-particle contour from the same initial-rise and culminativity machinery used in the sibling pattern articles, explains why the dictionary integer always equals the mora count, and walks through two standard examples: 橋 (hashi, "bridge", accent 2) and 男 (otoko, "man", accent 3).
What "odaka" (尾高) literally names
The compound 尾高 joins 尾 (o, "tail" or "end") with 高 (taka, "high"). Rendaku voices the second element, so the surface form is odaka rather than otaka. The full term is 尾高型 (odaka-gata, "tail-high type"); 尾高式 (odaka-shiki) is a recognised synonym in the same descriptive tradition.1
In the standard taxonomy, atamadaka, nakadaka, and odaka are grouped together as 起伏型 (kifuku-gata, "rise-and-fall type"). These are patterns with "音の高さが急に下がるところがあるもの" ("a place where the pitch suddenly falls"), in contrast to 平板型 (heiban-gata), which has no fall at all.5 Odaka belongs to the 起伏型 family even though its drop is inaudible in citation form.
The phonologist's name for this class is "final-accented words." Kawahara 2015 defines accented words as those bearing "an abrupt H(igh)-L(ow) fall in F0," and treats final-accented words as the case where the fall sits between the final mora of the word and the following mora, in practice the particle.4
One-line definition
Odaka is the pattern where the word itself surfaces as LHH...H: mora 1 is low, and every following mora is high through the final mora. The lexical H-to-L drop falls after the final mora, so you hear it only on the particle that attaches.123
Where odaka sits among the four Tokyo patterns
Tokyo Japanese organises noun accent into four patterns. Three of them (atamadaka, nakadaka, and odaka) carry a lexical H-to-L drop; the fourth, heiban, has none.43 Odaka is different because of where that drop sits: outside the word, on whatever attaches after it.
The result is unavoidable: you cannot diagnose odaka from a word said in isolation. Without a following mora, the drop has nowhere to land, so the citation-form contour is identical to heiban's.3 Every odaka diagnostic in this article comes back to that single fact.
How odaka sounds: the LHH...H + L-particle contour
The initial low mora
Mora 1 of an odaka word is low. This follows directly from the Tokyo initial-rise rule. Kawahara 2015 states it as "the first two syllables in a word bear a LH tonal sequence ... unless the first syllable is accented."4 In odaka, the accented mora is the final mora, never mora 1, so the initial-rise rule applies and mora 1 surfaces L.
The sci.lang.japan FAQ states the rule as a practical recipe: an odaka word is "a low mora, followed by all high mora, and then the particle after the end of the word is low. This type only occurs for nouns."7
The rising plateau to the final mora
Morae 2 through N are all high. The H plateau extends from mora 2 to the final mora. There is no H-to-L drop anywhere inside the word.123
This is the structural reason odaka and heiban are indistinguishable in citation form. Both patterns produce L on mora 1 (by the initial-rise rule) and H on every mora after it, through the end of the word. The lexical accent that separates them is positioned outside the word, where citation form cannot reveal it.413
The drop on the particle
The H-to-L drop is the lexical accent of an odaka word, but it lands on the mora after the word's final mora. In practice, that following mora is the attached particle. が, は, を, の, に, and で are all L when they attach to an odaka noun.137
Kawahara 2015 formulates the underlying rule for any accented word: "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."4 For odaka, the accented vowel is the final mora of the word. The "following vowel" is the first mora of the attached material.
The accent integer equals the mora count
The dictionary integer for an odaka word always equals its mora count N. This follows directly from the bracketed-integer convention: the integer marks the mora after which the drop occurs. For odaka, the drop falls after the final mora, so the integer equals the position of that final mora. In other words, it equals N.123
Worked mora-by-mora:
| Word | Morae N | Per-mora pitch | Drop after | Integer k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| はし (橋) | 2 | は(L) し(H) | mora 2 | 2 |
| おとこ (男) | 3 | お(L) と(H) こ(H) | mora 3 | 3 |
| いもうと (妹) | 4 | い(L) も(H) う(H) と(H) | mora 4 | 4 |
The decoding recipe collapses to three steps:
- Count the morae of the word (N).
