Is Japanese a monotonic language?

Question

I have two different books about Japanese, and one says Japanese is monotonic (which means, the stress on a certain syllable doesn't matter) and a different book which has every word stressed differently when it gives examples; it says that Japanese ISN'T monotonic. I'm confused, because the one that said it's monotonic is a dictionary, and even the dictionary people know that ame (rain) and ame (candy) are stressed differently when you want eithe rain or candy. I, obviously, speak English, so can someone, (preferably a native Japanese speaker who also knows English, but if you don't, that's okay) tell me whether Japanese is a monotonic language or not, and if there are rules governing how to place the accents on certain syllables? Thanks.

Okay, thanks. Are there any rules governing how you place certain accents, or a dictionary of accents? Thanks.

Answer 1

no

Answer 2

Usually, it doesn't make too big of a difference how you stree the word because you can still be understandable so long as you pronounce the syllables correctly.
It's not completely monotonic because you do say words with a slightly different *pitch*, but from context people would be able to understand if you mean candy or rain.
There are many different dialects in Japan and so people speak slightly differently (just like New York and Chicago, and the North and West USA), but because everyone is taught to speak the Tokyo dialect, everyone is understandable.

To learn how to say things correctly just takes hearing natives say it. Watching Japanese television (not anime) can help with this as well as the various computer programs which will let you record your voice and compare it to that of a native's.

Answer 3

Japanese is monotonal, but there is suprasegmental stress & 'slight stress' (very hard for English speakers to detect), as you've noted, for distinguishing homophones sometimes - e.g. hashi =bridge, hashi = chopsticks, hashi = edge.. This stress is often reversed in the western Japanese (Osaka - kinki district) accent.

Japanese stress also differs to English stress in that stress does not add length to that particular syllable as often occurs in English.