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Tonal language

A feature of linguistic analysis common to many languages around the world is tonality. The tone of a word is a high-low pitch pattern permanently associated with it. A change of tone alters the word as much as a change in its consonants or vowels Vowel

In phonetics [i], a vowel is a sound [i] in spoken language [i] that is characterized by an open configu ... 

. Chinese Chinese language

Chinese is a language [i] that forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family [i] of lan ... 

 is perhaps the most well-known of such languages. Tonality is different from intonation, which is present in every language. For example, a rising pitch at the end of a sentence often indicates a question, while a falling pitch indicates a statement.

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A feature of linguistic analysis common to many languages around the world is tonality. The tone of a word is a high-low pitch pattern permanently associated with it. A change of tone alters the word as much as a change in its consonants or vowels Vowel

In phonetics [i], a vowel is a sound [i] in spoken language [i] that is characterized by an open configu ... 

. Chinese Chinese language

Chinese is a language [i] that forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family [i] of lan ... 

 is perhaps the most well-known of such languages.

Tonality is different from intonation, which is present in every language. For example, a rising pitch at the end of a sentence often indicates a question, while a falling pitch indicates a statement. Intonation is a variable feature of phrases and sentences, while tonality is a fixed feature of individual words.

Geography of tonality


In Europe, only Norwegian Norwegian language

Norwegian is a Germanic language [i] spoken in Norway [i]. ... 

, Swedish Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language [i] spoken predominantly in Sweden [i] a ... 

, Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic language

Scottish Gaelic is a member of the Goidelic [i] branch of Celtic languages [i]. ... 

, Lithuanian Lithuanian language

Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania [i], spoken by about 4 million native speakers. ... 

, Serbian Serbian language

The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the tokavian dialect [i], use ... 

, Croatian Croatian language

The Croatian language is a language [i] of the western group of South Slavic languages [i] which is used... 

, the Limburgish Limburgish language

Limburgish, or Limburgian or Limburgic is a group of Franconian [i] varieties, sp ... 

 language and some dialects of Slovenian Slovenian language

Slovenian or Slovene belongs to the family of South [i] Slavic languages [i] ... 

 possess tonality, and only Lithuanian regularly marks it in text other than in dictionaries. The tones of Lithuanian are believed to be especially authentic, as they agree for the most part with the tones of Vedic Sanskrit, its ancient cousin. Another tonal language spoken in the Indian subcontinent Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent is a peninsula landmass [i] of the Asia [i]n continent [i] occupying the Indian Plate [i] ... 

 is Punjabi Punjabi language

Punjabi is the language of the Punjabi people [i] and the Punjab region [i]s of India [i] and Pakistan [i] ... 

.

Most languages of sub-Saharan Africa are tonal. Hausa is tonal, although it is a distant relative of the Semitic languages Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a family of languages spoken by more than 200 million people across much of th... 

, which are not.

In East Asia, most languages are tonal, but Korean Korean language

The Korean language is the official language of both North [i] and South Korea [i]. ... 

, Khmer Khmer language

Khmer , the language of the Khmer people [i] of Cambodia [i], is one of the main Austroasiatic languages [i] ... 

 and Japanese Japanese language

Japanese is a language spoken by over 127 million people, mainly in Japan [i], but also by Japanese emi ... 

  are not. In Tibetan, which is riven by dialects because of the harsh geography of Tibet Tibet

Tibet is a region in Central Asia [i] and the home of the Tibetan people [i]. ... 

, the Central and Eastern dialects , are tonal, while the dialects of the West are not. Much speculation has been generated over the reasons for this partial tonogenesis.

Some of the native languages of North and South America possess tonality, especially the Na-Dené languages Na-Dené languages

Na-Den is a Native American [i] language family [i] which includes th ... 

 of Alaska Alaska

Alaska is a U.S. state [i], located on the northwest tier [i] of North America [i] ... 

 and the American Southwest Southwestern United States

The southwestern United States is a region of the western United States [i], warmer than the northern st ... 

 , and the Oto-Manguean languages Oto-Manguean languages

Oto-Manguean languages are a large family of Native American languages [i] spoken in Mexico [i]. ... 

 of Mexico. Among the Mayan languages, which are mostly atonal, Yucatec, with the largest number of speakers, has developed five tones.

Patterns of tonality

Tonal patterns vary widely across languages. In English English language

English is a widely distributed language that originated in England [i] but is now the primary language ... 

, one or more syllables are given an accent, which can consist of a loud stress, a lengthened vowel, and a high pitch, or any combination of these. In tonal languages, the pitch accent must be present, but the others are optional. For example, in Czech Czech language

Czech is one of the West Slavic languages [i], along with Slovak [i], Polish [i] ... 

 and Hungarian Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language [i], unrelated to the other languages of Central Europe [i] ... 

, the first syllable of each word is stressed, but any syllable may be lengthened, and pitch is not used. In French French language

French is the third-largest of the Romance languages [i] in terms of number of native speakers, after Spanish [i] ... 

, no syllable is stressed or lengthened, but the final syllable has high pitch. Turkish Turkish language

Turkish is a Turkic language [i] spoken natively by the Turkish people [i] in Turkey [i] ... 

 similarly has high pitch on the last syllable, but also possesses length and possibly stress. There is much discussion about how much prominence pitch must have in order to label a language tonal.