- Read the bracketed integer k from the dictionary entry.
- If k = N, the word is odaka: mora 1 is L, morae 2 through N are H, and the following particle is L.
What odaka is NOT
Odaka is not a high first mora. Mora 1 is L by the initial-rise rule, the same way it is L in heiban and nakadaka.43
Odaka is not a drop you can hear in citation form. The drop is positioned after the final mora; without a following mora, the lexical H-to-L fall has nowhere to surface.13
Odaka is not the same as heiban. Heiban has no lexical drop at all, so a particle attached to a heiban noun stays high. Odaka has one lexical drop, positioned on the following particle, so a particle attached to an odaka noun goes low.13
Odaka is not English-style word stress. The H plateau morae are not louder or longer, and they do not have a different vowel quality from the L initial mora. Only F0 height (fundamental frequency, the acoustic basis of pitch) distinguishes them.4
Why odaka is invisible in isolation
The citation-form collision
A 2-mora odaka word like はし (橋, "bridge", accent 2) surfaces as LH when said alone. A 2-mora heiban word like はし (端, "edge", accent 0) also surfaces as LH when said alone. The two are phonetically indistinguishable in isolation.83
Wikipedia states the structural fact in general form: odaka words "are indistinguishable from accentless words unless followed by a particle such as が ga or に ni, on which the pitch drops."3
The heiban/odaka isolation ambiguity is not a quirk of any particular dictionary or audio sample; it is intrinsic to the four-pattern system. Both heiban and odaka generate L on mora 1 (by the initial-rise rule) and H on every mora after it, through the end of the word. The lexical accent that separates them is positioned outside the word, where citation form cannot show it.413
This is the standard teaching hook. The 端/橋 pair is the usual worked illustration of the heiban-vs-odaka collision in introductory pitch-accent material. Wikipedia itself uses the hashi minimal pair as the headline example of the isolation ambiguity.3 The broader three-way minimal-pair drill, which also involves 箸, is reserved for the dedicated minimal-pairs article. This article uses 橋 only as the standard odaka example.
Why the contrast surfaces only with a particle attached
Because the odaka drop is positioned after the final mora, it can only be realised on a following mora. By default, that following mora is the particle. Attach が, は, を, の, に, or で, and the difference becomes audible: heiban yields LH...H + H, while odaka yields LH...H + L.137
The 2-mora pair makes the contrast minimal:
| Word | Pattern | + が |
|---|---|---|
| はし (端, "edge") | Heiban [0] | は(L) し(H) が(H) → L H H |
| はし (橋, "bridge") | Odaka [2] | は(L) し(H) が(L) → L H L |
That single が-mora (high in heiban, low in odaka) is the test this article keeps returning to.
The strict pedagogical consequence
A learner cannot learn odaka words by ear from isolated audio. The dictionary integer or an attached particle is required to disambiguate the pattern from heiban.13
This is the operational reason pitch-accent training materials drill the particle attachment explicitly. OJAD's sentence-level prosody tutor Suzuki-kun renders pitch on a full sentence rather than on a word in isolation; type the noun followed by が and the drop becomes audible.9
The minimal-pair link is owned elsewhere
The bridge / chopsticks / edge (橋 / 箸 / 端) three-way minimal-pair drill is the standard illustration of the heiban-vs-odaka collision combined with the atamadaka-vs-odaka contrast. That drill belongs to the planned minimal-pairs article and is intentionally not walked through here. This article stays with the structural derivation of odaka and uses 橋 only as the worked odaka example.
