Back لغة نغمية Arabic Llingua tonal AST Tonlu dillər Azerbaijani Llengües tonals al món Catalan Tónový jazyk Czech Tonesprog Danish Tonsprache German Tonal language English Tonlingvo Esperanto Lengua tonal Spanish
A tone language, or tonal language, is a language in which words can differ in tones (like pitches in music) in addition to consonants and vowels.
Many languages, including Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai, Meitei, Lao, Hmong, Cantonese, Punjabi, Chittagonian , Noakhailla, Yorùbá, Igbo, Luganda, Ewe, Lingála, Cilubà and Cherokee are tonal.[1] Other languages, including Indo-European languages such as English and Hindi, are not considered tone languages. They can use intonation in different ways.
In some languages, it is pitch accent that is important instead. A word's meaning can then change if a different syllable is stressed. Examples include Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Lithuanian, and some Asian languages like Japanese and Korean. However, pitch accent is different from tones.
Some tones may sound alike to people who do not speak a tone language. They are the most difficult part of learning a tone language for those people.