What notation should we use for showing the pitch accent of words?

Question

Japanese, as I imagine most (if not all) of you are aware, has a pitch accent system, which essentially means that the pitch pattern of a word can be and is often a very important factor in determining its meaning¹. As this site grows, I can foresee the number of pitch-accent-related questions increasing, as it is a notoriously difficult concept for many foreigners (especially those coming from non-tonal language -- such as English -- backgrounds).

There are many different methods for showing the pitch accent of a word, from capitalization in romaji (HAshi vs. haSHI) to something which uses some kind of special markup (はし HL vs. はし LH). Of course, the reality of the situation is a little bit more complicated than either of these example systems can really represent without becoming exceedingly unwieldy.

In my speaking and listening classes in Japan, we used one of several formats, two of which are shown in the picture below. The second is one used with several understandings about pitch accent patterns. For example in 標準語: the second mora is always the opposite of the first; and once the pitch accent has dropped in a word, it does not rise again. Please excuse my sloppy handwriting.

How can we best notate pitch accent? Personally, I would prefer some type of markup in Japanese which is easily understood at a glance, but I don't know how possible this is using text.

_{¹ Please see How important is one's pitch when speaking Japanese? for reference.}

Related: Deciding on an "officially recommended" format for furigana on JLU

Answer 1

You can use red lines to show pitch accent! It's easy. Just type this in:

ありがとう​{LHLLL}

And it turns into this:

ありがとう{LHLLL}

L stands for low, and H stands for high. Thanks to @cypher for implementing this idea!

Answer 2

Downstep

I suggest using the IPA downstep symbol (ꜜ).

Example: omosiroꜜi

Advantages:

• It's fairly intuitive that a down arrow indicates a fall in pitch at the location of the ꜜ (as opposed to using the stress mark ˈ before the syllable).
• It's a standard linguistic notation.
• It doesn't use combining characters, which are difficult to input and edit on some platforms.

Circumflex

Another option is to place a circumflex accent on the accented syllable nucleus. This is the IPA falling-pitch diacritic; it's a slight abuse of notation since the pitch prototypically falls after the accented syllable.

Example: omosirôi

Advantages:

• The mark is placed directly on the perceived accented nucleus, rather than following it.
• Typographically well-supported, since the circumflex is a common accent, and the basic vowels + circumflex are available as precomposed characters.
• Similar to its meaning in the IPA
• This notation has been used before, e.g. in Ladefoged's phonetics textbook:

Advantages of both over the line or "HL" systems

• Some other systems force you to mark pitch on each syllable, which can be misleading since that is not phonemic in Japanese.
• The over/underline system and "HL" system give a binary pitch, which is misleading because the pitch really varies continuously.
• Also, only marking the accent position reduces visual clutter.

Misc

Both of these can easily be adapted for other dialects. For example, Kansai accent also distinguishes initial pitch, so it can be marked using acute/grave accents (the IPA pitch symbols) on the first syllable nucleus, e.g. ómôroi.

Answer 3

One way might be to use the <sub> (subscript) and <sup> (superscript) html tags.

Some tests (I've put them in <code> tags as it's otherwise hard to see where each character is vertically):

• <code><sub>ha</sub><sup>shi</sup><sub>ga</sub></code>

  → hashiga

• <code><sup>ha</sup><sub>shiga</sub></code>

  → hashiga

• <code><sub>ko</sub><sup>usokudo</sup><sub>uro</sub></code> or <code><sub>ko</sub><sup>osokudo</sup><sub>oro</sub></code>

  → kousokudouro or koosokudooro

• <code><sub>は</sub><sup>し</sup><sub>が</sub></code>

  → はしが

• <code><sup>は</sup><sub>しが</sub></code>

  → はしが

• <code><sub>こ</sub><sup>うそくど</sup><sub>うろ</sub></code>

  → こうそくどうろ

Answer 4

I think the capitalization method is easy to type, and is intuitive.