Many sub-Saharan languages have a simple scheme, whereby individual syllables in a word are at a fixed pitch. High and low pitch are always permissible, and sometimes a middle level of pitch occurs as well. However, some are more complex. In Yoruba Yoruba language

Yoruba is a dialect continuum [i] of West Africa with over 22 million speakers. ... 

 there are three pitches middle, low, and high and the meaning of a word is determined by the pitch on the vowels. For example, the word "owo" in Yoruba could mean "broom", "hand", or "respect" depending on how you pitch the vowels. Also, "you" in Yoruba Yoruba language

Yoruba is a dialect continuum [i] of West Africa with over 22 million speakers. ... 

 is o in a middle pitch, while the word for "he, she, it" is o in a high pitch. Change of pitch is used in some African languages for grammatical purposes, such as marking past tense.

Ancient Greek had a tonal pattern wherein, in isolated words, exactly one mora was high, and the others low. A short vowel was a single mora, and was therefore high or low, whereas a long vowel was two mora, and could therefore be low, rise from low to high or go down from high to low. Note that the scheme was more complex when words were grouped together, as they could form accentuation units with proclitic words at the start and enclitic words at the end, and such accentuation units could have multiple accents. By the start of middle-ages, this tonic accent system had been corrupted to a stress accent system, but remained recorded in written Greek until the 20th century.

In the Japanese Japanese language

Japanese is a language spoken by over 127 million people, mainly in Japan [i], but also by Japanese emi ... 

 of Tokyo Tokyo

listen is one of the 47 prefectures [i] of Japan [i] and is the location of its capital [i] ... 

, tonal patterns are adapted to multi-syllable words. Every word must contain a single continuous chain of high pitched syllables, beginning with either the first or second syllable. Syllables preceding and following this chain, if any, must be low. E.g., the city name Kyoto Kyoto

is a city [i] in Japan [i], which has a population close to 1.5 million. ... 

 has tone kyoOto, with the pitch pattern low-high-low. The words for "chopstick", "bridge" and "edge" all have the consonant-vowel structure hashi, but the first has the pitch pattern high-low, the second low-high, and the third also low-high but followed by an obligatory low in the next word.

Tonal contours are present in many languages, such as Yucatec, Thai, Vietnamese Vietnamese language

Vietnamese , formerly known under the French colonization as Annamese , is the national [i] ... 

 and the many Chinese "dialects". In Standard Thai, every word has one of five associated contours: high even, middle even, low even, rising, or falling. Mandarin has four tones, similar to Thai's without the middle tone. Cantonese has at least 8 tonal contours: high even, high falling, high rising, middle even, middle rising, low even, low falling and low rising. Two of them are superimposed upon words with other tone contours to indicate emotional closeness or familiarity, in a manner parallel to the diminutive suffixes of many Romance Romance languages

The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family [i], ... 

 and Slavic Slavic languages

The Slavic languages , a group of closely related language [i]s of the Slavic peoples [i] and a subgroup ... 

 languages.

Theories of tonogenesis

Because languages can both acquire tonality and lose it , linguists have speculated on its origin. From comparison of the Tibetan dialects with and without tone, it appears that initial voiced consonants are associated with a low pitch register, while unvoiced ones associate with high. Also, the loss of final consonants in Central Tibetan , suggests that such loss gives rise to tonal contours. Both Chinese and Vietnamese are believed to have been atonal within the past two millennia, and to have developed their modern tonal systems in such a fashion.

Notational systems

Because the transcriptions of tonal languages in the Latin alphabet were often devised by untrained Europe Europe

Europe is one of the seven traditional continent [i]s of the Earth [i]. ... 

ans, who were largely unfamiliar with the phenomenon, most official spellings of such languages today simply omit all indication of tonality. Even Pinyin Pinyin

Pinyin is a system of romanization [i] for Standard Mandarin [i], where pin means "spell" and yi ... 

, the current official Romanization system for Mandarin Chinese Standard Mandarin

Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language [i] used by the People's Republic of China [i] ... 

, is commonly printed in most publications without tone marks. This makes the Chinese words much harder to identify correctly; a parallel situation would arise if photographs of birds in birdwatching handbooks were printed in black and white instead of full color.

On the other hand, Vietnamese is written with qu?c ng? Vietnamese alphabet

The Vietnamese alphabet, called ch? qu?c ng?, usually shortened to qu?c ng?, is the ... 

, a Latin-based alphabet that denotes tones using diacritical marks above or below the base vowels; this was possibly inspired by a similar system used to write Ancient Greek. So too, Yoruba, almost alone among the tonal languages of Africa, is often written with tonal marks. The tonal marking of Navajo is especially simple, as only a single diacritic is needed to mark high, low, rising and falling tones.

However, all language spellings are inadequate in some way. Most languages of the Semitic family are written with most of the vowels left unexpressed; this tendency is found as far back as Ancient Egyptian Egyptian language

Written records of the ancient Egypt [i]ian language have been dated from about 3200 BC [i]. ... 

. Stress is not indicated in languages as distinct as English, Russian Russian language

Russian is the most widely spoken language of Eurasia [i] and the most widespread of the Slavic languages [i] ... 

 and Tagalog Tagalog language

Tagalog is one of the major language [i]s of the Republic of the Philippines [i]. ... 

, even though stressing different syllables can indicate different words .

Pronouncing tonality

The difficulty of pronouncing and of recognizing tonal patterns in words is greatly exaggerated. Like any other unfamiliar linguistic feature, such as aspiration, retroflexion Retroflex consonant

In phonetics [i], retroflex consonants are consonant [i] sounds used in some language [i]s. ... 

 or velarization, it can be taught and learned. Initially, tonal patterns can be sung like musical passages; then, the extreme range of pitch can be narrowed into that of ordinary speech. Since tonal languages often have long and short vowels, the analogy to teaching music, with both pitch and rhythm, is especially close.

See also

Prosody
Timing
Tone
Pitch accent


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