How do tonal languages express emotions?

When you’re speaking your native language, so much of your emotions are expressed in your intonation: how your voice rises and falls and emphasizes certain words.

Why is Chinese tonal?

In Chinese, the reason for having tones is quite simple – there are far fewer variations in sounds (about 400) than in most other languages (such as English, which has approximately 12 000), and so tones are used to distinguish otherwise identical ones.

Why is Vietnamese tonal?

Vietnamese is a tonal language, which means the inflection you put on a word changes its meaning. The tones are shown as symbols over and under the words, and their shapes actually let you know what your voice should be doing. It’s the tones that give the language its music-like quality.

Is Hindi a tonal language?

Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Punjabi, Yorùbá, Igbo, Luganda, Ewe, and Cherokee are tonal. The other languages, including Indo-European languages such as English and Hindi, are not tone languages. In some languages, it is pitch accent that is important instead.

What is the meaning of the four tones in Chinese?

Mandarin Chinese, with its four tones, is a typical example. Take the word ma. If you say it the way an English-speaker would say it, just reading it sitting by itself on a page, then it means “scold.”

How many tones are there in Cantonese?

The same has been found for speakers of Cantonese—which has six or even nine tones, depending on how you count—relative to English- and French-speakers. Could a language rely completely on tones?

Why are there so many tone languages?

Tone languages are spoken all over the world, but they tend to cluster in three places: East and Southeast Asia; sub-Saharan Africa; and among the indigenous communities of Mexico. Why there and not elsewhere? One thing these regions might have in common is heat, though it’s hard to imagine how that would make people speak more melodically.

What are some examples of Pinyin words with different tones?

A simple example would be “lead” where you can “lead a horse to water” but also “go down like a lead balloon”. In Chinese, words that have the same Pīnyīn letters but different tones, are usually (but not always) entirely different words.