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?

  • Luc@lemmy.world
    2·
    14 hours ago

    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!