Atamadaka (頭高): The Head-High Japanese Pitch-Accent Pattern
Atamadaka pitch accent, sorted: the HLLL contour, accent 1, why short native nouns skew atamadaka, the particle stays low, and いのち, 雨, にほん worked.
Atamadaka pitch accent, sorted: the HLLL contour, accent 1, why short native nouns skew atamadaka, the particle stays low, and いのち, 雨, にほん worked.
Critical period vs. adult learners: what research really shows about learning Japanese after childhood, broken down by pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.
Heiban pitch accent, sorted: the LHHH contour, accent 0, why the H sustains onto the following particle, and worked examples for さくら, がっこう, and ともだち.
How to read OJAD, sorted: the four features (Accent Dictionary, Verb Handbook, Text Search, Suzuki-kun), the overline notation, and a Jisho-to-OJAD workflow.
Japanese compound-word pitch accent, sorted: the short vs. long N2 rule, kango vs. wago behavior, the –家, –人, –国 patterns, and why dictionaries diverge.
Japanese pitch accent in plain prose: not tone, not stress, just high/low per mora with one drop per word, the four Tokyo patterns, and what to learn next.
Japanese pitch-accent minimal pairs drilled: はし, 雨/飴, 神/紙/髪, 牡蠣/柿, 今/居間, 雲/蜘蛛, each with accent number, contour, particle test, and a one-line drill tip.
Japanese pitch-accent notation, sorted: what 0, 1, 2, 3 mean, how overline-and-drop diagrams work, and how NHK, Shin-meikai, and OJAD differ.
The Mass Immersion Approach (MIA), explained neutrally: its AJATT roots, Matt vs Japan, the Migaku tools, the pitch-accent focus, and the 2020 Refold pivot.
Nakadaka pitch accent, sorted: the LHH...HL...L contour, accent 2 to N−1, how to read the drop from OJAD, and おかし and ともだち worked.
Odaka pitch accent, sorted: the LHH...H + low-particle contour, accent N, why citation form collides with heiban, the が-test, and はし and おとこ worked.
Japanese pitch accent for verbs and adjectives, sorted: the accented vs unaccented binary, the penultimate-mora rule across nine forms, and worked verbs.
Japanese regional pitch accent, sorted: why the four patterns are Tokyo-only, how Keihan (Kansai) adds an initial-pitch axis, and what accentless dialects do.
Should you learn Japanese pitch accent? An honest cost-benefit: the perfectionism trap, the textbook trap, and the level-keyed split J-Compass recommends.