94752
平板 words are shown in dictionaries as having low pitch for the first mora, and
then high pitch for remaining moras. I've read that in practice, the pitch
increase from first to second mora is not as severe as, e.g., the pitch
increases found in 中高 words. With that said, I think that I can hear the pitch
increase in most 平板 words (though I'm a beginner).

There are some words where I simply cannot hear the pitch increase, and the
word sounds literally flat to me. Here is an example: 簡単.
[Here](https://youglish.com/pronounce/%E7%B0%A1%E5%8D%98/japanese?) are
YouGlish snippets of native speakers actually saying this word. I cannot for
the life of me hear a pitch increase from the か to the んたん moras.

**Question:** Is the pitch increase actually present in the word 簡単? And/or
are there 平板 where there is no pitch increase, and the word is literally flat?
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2022-05-29T18:06:18.933
94751
2022-05-29T18:56:51.387
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question
pitch-accent
Are some 平板 words actually flat?
Words do not raise between the first and second mora _when the second mora is
a long vowel or ン_ (unless the speaker is hyper-enunciating them). This is
explicitly listed as a rule in the NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典 appendix.

It's very unfortunate that everyone continues to misnotate them with stuff
like かんたん{LHHH} but unfortunately most of the people who use that sort of
notation tend to not be experts. LH notation should only be used for notating
the fully realized pitch of a specific utterance, it is too verbose for simply
specifying what mora the accent is on, and people get the details like rises
wrong when it is used for that. The dictionaries moved away from LH notation
exactly because it has that issue (of saying too much about the pitch of each
mora when in reality the thing associated with the lexicon entry is just the
accent kernel).

In reality if you wanted to notate the exact pitch of the standalone
pronunciation of 簡単, it would would be something like HHMM (i.e., HHHH +
"sentence"-ending intonation). Within sentences where it is followed by more
words it would be HHHH.
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2022-05-29T18:19:50.213
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2022-05-29T18:56:51.387
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answer