Tone language

Author: Leandro Alegsa Creation date: November 13, 2022

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

Many languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, Hmong, Punjabi, Sylheti, Chittagonian, Yorùbá, Igbo, Luganda, Ewe, and Cherokee are tonal. Other languages, including Indo-European languages such as English and Hindi, are not considered tone languages but can use tone in different ways.

In some languages, it is pitch accent that is important instead. A word's meaning can then 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. However, pitch accent is different from tones.

Some tones may sound alike to people who do not speak a tone language. They are the most difficult part of learning a tone language for those people.

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.

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.