Tonal language

A tonal language is a language in which a change in the pitch or course of a syllable is usually accompanied by a change in the meaning of the corresponding word (or morpheme). Tonal languages are the most common of all languages spoken in the world today, though they do not comprise the majority of all speakers. Tonal languages include the following languages, among others:

Chinese languages such as High Chinese or Cantonese,
Tai-Kadai languages, for example Thai and Lao,
Hmong-Mien languages,
Vietnamese, an Austroasiatic language,
Tsat, an Austronesian language,
Afro-Asiatic languages, for example Hausa in West Africa,
many Niger-Congo languages, for example Yoruba and Igbo in West Africa and isiXhosa in South Africa,
nilosaharan languages, for example Kanuri in West Africa,
Khoisan languages in southern Africa,
Mayathan, the Mayan language of Yucatán, as opposed to other Mayan languages,
many of the indigenous languages of the Americas, for example, the Apache languages,
some Indo-European languages, for example Panjabi, Ancient Greek in its original pronunciation, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Swedish and some South Danish dialects, the South Slavic languages Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian, Limburgish and the Ripuarian dialects of German.

Languages which use sentence melody alone to emphasize grammatical structures or sentence elements (for example, voice raising at the end of an interrogative sentence in German) are not tonal languages; in tonal languages, however, this feature can occur in addition. In tonal languages, tone is an integral part of the word (or morpheme), and there are words of quite different meanings that differ phonetically only in tone progression or pitch. Depending on the language, tone also plays a more or less important role in grammar.

Basically, one distinguishes between two or three types of tonal languages:

Register tone languages, with constant pitches, e.g. constant high or constant low,
Contour tone languages, with different pitch progressions, e.g. rising,
Tone accent languages (non-actual tone languages), in which words (or morphemes) are distinguished by different types of stress, but the stress is not (or not only) realized by a print accent, but by a different pitch or a different tone progression.

Combinations of these basic types also exist. The tonal languages of Europe belong to the tonal accent languages and use both tonal and non-tonal syllables.

Tones in Mandarin

→ Main article: Tones of High Chinese

High Chinese ("Mandarin", Pǔtōnghuà) belongs to the contour tone languages. It distinguishes four or five tones; the fifth is often not counted as a tone by itself, but this is a relatively arbitrary determination:

First tone (Chinese 陰平 / 阴平, pinyin yīn píng - "yin level"): The pitch of the high tone is constant and high, the tone sounds almost sung instead of spoken.
Second tone (Chinese 陽平 / 阳平, pinyin yáng píng - "yang level"): The pitch of the rising tone rises from lower to middle to high pitch, similar to the intonation of a question in German.
Third tone (Chinese 上聲 / 上声, pinyin shǎng shēng - "rising tone"): In the falling-rising tone, the pitch drops down from the middle level and usually rises back up to the middle level. Due to tone shandhis, exceptions occur here (see below).
Fourth tone (Chinese 去聲 / 去声, pinyin qù shēng - "falling tone"): the pitch drops sharply, the syllable is pronounced shorter and with more affect, comparable to the German stress on a command (e.g. Geh! ).

The neutral fifth tone is usually not counted:

Neutral tone (Chinese 輕聲 / 轻声, pinyin qīng shēng - "light tone"): The neutral tone sounds short and light and is therefore often not considered a tone in its own right.

The neutral tone often occurs in polysyllabic words where the second syllable is pronounced less strongly than the first. For example, 妈妈 is pronounced as māma, and the neutral tone occurs in the second syllable, even though both represent the same character.

Tones can also interact with each other - in a so-called Tonsandhi. Thus, in spoken High Chinese, two syllables with a third tone never follow each other. If two syllables with a third tone collide, the first syllable is pronounced in the second tone. Other languages sometimes have much more complex interaction rules.

Since we are dealing here with interactions in certain phonetic environments, the "fifth tone" cannot be regarded as an independent tonal phoneme (tonem) like the other four tones. It is therefore an allotone.

The four tones of High Chinese

Questions and Answers

Q: What is a tone language?

A: A tone language is a language in which words can differ in tones (like pitches in music) in addition to consonants and vowels.

Q: What languages are considered tonal?

A: Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, Hmong, Punjabi, Sylheti, Chittagonian, Yorùbá, Igbo, Luganda, Ewe and Cherokee are all considered tonal languages.

Q: Are Indo-European languages such as English and Hindi considered tone languages?

A: No. They are not considered tone languages but can use tone in different ways. In some of these languages it is pitch accent that is important instead.

Q: How does the meaning of a word change if a different syllable is stressed?

A: The meaning of a word can change if a different syllable is stressed. Examples include Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Swedish, Norwegian Serbo-Croatian Lithuanian and some Asian languages like Japanese and Korean.

Q: How does pitch accent differ from tones?

A: Pitch accent is different from tones because some tones may sound alike to people who do not speak the language natively. This makes them the most difficult part of learning the language for those people.

Q: Is there any way to make learning tones easier for non-native speakers?

A: Learning tones can be difficult for non-native speakers but there are resources available that provide tips on how to learn them more effectively such as listening exercises or using mnemonics devices to help remember certain sounds or patterns associated with particular words or phrases in the language being learned.