Behaviour under particle attachment: the particle goes low
The "particle catches the drop" rule
When が, は, を, の, に, or で attaches to an odaka word, the particle itself is L. The low pitch on the particle is the surface realisation of the lexical accent that the word itself never gets to express.123
English Wiktionary's example list shows the rule directly: 頭(あたま)は ("head + は"), 言葉(ことば)を ("word + を"), 分(わ)かりが ("understanding + が"), 犬(いぬ)と ("dog + と"). In each case, the particle is the L mora.1
This is the exact inverse of the heiban "particle stays high" rule. Together, the two patterns give the cleanest diagnostic in the four-pattern system: same in-word contour (LH...H), opposite particle behaviour.5
The が-attachment audit
The same が-test used in the heiban, atamadaka, and nakadaka articles applies here. An odaka word plus が yields LH...H L. The が is unambiguously L.81037
Side-by-side, the four patterns at three morae:
| Pattern | k | 3-mora schema | + が |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heiban | 0 | L H H | L H H H |
| Atamadaka | 1 | H L L | H L L L |
| Nakadaka | 2 | L H L | L H L L |
| Odaka | 3 (= N) | L H H | L H H L |
The heiban row and the odaka row are identical in citation form. They differ only in the が-column. That single contrast is what the particle test is designed to expose.
Why the particle test does not distinguish odaka from atamadaka or nakadaka
Atamadaka, nakadaka, and odaka all surface with a low particle. Only the inside-the-word contour separates them.37 By itself, the particle test only separates the two patterns whose in-word contour is LH...H: heiban (particle H) and odaka (particle L).
For atamadaka and nakadaka, the in-word drop is already audible, so the diagnostic burden is on the contour, not the particle. Odaka is the one pattern where the particle does all the work.
Multi-mora particles and the spreading L
Some particles are multi-mora, such as まで, から, and より. For an odaka word, the L spreads across the whole cluster by the standard tonal-spreading rule: tonally unspecified morae copy the tone from the rightmost specified mora.4
Worked example: はし[2] + まで surfaces as は(L) し(H) ま(L) で(L), or L H L L. The L originates at the post-word position (the lexical accent of 橋) and spreads rightward across まで. This is an extension of the tonal-spreading rule that governs single-mora particles, not a new rule.4
How to identify odaka from a dictionary
Reading the bracketed integer
OJAD, Jisho (with Yomitan), and NHK 2016 print the accent locus, meaning the position of the pitch drop, as a bracketed integer like [2] or [3]. For an odaka word, that integer always equals the mora count N.119810
The recipe mirrors the contour derivation:
- Count the morae of the word (N), being careful that long vowels, geminate consonants, and moraic ん each count as one mora.
- Read the bracketed integer k from the dictionary entry.
- If k = N, the word is odaka. Its per-mora contour is LH...H (mora 1 L, morae 2 through N H), and any attached particle is L.
Examples from Wiktionary: 橋 is tagged "(Odaka – [2])" with N = 2; 男 is tagged "(Odaka – [3])" with N = 3; 弟 is tagged "(Odaka – [4])" with N = 4.81012
Reading the overline-and-down-arrow diagram
NHK 2016 and OJAD show the contour with an overline that drops after the final mora. Visually, the overline covers morae 2 through N, and the down-arrow (or fall mark) sits to the right of the last kana. This indicates that the drop falls on the next mora outside the word.119
Wiktionary uses the IPA-style ꜜ downstep mark in the same position: 橋 is rendered [hàshíꜜ], with ꜜ placed after the final mora し to mark the post-word drop.8 The ꜜ position is the visual version of the accent integer. It tells you the same thing the bracketed [2] tells you.
Using OJAD and Suzuki-kun for odaka
Because the odaka drop only appears on a following mora, OJAD's Suzuki-kun is the most reliable way to hear odaka in practice. Suzuki-kun "estimates pitch patterns for arbitrary Japanese sentences" and offers four voices (two male, two female) and three speech speeds.9 Type the noun followed by が, and the drop becomes audible on the particle.
