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Topic: Tonal language


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In the News (Sun 22 Nov 09)

  
  Spartanburg SC | GoUpstate.com | Spartanburg Herald-Journal
Because the transcriptions of tonal languages in the Latin alphabet were often devised by untrained Europeans, who were largely unfamiliar with the phenomenon, most official spellings of such languages today simply omit all indication of tonality.
Since tonal languages often have long and short vowels, the analogy to teaching music, with both pitch and rhythm, is especially close.
Language researchers have argued about whether the defining qualities of tonal languages implied notable right-brained activity, or substantial bi-lateral brain activity (that is, using both sides of the brain), and different research techniques seemed to arrive at different conclusions.
www.goupstate.com /apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=NEWS&template=wiki&text=tonal_language   (1678 words)

  
  Tonal language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hausa is tonal, although it is a distant relative of the Semitic languages, which are not, so it apparently acquired it during its history.
Because the transcriptions of tonal languages in the Latin alphabet were often devised by untrained Europeans, who were largely unfamiliar with the phenomenon, most official spellings of such languages today simply omit all indication of tonality.
Since tonal languages often have long and short vowels, the analogy to teaching music, with both pitch and rhythm, is especially close.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Tonal_language   (1276 words)

  
 Tone (linguistics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In cases such as these, the classification of a language as tonal may depend on the researcher's interpretation of what tone is. For instance, the Burmese language has phonetic tone, but each of its three tones is accompanied by a distinctive phonation (creaky, murmured, or plain vowels).
However, Punjabi is clearly a tonal language where the tones arose as a reinterpretation of different consonant series in terms of pitch, as happened in most of the Chinese languages.
Because many speakers of non-tonal languages confuse musical tone with tone contour, it may be assumed (incorrectly) that a tonal language is incompatible with singing.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Tone_(linguistics)   (3122 words)

  
 Music & Communication - African Talking Drum - African Culture
Coupled with this, most languages in the world are tonal languages - this means that there is a permanent high low pitch that is associated with the word being used.
Apart from Kiswahili, Wolof and Fulani all the languages of Sub-Saharan Africa are tonal languages.
Tonal languages are very well suited to this purpose because a word that is spelt exactly the same way using the latin alphabet has two completely different meanings depending on the tone that is being used.
www.bellaonline.com /articles/art20431.asp   (860 words)

  
 Chinese language: Facts and details from Encyclopedia Topic   (Site not responding. Last check: )
The english language is a west germanic language that originated in england from old english (anglo-saxon), the language of the anglo-saxons of northern...
The dungan language (autonym: khueuzwu yuuyan; [] in chinese) is a language spoken by the 50,000 dungan...
A regional language is a language spoken in a part of a country - it may be a small area, a federal state or province, or a wider area....
www.absoluteastronomy.com /encyclopedia/c/ch/chinese_language.htm   (10607 words)

  
 Whistled language -   (Site not responding. Last check: )
Tonal languages are stripped of articulation, leaving only suprasegmental features such as duration and tone, and when whistled retain the spoken melodic line.
In non-tonal languages, some of the articulatory features of speech are retained, though the normally timbral variations imparted by the movements of the tongue and soft palate are transformed into pitch variations.
Though whistled languages are not secret codes or secret languages (with the exception of a whistled language used by ñañigos terrorists in Cuba during Spanish occupation (ibid: 22)), they may be used for secretive communication among outsiders or other who do not know or understand the whistled language though they may understand its spoken origin.
psychcentral.com /psypsych/Whistled_language   (977 words)

  
 Highbeam Encyclopedia - Search Results for Tonal language
The official language of Thailand, Thai is spoken by approximately 50 million people in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Yunnan province of China.
The classification of human languages into different types on the basis of shared properties which are not due to common origin or geographical contact.
Language and a poetics of collage: Catalina Cariaga's Cultural Evidence.
www.encyclopedia.com /SearchResults.aspx?Q=Tonal+language   (1317 words)

  
 Tom Pankhurst's TonalityGUIDE (pilot project)   (Site not responding. Last check: )
Tonality is specifically an organisation of pitch, as opposed to the equally important parameters of rhythm, texture or timbre.
Although tonal language changed across this time span and varied enormously within each period, the same basic principles underlie the organisation of pitch in most of the music of this era.
Tonal music relies on the division of this spectrum into octaves each of which is divided into the twelve semitones of the chromatic scale.
www.tonalityguide.com /introoverview.php   (593 words)

  
 ipedia.com: Tonal language Article   (Site not responding. Last check: )
A tonal language or tone language is one in which changes in pitch lead to changes in word meaning.
Some language groups that contain tonal languages include Sino-Tibetan (to which Chinese belongs: many Chinese dialects are tonal), Austro-Asiatic (which includes Vietnamese), the Indo-European (which includes Punjabi), the Bantu languages (most languages in Sub-Saharan Africa are Bantu) and the Khoisan languages.
In tonal languages, the tone is an integral part of a word; minimal pairs exist in the language distinguished only by a change of tone.
www.ipedia.com /tonal_language.html   (625 words)

