Friday, August 25, 2023

Tone Languages

Tone languages are languages with words that differ in their tones. The different tones convey different meaning. There are no European languages that are classified as tonw languages. However, many Asian and African languages are tone languages.

Languages that are tone languages include Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Burmese, Yoruba, Igbo and Zulu. The number of tones varies from one language to another. Mandarin has four tones, Thai has five and Vietnamese has six.

The four tones of Mandarin are the following:

Tone 1 high level
Tone 2 Rising
Tone 3 Falling-Rising
Tone 4 Falling

Many languages are tone languages. However, European languages are not among them.. Tone languages use different tones to convey different meanings in words.

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