The Linguistic Mystery of Tonal Languages - The Atlantic - 1 views
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Lara Cowell on 26 Feb 20In many languages, pitch is as important as consonants and vowels for distinguishing one word from another. In English, "pay" and "bay" are different because they have different starting sounds. But imagine if "pay" said on a high pitch meant "to give money," while "pay" said on a low pitch meant "a broad inlet of the sea where the land curves inward." That's what it feels like to speak what linguists call a tonal language. At least a billion and a half people worldwide do it their entire lives and think nothing of it. The article goes on to talk about which areas of the world have the highest concentration of tonal languages and reasons why that might be, also some of the advantages of speaking a tonal language.