  
 Introduction to Tonal Languages
Since tone languages are languages which use variant pitches, pitch is the first term that should be discussed.
Tone languages can be classified as belonging to one of two categories on the basis of the shape of their pitch phonemes: register tone languages and contour tone languages.
A variation on the tonal language concept is the pitch accent language.
www.mnsu.edu /emuseum/cultural/language/tonal.html   (1480 words)

  
 Hitchhiking Vietnam: Travel Tips
That means you MUST arrive speaking more of the native language than the average native speaks of yours.
Rule #7 If you are learning a tonal language and play a musical instrument, consider "playing" the tone behind the word as you say it.
English is now offered as a University course and it is I was told by far the most popular language to study...
www.pbs.org /hitchhikingvietnam/travel/lang.html   (1180 words)

  
 Introduction to the Thai Language
That Thai is a tonal language is not a barrier that cannot be overcome by any non-Thai with an interest in learning the language.
Languages are living entities, not sets of mathematical formulae; primarily, they don't serve the purpose of being correct but of being understood.
Indeed, the Thai language has one of the simplest grammars of all languages, and many writers have claimed there is no grammar at all.
www.thaioregon.com /thailanguage.htm   (2394 words)

  
 NationMaster.com - Encyclopedia: Albanian language   (Site not responding. Last check: )
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred languages and dialects (443 according to the SIL estimate), including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and Southern Asia.
Albanian was proved to be an Indo-European language in 1854 by the German philologist Franz Bopp.
Albanian in the Tosk dialect is the official language of the Republic of Albania.
www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Albanian-language   (720 words)

  
 Kids.net.au - Encyclopedia Chinese language -   (Site not responding. Last check: )
Chinese is a tonal language related to Tibetan and Burmese[?], but unrelated to other CJK and neighbouring languages genetically, such as, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai or Japanese.
The term "Chinese" is employed for the classical written language known as "wen2 yan2 (文言 "literary language")" which was used by Confucius, as well as the modern standard[?] known as "bai2 hua4 (白話 [白话] "vernacular")".
Old Chinese, sometimes known as 'Archaic Chinese', is the language of the early and mid Zhou Dynasty (11th to 7th centuries B.C.), whose texts include inscriptions on bronze artifacts, the poetry of the 詩經 Shijing, the history of the 書經 Shujing, and portions of the 易經 Yijing (I Ching).
www.kidsseek.com /encyclopedia-wiki/ch/Chinese_language   (1797 words)

  
 Talking Drums   (Site not responding. Last check: )
If you are going to have someone demonstrate a tonal language, or have a picture book or a sound clip of talking drums to share (see below), you may also want have these ready for your discussion.
If English were a tonal language, though, saying the syllable "hat" while your voice rises might mean something you put on your head; saying it while your voice falls might mean something you put on your feet.
If any members of the class speak a tonal language (Chinese, for example), or if a parent or other adult is available for a demonstration, ask them to help the class with a show-and-tell that demonstrates how the meaning of words in their language changes with inflection.
cnx.org /content/m11872/latest   (1896 words)

  
 Language of Thailand   (Site not responding. Last check: )
The official national language, spoken by almost 100 per cent of the population is, THAI, classified by linguists as belonging to a Chinese-Thai branch of the Sino-Tibetan family.
It is a tonal language, uninflected, and predominantly monosyllabic.
Thai is one of the oldest languages in East and South-East Asia.
www.hellosiam.com /html/thailand/thailand-language.htm   (803 words)

  
 Brover-Lubovsky, Bella (2001)   (Site not responding. Last check: )
Nevertheless, an analysis of Vivaldi's tonal structures suggests that the basic parameters of harmonic tonality are not relevant to understanding his tonal processing.
In the dissertation Vivaldi's tonal and harmonic thinking is discussed through an examination of the large corpus of opening movements from 442 of his concertos.
At the same time, Vivaldi's important contribution to the language of harmony, to the establishment of tonality and to the formation of the tonal-harmonic grounds of instrumental composition spurred the development of musical practice and theory.
www.sun.rhbnc.ac.uk /Music/Archive/Disserts/brover-l.html   (278 words)

