Tone Spreading in African Languages
Ever wonder how a single word can have multiple meanings based only on its melody? This post explores "tone spreading", a fascinating process in many African languages where the pitch…
Tag: tone sandhi
Hmong’s Tonal Writing System
Discover the Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA), the ingenious writing system for the Hmong language. In this linguistic deep-dive, you'll learn how the final consonant of a word isn't pronounced, but…
Tone vs. Intonation Explained
Ever wondered why saying 'mΔ' in Mandarin can mean 'mother' while 'mΗ' means 'horse'? Or how the exact same words, "You're leaving", can be a statement or a question in…
The Chameleon Tone: Unlocking the Musical Logic of Mandarin’s Tone Sandhi
Mandarin is famously a tonal language, but what many learners quickly discover is that the tones they memorize often change in mysterious ways during conversation. This isn't a mistakeβit's a…