For a learner's workflow, the bracketed integer tells you the pattern, but Suzuki-kun lets you hear the particle catch the drop. Isolated-word audio samples are not enough for odaka.93
When sources disagree
The odaka-vs-heiban tag is sometimes contested for individual words because the citation-form contour does not resolve it. NHK 2016 and OJAD are the working standard for J-Compass.119
Some older textbooks tag certain words as odaka where modern dictionaries have shifted them to heiban. This reflects a real diachronic trend, or historical change, in Tokyo Japanese, discussed in "Good to know" below.411 When you encounter a disagreement, defer to NHK 2016 / OJAD for the lookup and expect occasional drift on accented short native nouns.
Worked examples
はし (hashi, "bridge", accent 2)
橋 is a 2-mora native noun, the shortest possible odaka word. Wiktionary tags the Tokyo pronunciation [hàshíꜜ] as "Odaka – [2]"; the ꜜ downstep sits after the final mora し, confirming the post-word drop.8
Per-mora pitch: は(L) し(H). With が, the contour becomes L H L. The が is L, catching the lexical drop the word itself does not get to express. The integer equals the mora count (k = N = 2), as it must for every odaka word.118
橋を渡ります。8
"I cross the bridge."
あの橋が長いです。8
"That bridge is long."
The second sentence is the が-test in a real frame. The が after 橋 is L. The same が after 端 (heiban, "edge") would be H. That single mora is the entire audible difference between the two words in connected speech.
橋まで歩きました。8
"I walked as far as the bridge."
まで is a 2-mora particle cluster. The L spreads across both morae by the tonal-spreading rule. The contour on 橋まで is L H L L.48
おとこ (otoko, "man", accent 3)
男 is a 3-mora native noun. Wiktionary tags [òtókóꜜ] as "Odaka – [3]". The ꜜ downstep sits after the final mora こ, again confirming the post-word drop.10
Per-mora pitch: お(L) と(H) こ(H). With が, the contour becomes L H H L. The H plateau runs from mora 2 to mora 3, leaving the が to catch the drop. The integer equals the mora count (k = N = 3).1110
その男が来ました。10
"That man came."
男と話しました。10
"I talked with a man."
The と in the second sentence behaves just like が: it catches the drop and is L. The particle's identity does not matter; only its position immediately after the odaka word does.410
Reading the two together
A single recipe holds for every odaka word: mora 1 L, morae 2 through N H, particle L. The only variable across odaka words is the mora count N itself.123
This is why odaka is a single label across all mora counts. Heiban means k = 0, atamadaka means k = 1, nakadaka means 2 ≤ k ≤ N − 1, and odaka means k = N. Three of the four pattern labels identify k by themselves; nakadaka is the exception, where k carries additional information.123
| Word | Morae N | Accent k | Per-mora pitch | With が |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| はし (橋, bridge) | 2 | 2 | は(L) し(H) | は(L) し(H) が(L) |
| おとこ (男, man) | 3 | 3 | お(L) と(H) こ(H) | お(L) と(H) こ(H) が(L) |
| いもうと (妹, younger sister) | 4 | 4 | い(L) も(H) う(H) と(H) | い(L) も(H) う(H) と(H) が(L) |
The いもうと row anchors the 4-mora case. Kawahara treats 妹 as a final-accent word with the LHHH + L-particle contour.4
Other commonly-cited odaka nouns
For drill purposes, the following nouns are tagged odaka in NHK 2016 and OJAD:
- いもうと (妹, "younger sister", accent 4)4
- おとうと (弟, "younger brother", accent 4)12
- やま (山, "mountain", accent 2)2
- あたま (頭, "head", accent 3)1
- ことば (言葉, "word", accent 3)1
- いぬ (犬, "dog", accent 2)1
- ちち (父, "father", accent 2)13
- むすめ (娘, "daughter", accent 3)13
Some sources disagree on the heiban-vs-odaka tag for individual words on this list. Defer to NHK 2016 / OJAD as the working standard, and cross-check any word before relying on it.119
Good to know
Odaka is the only pattern whose drop lives outside the word
Heiban has no drop at all. Atamadaka drops between mora 1 and mora 2. Nakadaka drops strictly inside the word (between mora k and mora k+1, with 2 ≤ k ≤ N − 1). Only odaka drops after the final mora, onto the particle.123
That "outside the word" position is the source of every quirk on this page: the heiban-vs-odaka collision in citation form, the no-particle-no-diagnosis rule, and the accent-integer-equals-mora-count convention. These are not three independent facts. They are three consequences of the same structural placement.13
Why there are no odaka verbs
sci.lang.japan states the constraint explicitly for the odaka pattern: "This type only occurs for nouns."7
The structural reason is conjugation. Verbs and i-adjectives that look final-mora-accented in dictionary form behave differently once conjugated. The accent locus shifts as the paradigm changes shape.
