Tonal languages use tone to change the meaning of words. Chinese is a well-known tonal language, but many other languages in Asia, Africa, and South America are also tonal. Diacritics are used in writing to indicate tone. The reason why some regions have tonal languages is unknown.
A tonal language is a language in which tone is used as a part of speech, changing the meaning of a word. An example of how tone can change the meaning of a word can be found in English: the word “present” can be used as a verb or noun, with the stress on the first or second syllable changing the meaning. In tonal languages the way a word is pronounced is very important, as it radically changes its meaning. Tonal languages are found mainly in Asia, Africa and South America.
Perhaps the most famous tonal language is Chinese, which is infamously difficult to learn due to both its complex written structure and the subtle variations in tone that can change the meaning of words. Depending on whether the tone is high or low and where the stress is in a word, its meaning can change dramatically. The sounds of tonal languages are often quite distinctive, as pitch changes rapidly within words and sentences.
When a tonal language is written, diacritics are typically used to indicate tone, to eliminate confusion. Unfortunately, when such languages are transliterated these marks are often removed; For example, English transliterations of Chinese words do not indicate how these words should be pronounced. This can lead to confusion and embarrassment when trying to use transliterations to communicate with speakers of a tonal language.
In addition to Chinese, many Asian languages such as Thai and Vietnamese are also tonal, and these languages also have unique regional dialects that can further modify word inflections. In African, Hausa and Maasai are two common examples of tone languages, although there are many others. In South America, many pre-Columbian languages, such as some Mayan dialects, are tonal.
No one really knows why some regions have numerous tonal languages and others have none. All kinds of theories have been advanced and linguists have shown how tonal languages evolve, but there is no hard and fast explanation for what drives a society to develop, or abandon, a tonal language. Ancient Greek, for example, was tonal, and this language’s tonal sounds led to the development of an early set of diacritics so that written Greek could be understood. Modern Greek, however, lacks a tonal element, although it is clearly derived from Ancient Greek.
The specific sounds of a tonal language are sometimes called tonemes. All languages use pitch and tone to some extent to convey meaning, including European languages, which are part of a family of tonal accent languages. In a tonal language, however, sound contains a word of subtlety that can be frustrating for adult language learners.
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