# "Frog" and "Home" in Japanese

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frog-and-home-in-japanese/573701>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 6, 2011, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frog-and-home-in-japanese/573701 "2011-03-06T20:37:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2011, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frog-and-home-in-japanese/573701/21 "2011-03-07T19:20:38Z")

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> [@hibernicus](#):
>
> I was wrong about the pronunciation. The two words have different pitch accents. I (like most foreign learners) don’t have a clue about the correct pitch accent of Japanese words. It’s complicated by the fact that the pitch accent in my wife’s dialect is different to that of standard Japanese.

I think pitch accents are one of those things that you’re either raised from childhood with or you just “get” them. Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m an amazing at Japanese, speaking or otherwise, but I can generally recognize pitch accents and use them decently if I know the word well enough. However, when I was in Japanese it became evident that this isn’t necessarily a universal thing. There were two words (bugger that I can’t recall which one) that we came across either were exactly the same or else exactly the same in some form (passive, I believe) but used in similar contexts with very different meanings that we were curious how to distinguish in speech. The instructor said them in different inflections and I understood pretty quickly, but my partner was kind of confused. Then the instructor did what I considered grossly over-exaggerating them and he still heard no difference whatsoever.

Again, I’m not going to say I’m amazing at it, but I think it’s something that you need extensive training in or some unusual talent. I just hope some of the people that lack both stay away from Chinese, that’d be a nightmare for them.

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