I know that Japanese has it, there’s a difference between 紙 and 神 for example:
Technically: Latin Alphabet languages have something alike but not known as “pitch accent” more akin to word stress (think, “Cent” vs “Scent” or “Whole” vs “Hole”) as in is there a difference in ‘volume’ (like the tone of your voice upon pronouncing either word). Is there an emphasis on how a word could be understood based on how it’s said (in EN, FR, DE)?
I mean, do you know examples of words in (European) languages or ENG where something equivalent of “pitch accent” applies? Can you also tell the difference between something like “sent” / “cent” and “scent” even though those types of words are not relevant to another simply by hearing someone pronouncing it and the tone of their voice?
I’ve only ever heard Japanese, Chinese, etc. described as tonal languages, not pitch accents.
You’re wondering about languages in the Indo-European language group making distinctions between homonyms/homophones by tone. Tone has a different function in those languages, such as expressing inquiry.
In English, syllable emphasis can be used to distinguish between homonyms (verb presENT vs noun PRESent) and would-be homophones (desSERT vs DEsert)
This is a tangent, but I’ve noticed more and more people using what I’d consider the noun form of “estimate” as a verb. Even on bbc radio 4 news the other day. Irritates me an unreasonable amount
Sounds like instances where they become more familiar with the written forms first and then hear only one of the forms later that became reinforced somehow. Estimate is a common word, so I’m guessing the mispronunciation must be coming out of a unique environment.
For myself, yhere are definitely words in which the correct pronunciation still escapes me, such as valence. To this day, I might pronounce differently depending on my mood with no certainty on how it’s supposed to be said (either rhyming with cadence or balance).
I heard someone mangling “indefatigable” in a programme the other day, they got the word “fatigue” in there.
Edit to say I think it’s VALEnce, but I could be wrong.
Regarding valence, both pronunciations I’ve heard and used put emphasis on the first syllable, it’s just whether the first vowel is long or short.
It’s one of those things that just doesn’t come up often enough to actually address it and nobody has ever misunderstood or challenged me whenever I’ve said it differently in conversation, during a presentation or afterwards, or in lecture. It sticks out as an example for me because any other words I was uncertain about definitely get challenged (e.g., route and router)
Rooter always sounds rude to me. ;-)
Wikipedia has a nice article about it. It’s rare in European languages, but it does exist
Scent, cent, sent all sound identical in English, thus why spelling is a challenge in English.
Same as Know and No.
Most people say Whole and Hole the exact same, except certain regions will pronounce the WH as the true Whuh sound. The Family Guy show pokes fun of this with the CoolWhip word.
Then there is the Welsh speaking the English language where they say Ear, Year, Here the exact same way. LOL (as Yuhr)
It might just be my regional (Philadelphia) accent, or even just how I personally speak
But I do feel like there is a very subtle difference in how I pronounce scent, cent, and sent.
Like so subtle I absolutely wouldn’t notice it if I wasn’t specifically listening for it, and wasn’t even aware of it until just now because I never had a reason to even think about it.
In scent, I sort of stretch out the “s” a little longer, and the “e” feels a little more nasal
With “cent” the “c” becomes almost like a “ts” sound, and the “e” feels a little higher-pitched than in “sent” and I also kind of hit the “t” a little harder which kind of makes the word feel a little shorter and punchier.
Again, this is all “very” subtle, not something most people could probably pick up on at all in actual conversation, but sitting around talking to myself at midnight and really thinking about it I can pick up a little bit of a difference.
There is one something like this for me and that is the word Gnome. People say it as either Nome or GuhNome. But I was taught that GN makes a nasally ng with toungue going back closing Tue throat/roof of mouth like you would like the sound and the ending of ing words. Like ngnome. If I say Gnome or Nome my tongue and throat are doing different things. Gnometongues is at the back first, Nome tongue is against roof of mouth at the front teeth to start. To a listener it might not be that noticeable unless they spoke a language with those specific sounds.
Are you sure it’s not what other sounds are occurring around the words affecting the sound? How we pronounce t and s can vary quite a bit, even in the same word when it occurs differently, with different sounds right before it after or even different stress placed on the word based on the context.
If pitch made differences in meaning at the word level, it would be called a tonal language afaik
English has pitch for other aspects of speech, such as indicating emphasis or what sentences are questions. Try saying “you did it” with an emphasis on the first word, without changing the volume or tempo: it’ll change pitch. If you raise the “it” instead, you get a question sentence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_declarative). The pitch could make a difference for how you understand a word, like you’d not think the person said “what’s that cent?” (same set of base sounds but, due to the question pitch, it’s more likely “… scent?”), but it’s not a fixed property of the word like in a tonal language
Variants of “mhm” are also tonal to me. I don’t know if this works the same in any English-speaking region but, where I’m from, “hm” with
- rising pitch is “I don’t understand”
- high-low-high is enthusiastic agreement
- low pitch is like acknowledgment that you’ve heard the person (and don’t voice an objection), and
- low-low with a pause between means “no”
Not sure that’s considered a word, though
Unrelated but this reminds me of a thing that happened earlier today while we were playing a board game. European languages aren’t considered click languages, but we still have them. One player asked a question of another, and someone from Turkey tsk’d. They made no other sound or head movement. Apparently this meant “no”! Native DE/NL speakers won’t understand that this is an answer to a question. We do use tsk here, just for other purposes. Was interesting to notice the culture difference!
Pitch accents are a system of speaking. They apply to all of the words. Every word has a tone, even if the tone is flat. If you don’t say the word in the correct tone, you said the wrong word. It is not the same thing as stressing a word.
except for finland swedish :D