A "final-accented verb" is therefore not a stable category across the paradigm. The four-pattern grid that organises noun accent does not transfer cleanly to verbs and adjectives. Verbs and adjectives have their own pitch behaviour, treated in a separate forthcoming article.7
For practical purposes, odaka is a nouns-only pattern in modern Tokyo Japanese. When you see odaka mentioned in a learning resource, it is implicitly about noun accent.
English-speaker pitfall: flattening odaka into heiban
For many L1-English speakers, the reflex when there is no in-word drop is to flatten the entire word into a stress-timed lump and let the final particle stay high. That turns every odaka word into a heiban word. The fix is conscious drill: initial low, then high plateau, then drop on the particle.
The wrong realisation of 橋が is L H H: the particle stays high, producing a heiban contour ("edge" 端 rather than "bridge" 橋). The correct realisation is:
橋が長いです。8
"The bridge is long."
The が is L. The H plateau runs up to し, and the pitch falls on が. If your が is the same height as your し, you are saying 端 (edge), not 橋 (bridge).43
Odaka frequency, in proportion
Odaka concentrates in short native nouns: 2-mora and 3-mora wago. Long Sino-Japanese nouns (kango) tend toward nakadaka or heiban.4 The practical consequence is simple: an OJAD lookup of a long kango noun is unlikely to return odaka, while a short native noun has a real chance. The reference list above is dominated by 2-to-4-mora native nouns for this reason.127
Treat this as a tendency, not a rule. Odaka is the rarest of the four patterns in raw type counts, but it is overrepresented in the short-noun vocabulary that early learners encounter first.7
Diachronic drift: some odaka words are becoming heiban
Tokyo Japanese has a documented trend toward heiban for several formerly odaka short nouns. This is one source of the source-disagreement issue noted above: an older textbook may tag a word as odaka where NHK 2016 and OJAD have shifted it to heiban.11
There is also an effect from the syntactic environment. English Wiktionary notes that "before the particle の, odaka words typically deaccent to heiban, with some exceptions": the odaka contour is suppressed in the specific の-attachment context.1
This article keeps the strict NHK 2016 tagging throughout. Expect drift over decades, and treat any odaka tag on a short native noun as a dictionary decision rather than a permanent property of the word.
The accent integer is mora-counted, not syllable-counted
A long vowel, a geminate consonant, and the moraic ん each count as one mora for accent purposes.43 For odaka, this matters directly because the integer equals the mora count. おとうと is four morae (お-と-う-と, with the long vowel counting as a separate mora) and is tagged odaka [4], even though the syllable count is lower.12
When you count morae for the odaka test, count by kana with one adjustment: long vowels, small つ, and ん each add one mora.
Sources occasionally disagree on individual short-noun tags
Different dictionaries sometimes tag the same word with different accent numbers. For odaka, this most often shows up as an odaka-vs-heiban disagreement, because the citation-form contour does not resolve it.113
The working standard for this site is NHK 2016 and OJAD; older textbook traditions sometimes disagree. When in doubt, defer to NHK 2016 / OJAD for any single-word lookup.119
See also
- Japanese Compound-Word Pitch Accent: How Two Words Combine into One Accent Pattern
- Regional Pitch Accent in Japanese: Kansai (Keihan), Tohoku, and the Accentless Dialects
- Should You Learn Pitch Accent? An Honest Cost-Benefit Analysis