Japanese pitch accent

Japanese pitch accent is a feature of the Japanese language that distinguishes words by a distinct tone that focused on a specific mora ('accent') in most Japanese dialects. The nature and location of the accented syllable for a given word may vary between dialects. For instance, the word for "river" is [ka.waꜜ] in the Tokyo dialect, with the accent on the second mora, but in the Kansai dialect it is [kaꜜ.wa]. A final [i] or [ɯ] is often devoiced to [i̥] or [ɯ̥] after a pitch drop and an unvoiced consonant.

The Japanese term is kōtei akusento (高低アクセント; lit. 'high-and-low accent'), and it refers to the system used in languages such as Japanese and Swedish. These languages are called pitch-accent languages.

This contrasts with kyōjaku akusento (強弱アクセント; lit. 'strong-and-weak accent'), which refers to stress. An alternative term is takasa akusento (高さアクセント; lit. 'height accent') which contrasts with tsuyosa akusento (強さアクセント; lit. 'strength accent').