  
 Untitled Document
Language fossilization, the carry-over of grammar and narrative structures from one language or dialect to another, causes us all to deviate from 'standardized' usage.
The dog was mean." Tonal language users generally use articles to indicate type and quantity of objects, consistently throughout a conversation.
But, with second language learners, who are more formulaic in their approach to language, I believe that being educated to use these technological helps can be a great asset.
www.uta.edu /english/fyguide/add1.htm   (2676 words)

  
 Study Links Perfect Pitch to Tonal Language
The languages studied in the new research were Vietnamese and Mandarin Chinese, two major languages in which different rising and falling tones can impart different meanings to the same combination of vowels and consonants.
The differences of pitch between the two repetitions of a word by a particular speaker were all less than 1.1 semitone, and four of the seven speakers displayed pitch differences of less than half a semitone.
The tentative conclusion, he said, is that most people have excellent pitch memory, but the ability to express that memory diminishes in a person who does not speak a tonal language or study music at a young age.
www.psych.mcgill.ca /labs/levitin/media/tonal_language.html   (1164 words)

  
 Thailander.com - Thai Language - English Version   (Site not responding. Last check: )
The Thai Language, Pasah Thai, has its roots going back to the hills of Southern China from where the the Thais originated but are overlaid by Indian influences.
There are distinct dialects of Thai spoken in the North, Northeast and south, but its the language of the Central Region and Bangkok which is used throughout the country as the medium for education and mass media.
In tonal languages the meaning of a syllable is determined by the pitch at which it is pronounced.
www.thailander.com /aboutthailand/language   (301 words)

  
 ~ laoconnection.com - Lao Language
It is a tonal language and is generally, although not entirely, monosyllabic.
Learning the language can be easy, that is if you have the inclination and drive to learn a new language, especially an Asian one.
In fact one of the main advantages of the Laotian language (aside from the reasons mentioned above) is that it is unlike Chinese or Japanese because each sound has a letter/symbol and not a pictograph or ideograph.
laoconnection.com /language1.htm   (1054 words)

  
 Learn Chinese Language
The Chinese language is a tonal language and often regarded as a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
The Chinese language, spoken in the form of Standard Mandarin, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore, and one of six official languages of the United Nations.
The terms and concepts used by Chinese to separate spoken language from written language are different from those used in the West, because of differences in the political and social development of China in comparison with Europe.
www.danwei.org /china_information/learn_chinese_language.php   (555 words)

  
 Speaking Chinese
It is this tonal nature of the language that gave rise to Westerners mockingly referring to spoken Chinese as a "sing-song" language.
The significant difference is that English uses tonal quality for emphasis or to express an emotion.
Since the Chinese language is filled with homonyms (words of different meaning but identical pronunciation), were it not for its tonal quality, Chinese would probably not work very well as a language.
www.koreanhistoryproject.org /Jta/Ch/ChLAN2.htm   (430 words)

  
 Learn about Ear Training, Absolute Perfict Pitch, Language Learning and Music connections from the Educational ...
Speaking Tonal Languages is responsible for Perfect Pitch 11/9/04 A new study concludes that young musicians who speak Mandarin Chinese can learn to identify isolated musical notes much better than English speakers can.
Deutsch suggests that for students who speak a tonal language, acquiring absolute pitch is like learning a second language, which becomes much more difficult after a “critical period” of development.
Thai is a tonal language and Patel is keen to discover if that is reflected in the country's music.
www.edu-cyberpg.com /Music/perfectpitch.html   (3690 words)

  
 ipedia.com: Vietnamese language Article   (Site not responding. Last check: )
Vietnamese, a tonal language, is the national and official language of Vietnam.
Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt), a tonal language, is the national and official language of Vietnam.
Vietnamese is part of the Viet-Muong grouping of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family, a family that also includes the Khmer language, spoken in Cambodia.
www.ipedia.com /vietnamese_language.html   (780 words)

  
 Language
Chinese language is one of the most spoken languages in the world (See World Language and Population) and Hakka is one of the five major spoken languages(dialects) in mainland China with the following breakdown: (Journal of Asia and African Studies, No. 24, 1982)
Tonal system is the same as used by Norman, J. in 'Chinese' (Cambridge University Press, 1988).
It is generally described as [214] on the tonal scale." "When the third tone occurs before any tone except another third tone, it becomes what is commonly known as a "half third"; that is, it loses its final rise and remains low throughout: [21].
www.asiawind.com /hakka/language.htm   (2798 words)

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