High & Low pitch ???

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J4mes_bond25  #288596  Thu, 02 Nov 06 01:31 PM
I fancy knowing what exactly is this high & low pitch voice/accent within any individual accent. Is this similar to the "rhythm" or "stress" pattern ???

What accents around the world are considered to be having high and/or low pitch ???
  
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Anonymous  #294931  Sat, 18 Nov 06 08:54 PM
We briefly discussed this in my linguistics class.  I would say the most obvious "tonal" languages in the world are some of the south east asian ones, in particular Chinese (in very particular, the Cantonese dialect), and Korean, and Japanese.  The same words when spoken in a different tone range, or with a different tonal pattern (i.e. from a high tone to a lowtone, or from low to high) will alter the meaning of the word entirely.

I hope this answers your question.

  
Tarkowsky  #317724  Sat, 20 Jan 07 06:25 PM
I just want to point out that japaneese and korean are not  tonal languages(don't trust Wikipedia).Vietnamese,Lao and Thai have tones.
  
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Forbes  #318037  Sun, 21 Jan 07 03:37 PM

A language with a pitch accent is not the same as a tonal language.

In a tonal language every syllable has a tone or pitch which does not depend on the tone or pitch of the other syllables surrounding it (though there may be influences).

In a language with a pitch accent one syllable in a word is picked out and given a different tone to the other syllables in the same way that in English one syllable is picked out and given a different stress to the others.

In a tonal language monosyllables with different tones can have different meanings; this cannot happen in a language with a pitch accent.

  
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