掲示板 Forums - Pitch

As far as I know, you pretty much have to learn pitch accent word by word. Some patterns exist, but they aren't consistent enough.

You just kinda pick it up naturally, but unless you have someone to correct you, it's hard to tell if you're getting it right.

It's probably not worth actively investing it before N2, at a minimum. Some common pairs like 雨・飴、橋・箸 and 神・髪 are worth knowing of course.

Assuming you're asking about pitch accents and not sentence-level intonation.

One trick I would give you for pitch accents that every word ending in つ will drop like ¯¯¯\ this; Has a falling pitch. These are all Atamadaka pitch accents.

秘密

あいつ

教室

I believe it does work for the つ counter (一つ、二つ…), but it's very unreliable otherwise.