Right-angled symbol consisting of overbar and pipe?

Hi, I noticed this in the book Contemporary Japanese An Introductory Textbook for College Students Volume 2 by Eriko Sato.

There are several japanese words on even-numbered pages that have what looks like a closing quotation mark in them, but not opening quotes. Also, the symbols are rotated incorrectly compared to other references about japanese quotation marks I've found. What is this symbol called, and what does it mean? For example, on page 4, we have:

てんき

but in between て and ん, there is a right-angled shaped symbol consisting of an overbar, with a what looks like pipe "|" connected to the right-hand side of the overbar. PFA an image of this symbol.

I've never seen that before but it must be indicating pitch/intonation. The book must mention its function somewhere.

mdchachi said:

I've never seen that before but it must be indicating pitch/intonation.

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sounds plausible

mdchachi said:

The book must mention its function somewhere.

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I didn't see the symbol explained anywhere before page 4 of Volume 2, but I did find on page viii:

This textbook does not spoonfeed the rules and facts. Instead, it introduces them by a unique method, the "Guess and Try" method.

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Perhaps I have found one

jeffydragonslaye said:

sounds plausible



I didn't see the symbol explained anywhere before page 4 of Volume 2, but I did find on page viii:



Perhaps I have found one

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It actually says that? Wow. That means they were lazy textbook writers.

mdchachi said:

It actually says that? Wow. That means they were lazy textbook writers.

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Well, page viii mentions "Guess and Try" sections, where students observe a real-life conversation in each lesson - that's not what's happening on the left column of page 4.

Not explaining everything in the book is one thing, but not explaining how to use the book is a whole other level!

Definitely looks like pitch accent indication to me. I think Dogen has used similar markings in his material in the past. Here's one of his videos about pitch accent:

To be fair, I don't know whether it was explained in Volume 1, which I did not see at Barnes & Noble.

It is an accented mora indicator.

Here is the video I watched. Uses the same notation. He references his other video with goes into moras, feet, etc.

Courtesy of GPT-4:

In linguistics, a mora is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as ba consists of one mora (monomoraic), while a long syllable such as baa consists of two (bimoraic). A mora can be formed by different segments depending on the language, such as vowels, consonants, or codas. A mora is used to measure syllable weight, which can affect stress or timing in some languages.

Moras are very important in Japanese, as they are used to measure the length of words and utterances, and to determine the accent and pitch of words. In Japanese, each mora is roughly equal in duration, and a syllable can have one or two moras depending on its structure. For example, the word さくら (sakura) has three moras: sa-ku-ra, while the word せんせい (sensei) has four moras: se-n-se-i. Moras are also used in Japanese poetry, such as haiku and waka, where each line has a fixed number of moras.

In Japanese, each word has a relative pitch pattern that depends on which mora has a high or low pitch. The pitch can change the meaning of words that have the same sounds but different accents. For example, the word はし (hashi) can mean "bridge", "chopsticks", or "edge" depending on the pitch accent. The pitch can also drop after an accented mora, creating a contrast between high and low pitches. The pitch accent of Japanese is not fixed for all dialects, and some regions have different patterns or no accent at all.