Please don't send @theimmersionguy any negativity-almost us KZreadrs are guilty of leaning too hard into thumbnails and titles for views, myself included, and he's addressed these points in the top comment. He brings up a lot of great points in this video, and I would encourage everyone to watch any follow-up he makes on this topic, as I'm sure he'll make good arguments against my blind spots on this topic, the same way that he did here. 皆さん冷静に

I learned Japanese for 10 years before studying pitch accent. It undoubtedly helped my pronunciation and perception of Japanese. After studying pitch accent I began getting compliments from natives about intonation and been told "you don't have an American accent." Before studying pitch accent, I didn't really get those.

Native speakers don't just randomly fluctuate between different regional accents - they either have a consistently mixed accent, or they have acquired multiple accents that they use in different scenarios. But no native speaker will pronounce e.g. 日本語 with two different pitch patters in two consecutive sentences, whereas non native speakers who don't hear pitch will do this all the time. It's this sort of inconsistency that's specific to learners which results in being hard to understand.

I was once trying to tell a Japanese person I like salmon and she thought I meant alcoholic beverages so that alone tells me Dōgen might be onto something

I'd argue the pitch accent equivalent in english would be like how we put emphasis on certain syllables in words when speaking. Like when we say the word "banana," there is an emphasis in the middle like ba-NA-na. I'd imagine if someone said ba-na-NA enough times, the person they're talking to would eventually ask why they're saying the word "banana" like that. Another example is "waffle." It's usually said like "WA-ffle," and it would sound weird if someone started saying "wa-FFLE." I would imagine that a native english speaker hearing someone say "wa-FFLE" would give them the same weird feeling a japanese person would feel after hearing "ni-HON-go."

20 yr resident of Japan, 34 yrs studying Japanese, and I just discovered the pitch accent about a year or 2 ago. Before that, I was baffled that some Japanese didn't understand me. Since I started trying to improve my pitch accent, this happens less often. Learn pitch accent early. It will save you a lot of time in the long run. Why not give yourself every advantage by learning pitch accent?

One difference with English is since it's an international language people are much more used to hearing non-native speakers of English and dealing with weird accents than Japanese speakers are.

I know a Japanese woman that moved to Norway as an adult and she speaks Norwegian incredibly fluently because not only is the phonology almost identical, but both languages use pitch accent. That is to say, knowing pitch accent (even from a different language) is clearly a major advantage in sounding native. Almost no adult immigrants sound anywhere close to that native.

Regardless of what "The Immersion Guy" was actually trying to say, I found his tone and delivery off-putting and inflammatory. He claims he didn't mean to instigate, yet denigrates "phonetics nerds" and "pitch propagandists" at length, as if his approach was the one true way to do things. Even the title of his video is hyperbole and clickbait; can he really claim pitch accent is "useless?" The irony is that "The Immersion Guy" is the one acting like a propagandist (in a ploy to get more subscribers), no one else.

Half an hour into Dogen‘s response and I’m ready to sign up for his Patreon pitch accent thing - not necessarily to learn pitch accent in itself but especially because I LOVE learning and the degree of differentiation, sensory & intellectual granularity with which he approaches and presents this (and other) topics. Just so stimulating to my brain and ears, and it puts me in touch with “Japan” and its lovely people. Ready to sign up with me?

A drive-by comment by a japanese-english person. Intonation is the first thing you immediately notice if done poorly (assuming decent vocab/grammar). For example, in western films, you can almost immediately tell who is non-native/not fluent in japanese by how they speak, not what they say.

41:59

ピッチアクセントと、音の長さの違いも重要ですね。難しい日本語を知らなくても、ピッチアクセントが上手だとかなりの上級者か日本育ちのように聞こえます。

Just to speak to your point at

"There are other factors, things like your actual pronunciation". THIS. This is what also tells me that they do not understand Japanese phonology AT ALL. Pitch IS part of the pronunciation. Again, it's not a decisive feature in English, but it is in Japanese. It's as important as long-short vowel distinction, but native speakers might not consciously value it as much because it doesn't have an equivalent in writing. It doesn't mean that they don't notice and it doesn't mean that it can't alter their perception of your Japanese.

Haven’t heard all 3h yet, but love this so far! You respectfully present your points. Loved the point around

As a linguistic nerd, I'm not obsessed with "sounding native" but I still study pitch accent because I think it's a very interesting feature of Japanese. Knowing pitch accent not only makes your Japanese more understandable but also makes Japanese more understandable to you. It's not about vanity, it's about comprehension.

Having a broken dialect due to moving is actually a good point. When I lived in North Carolina, I lived in Tarboro. Outsiders might pronounce the town's name as "Tar-boh-roh," but people there pronounce it as "Tah-bruh." I often went to another town called Greenville. (We often joked that this town is so small, you'll blink and drive right past it.) Some might pronounce "green-veel," but we pronounced it as "green-vuhl."

I was a bit wary checking out this video, because your comedic persona is a bit arrogant, so I thought it might be something you based on a real trait, but you quickly put my worries to rest by being fair, humble and open in. Thank you for your video. I glad I watched it

why do english-speaking people on yt argue so much over this?