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Is Mandarin becoming less tonal? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 4146 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 17 06 November 2013 at 3:30pm | IP Logged |
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I was reading an article that claims that Beijing Mandarin in particular is gradually becoming less tonal and becoming a language based more on stress and pitch accent than tone alone.
It seems this phenomena is only really happening in Northern Mandarin and the further south you go, tone retains its significance, probably because of the influence of other tone heavy Chinese dialects. If I were to make a guess, perhaps Northern Mandarin is less tonal than Southern varieties of Mandarin because it is surrounded by non-tonal languages like Mongolian and Russian to the North and Korean to the East and is phonologically influenced by these languages? Is Northern Mandarin gradually loosing its tonal system? Edited by LanguagePhysics on 06 November 2013 at 3:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| demie Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4040 days ago 12 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Japanese, Slovenian | Message 2 of 17 07 November 2013 at 8:20pm | IP Logged |
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That's really interesting and I wish I had anything relevant to add.
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| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5408 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 3 of 17 08 November 2013 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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Not exactly on topic but I remember reading here and there that some Uyghurs speak a toneless Mandarin. Obviously it's the result of them having to learn it as a second language and not a "natural" evolution.
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| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4699 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 4 of 17 08 November 2013 at 3:10pm | IP Logged |
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Why do you think so? Can you show some examples? Edited by LaughingChimp on 08 November 2013 at 3:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| michaelyus Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4565 days ago 53 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Italian, French, Cantonese, Korean, Catalan, Vietnamese, Lingala, Spanish Studies: Hokkien | Message 5 of 17 08 November 2013 at 5:48pm | IP Logged |
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I would also like to see the examples too. I can understand where the impression comes from though: how extensive neutral tone (which really looks a neutralisation of tone) is; how many polymorphosyllabic words have emerged; how extensive (and how well-correlated) 儿化 and other diminutive-type endings (e.g. -头, -子) in disambiguating noun functions from others.
What would be interesting is to see whether it has gone the way of Shanghainese in tending towards pitch-accent, although as a local Mandarin variety, Beijinghua/Pekingnese has lost the Middle Chinese voicing distinction completely whereas Shanghainese retains it. If it hasn't, what then? Would it retain phonation distinctions? Vowel breaking, à Khmer? (I'm sure I already hear a strong contrast-heightening allophony in Beijinghua related to which of the nasal consonant codas there are). But without a proper quantitative metric for "tonality", it's going to be really tricky to determine anything. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4668 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 6 of 17 08 November 2013 at 7:24pm | IP Logged |
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The use of bi- and polysyllabic words favors the change from a strict tonal system to a pitch accent one.
In polysyllabic words, the tones (except for the one in the stressed syllable) are neglected in fast speech> say Putonghuà in 0.3 sec. For every 1 syllabic word in Mandarin, there is a perfect 2 syllable synonym. And some words have even a 3 syllable synonym. Instead of shé, you can say dúshé (which in the future may become dúshe [pitch system] Compare it with English, people from the Southern states (USA) who merge pin and pen still distinguish the two concepts by using synonyms>* ink pen* instead of pen and *stick pin* instead of pin. Edited by Medulin on 08 November 2013 at 7:39pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 7 of 17 09 November 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
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Makes sense to me. Mandarin already has a pretty simple tone system only distinguishing four contours and no absolute tones, and compared to Cantonese it relies heavily on polysyllabic words, often making them out of two synonymous morphemes (i.e. 睡眠 "sleep sleep"). Also note that Mandarin songs are already toneless, that is, they take on the tones of the melody and discards the tones of the words, and they are still very much understandable. Compare this to Cantonese songs, where you can't put a low-tone syllable on a high-tone note and vice versa. I often find tones are mostly on the stressed syllables in Mandarin and less accentuated on the non-stressed syllables. A sentence like "你给我过来!" can have clear tones on 给 and 过, but the other syllables might have a less clear tone. Again, I compare to Cantonese where every syllable has a clearly defined tone and there are no "neutral tones" at all.
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| audiophile Groupie United States Joined 5116 days ago 44 posts - 81 votes Studies: French | Message 8 of 17 09 November 2013 at 10:50pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know if Chinese becomes less tonal. But I do know that tones are really not that important. As long as you can speak with the correct stress and rhythem, you will be understood.
In the example above 你给我过来 can be spoken as ni(4)gei(4)wo(4)guo(3)lai(4) with no problem (although all the tones are wrong). In fact, that's how local people would speak if they want to imitate and make fun in a foreigner's tone. Many prononciations in Chinese dialects don't match the correct Mandarin tones. In other words, if you can somehow maintain a "fluency", then you will be understood even if most of your tones are being wrong. Basically, if you can somehow develop your own "dialect", then mastering conversational Chinese is a pretty easy task. Edited by audiophile on 09 November 2013 at 10:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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