Recently, I learned about Dogen on Patreon via Tofugu.
No, not this 道元.
This one.
(Although, I just now made this connection. Could it be…?)
Anyways, I sort of knew Japanese had a pitch accent, but Dogen’s Patreon page makes it painfully clear that it is not a simple thing, to be ignored. Well, I guess you can ignore it, since context will provide information to the Japanese listener trying to understand my feeble attempts to speak.
But wouldn’t it be cool to use はし in conversation, and have the listener know immediately what you meant?
I have to confess, though, this is a BIG demotivator. It just adds another layer on top of trying to learn Japanese. Especially since as a living language, there are regional and age differences in the pitch accents of some words.
I’m going to give his stuff a shot. Even though I’m truly doubtful about my ability to do so.