I’m just curious if there are other languages like Chinese in that one can pronounce the same syllable with different tonal accents and have it mean different things. From what I understand, Chinese is like the Latin of the East, which is to say that most of the languages in Asia came from Chinese (the big distinction being that Chinese is a living language, and Latin isn’t). Yet, when I ask people from Korea, Japan, etc. if their languages bear the same characteristics, they say no.
Most languages in Asia did not come from Chinese, though Korea and Japan adopted Chinese characters for writing.
Beyond that, no idea on your question. And anyways, who is to say that Chinese has different tones for the same vowel. Why not just say that they have more vowel sounds than us–it’s not their fault that English speakers insist on linking various unrelated sounds to the same English character.
Thai has only five tones, though. Also, “Chinese” is more than one language. AFAIK all Chinese languages are tonal, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see that one isn’t. Laotian is also tonal, and I think Cambodian may also be tonal. Not sure about Malay.
The mouth and everything in it stay in one place. That counts as one vowel. Even the Chinese make a distinction between different vowels and different tones.
Oh dear. You’re working with several major misconceptions.
First, the concept of a language called “Chinese” is a tricky one. When people casually use the term Chinese, they’re usually thinking of something like “what people in China speak”, and that is not just one language but a group of mutually incomprehensible languages (often, confusingly, referred to as “dialects”) that are bound together by culture and by a common written language. That is to say, because of the way the Chinese writing system is designed, the characters generally mean the same in most or all Chinese dialects. I’ve been told that it’s not uncommon, in a city like Hong Kong, to see people drawing characters in the air to clear up misunderstandings. Most educated people in China learn to speak a dialect called Mandarin to at least some degree.
Second, there are tons of language families in Asia, and no language (let alone any living language) can be said to be the source of most of the modern Asian languages. Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system but is not related to any Chinese dialect. And just to clear things up, most modern European languages don’t come from Latin, either, although many borrowed Latinate vocabulary.
And finally, on to your question. Not only is Chinese not the only tone language, but counting in terms of distinct languages (as opposed to counting by number of speakers), tone languages outnumber non-tone languages. That is to say, in most languages, the intonation with which one pronounces a syllable can change its meaning. Most Dopers, I think it’s safe to say, have only really encountered European languages. The linguistic map of Europe happens to be dominated by the Indo-European language family, which has but two, fairly small, tone languages: Norwegian and Swedish. (And one could argue whether they are true tone languages.) For that matter, the next-largest language family in Europe, the Finno-Ugric, is also light on tone languages. But look to the native languages of the rest of the world and you’ll find tone languages all over the place.
Are you familiar with Chinese? I didn’t make up the tonal thing. I live with a Taiwanese girl, and spend all of my time with Chinese/Taiwanese people. There is certainly a tonal aspect to the language. The syllable “dao” can either be “way”/" path" (as in Taoism) or “knife,” according to the inflection of the syllable.
Very true. My girlfriend does it all the time. It’s like she can’t think without imagining that she’s writing the word. A Korean friend of ours knows some Chinese, so often when one doesn’t know a word, they draw the form on the table with their finger.
That probably depends on your/my definition of one langauge “coming from” another. Not saying you’re wrong…but in any case, not the subject of the thread.
That’s what I’m looking for. Can you give me an example? Is that to say, like Chinese, the same (group of) syllable(s) with a different accent means something different, or just that it won’t be understood otherwise. The latter, for example, would be like someone speaking French with an English accent. In English, we tend to emphasise the second syllable of a multi-syllable word (that’s to say, there’s a sort of down-up-down-up pattern), whereas it’s the opposite, for the most part, in Romance langauges (up-down-up). The words are often not understood if the inflection is not changed.
You mention Swedish and Norwegian. I’m familiar with Swedish and have some very good Swedish friends. When we talked about this very subject, the Swedes were just as surprised as I was about the difficulty of Chinese tones.
Perhaps it’s debatable.
Not me. I just don’t speak any of the Asian languages, yet. I’m a novice.
Willing to have some ignorance fought … could you cite the proposition in red above? That runs counter to my current understanding.
My understanding of tone in Norwegian and Swedish was that the pitch of a syllable was tied to whether or not that syllable was stressed – IOW, tone isn’t working alone in distinguishing meaning the way it does in the Chinese dialects. However, my understanding of this is not concrete – I know that Noregian and Swedish are not traditionally considered tone languages … and I think the explanation I gave is the reason, but I’m not certain.
EDIT: found a Wiki stub that describes pitch accent … which is what seems to be going on in Norwegian and Swedish.
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Gitfiddle, the answer to the OP is “yes”. If you’d like a short list of examples, here are some (including a few already given): Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, Punjabi (India), Yoruba (West Africa), Hausa (West Africa), !Kung (South Africa … pretty sure it’s the language the Bushman spoke in The Gods Must Be Crazy), Navajo.
Pitch accent is not the same as tone. Lithuanian has preserved the pitch accent probably from Proto-Indo-European that was also found in ancient Greek and Sanskrit.
Vietnamese is tonal. Malay is not.
Hmong is the tonal language champion of Asia. Eight tones. Since every syllable is open in Hmong, the final consonants are no consonant sounds but indicate the tone. For example, the Hmong spelling of itself is “Hmoob.” The final -b indicates a high tone.
Actually a good number of Indo-European languages (if not all?) use tone, but not syllable per syllable in order to differentiate vocabulary. We use rising and falling inflections across sentences to indicate statements or questions, and in some constructions the listener knows it’s a statement or questions through that means only, not through grammar.
Thai is phonetic, not like kanji Chinese. A somewhat confusing mix of the associated consonants (there is even a “vowel consonant”, so to speak, in case you want to use a vowel without a consonant) and diacritical marks to indicate intonation. In other words you have the exact same vowel, but whether the tone is rising, falling, falling and then rising, rising and then falling, or just “normal” completely changes the meaning of the sentence. Sort of like the tone at the end of a question versus statement in English, but it affects the meaning of words.
Question: are you a linguist? Have you studied the language? What makes you certified to insist that “English speakers” insist on linking various unrelated sounds?
Also, it wasn’t English speakers who created Pinyin, which does indeed indicate tones for the various vowels. Pinyin was created in the Soviet Union for Chinese speakers living there, and it was promoted by the Chinese government for official use.
From my understanding, Japanese uses tonal accents to distinguish some words. That is to say, some words are distinguished by which syllable is accented. (And the accents are similar to the ones we use in English too, except we don’t use them to distinguish words.) I don’t know if I’d call it a tonal language though as there are really only two tones (accented or not) compared to several in Chinese and Vietnamese. To me, Japanese sounds much more comparable to Romantic languages than other Asiatic languages like the two I just mentioned in how things are pronounced.