Japanese pitch, from scratch: what high and low actually mean
For English speakers, the hard part about Japanese pitch isn't the pitch itself. It's that we keep reaching for stress instead. Japanese pitch is simpler than it sounds. Every beat is either high or low — two levels, and only a handful of rules. This page lays out those rules, and shows you how to read the ⓪①②③ numbers in the dictionary.
First, put stress aside
English marks words with stress: one syllable in a word gets pushed harder and longer — REcord the noun, reCORD the verb. Japanese doesn't do that. Its pitch belongs to the whole word, and all it describes is where inside the word the voice drops. A single kana has no pitch of its own. は is high in 箸, and low in 橋. The は didn't change — the two words just drop in different places.
Two rules that never break
- Beat 1 and beat 2 are never the same. Either it starts low and beat 2 goes up, or it starts high and beat 2 comes down. A word never opens on two matching beats.
- Once it drops, it stays down. Inside one word the voice comes down at most once, and after that it stays low to the end. It never dips and climbs again.
Those two rules leave exactly one thing to know: which beat the drop comes after. That's what the number in the dictionary is telling you.
Reading ⓪①②③
| Mark | Name | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| ⓪ | Flat | No drop. Starts low, goes up on beat 2, and stays high to the end — the particle after it stays high too | 桜が さくらが |
| ① | Head-high | Drops right after beat 1. Starts high, everything after is low | 箸が はしが |
| ② | Middle / tail | Drops after beat 2 | 橋が はしが |
| ③… | Middle / tail | Drops after beat 3 (or beat n) | 卵が たまごが |
Watch 橋② against 端⓪. On their own, both are はし, and you can't hear any difference — the difference is in the particle after them: 橋が: the が in 端が: the が is high, and in 橋が it's low. So when you practise pitch, say the particle too. On its own, a word can't show you the difference between flat and tail-drop.
How to practise
- Glance at the number before you say the word. You don't need to memorise a table. Learn where each word drops as you meet it, and it adds up.
- Say it with the particle. As above — flat and tail-drop only differ once the particle is there.
- Train your ear on pairs: 箸 / 橋, 雨 / 飴, 神 / 紙. If you can't hear the difference yet, don't rush to produce it. Hearing comes first.
- Go with the Tokyo standard. Dictionaries and textbooks all mark Tokyo pitch. Kansai works differently, and mixing the two early on only muddles things.
One last honest note. Get the pitch wrong and people will still understand you — context carries it. Pitch is worth practising because it's the single biggest thing that makes you sound Japanese rather than foreign. It is not worth worrying about, and it's certainly not worth checking so many times that you never open your mouth.
Our own plug, clearly marked: manabiu(the desktop app on this site) shows the high-low of every beat for any word you look up (Tokyo pitch marked for 100,000 words), so you can compare beat by beat while you shadow. Pitch is never scored — machines still can't judge it accurately, and a judgement you can't trust is worse than none.