I've installed this Anki plugin that adds pitch accent info. The author has helpfully provided some guidelines about the notation:
- Overline: Indicates "High" pitch
- Downfall arrow: usually means stressing the mora/syllable before.
- Red circle mark: Nasal pronunciation、e.g. げ would be a nasal け.
- Blue color: barely pronounced at all.
Now, I also gather from Kanshudo that
- 0 is heiban
- 1 is atamadaka
- 2 is nakadaka
- 3 is odaka
and Reddit tells me that
2 and later can't really be converted to nakadaka / odaka directly.
The 0, 1, 3, ... syntax just explain where the last high pitch mora is. Naturally, 0 is converted to Heiban because it has no "last" high pitch mora, and that's the exact definition of Heiban. It never goes low. 1 converts to atamadaka because it means that the last high pitch mora is the first mora, which is the definition of atamadaka - "head (or start) is high".
But as for nakadaka, the definition is just "the last high pitch mora is in the middle of the word". It could be 3 or 5 or anything really depending on how long the word is. It just can't be the first or the last mora.
The same goes for odaka.
Ok; now, for 中国 yomichan
(and the Anki extension) tells me that the pitch accent is:
ちゅ[うごく]{HHH} [0]
So it's heiban? Then I listen to yomichan's audio, and think "wait, there's definitely a high-low dropoff after ちゅ".
So I go on OJAD and Japanese Accent Study Website and, lo and behold:
[ちゅうごく]{HHLLL} (actually, OJAD shows it just dropping off after ゅ, but I don't know how to markdown that)
And now I'm confused.
Do I have a bug somewhere in my setup?
Do I not understand how Anki and
yomichan
denote pitch accent? Do the linked resources actually agree?- Then, I'm asking for an explanation of how to read the accent notation used by the AJT plugin (and
yomichan
, I suppose)
- Then, I'm asking for an explanation of how to read the accent notation used by the AJT plugin (and
Or,
Is Anki's and
yomichan
's reading wrong (despite the audio linked)?yomichan
correctly identifies it as "China" (so it's the right word) and it's not some obscure vocabulary (so there have had to be other people spotting this)?- Then, is it correct to say that 中国 is actually atamadaka?
3
doesn't necessarily mean odaka; it just means the pitch drops to low after the 3rd mora.