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Cantonese Tones | ||
Tags: Cantonese | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes  Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 11 14 July 2012 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am trying desperately to figure out the correct tones for Cantonese, but every where I look they seem to be
different. Cantonese101 podcasts say that there are 6 tones, and they seem to be fairly straight forward. But then I see a youtube vid which says there are 6, with some of the tones being different (such as the inclusion of a falling tone which was never mentioned in 101). So I check my 'Teach yourself Cantonese' audio to try and clear up the matter, and yet I am told that there are 7 tones! I have heard that there are only 6, with the confusion coming from an extra 3 tones that actually produce the same sound as three others. However, this still leaves me trying to solve the mystery of being told in one place that there are falling tones, and in others that there are not... Can anybody with some knowledge in this area help me out with a breakdown of the correct Cantonese tones? Many thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 2 of 11 14 July 2012 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Don't worry about phonemes, learn just the sounds. There is often not just one correct answer, phonemes are subjective and you can often find widely varying analyses of the same language. One of the more extreme examples is modern Greek, which can have anywhere between 15 to 25 consonant phonemes depending on analysis. Just learn how the words sound and don't bother with breaking them down to phonemes. You have to learn all the allophones anyway if you want to speak with a reasonably good accent, so there is really no use for that.
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| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 11 14 July 2012 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not worried about phonemes... I am asking about TONES in Cantonese, not phonemes :-P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 11 14 July 2012 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Most sources I have count six or seven tones, with the possible addition of three more (the "clipped consonant" endings -p, -t and -k).
I just found this: "There is inconsistency in the analysis of Cantonese tones. Cantonese is variously analysed as having 6, 7, 9 or 10 tones, but the disagreement is of little substance. Six tone analysis: Tone 1) high level or high falling:wài‘splendid’威 Tone 2) high rising:wái‘broken’毁 Tone 3) mid level:wai‘dirty’秽 Tone 4) low falling:wàih‘surrounding’围 Tone 5) low rising:wáih‘great’ 伟 Tone 6) low level:waih‘stomach’胃 Tones 4, 5, and 6 are low tones, written with anhin Yale indicating laryngealisation. Tones3 (mid level) and 6 (low level) have no tone mark. Nine tone analysis: On clipped syllables ending with unreleased - p, -t , -k , there are 3 possible tones: high, mid or low. In older textbooks these were numbered separately as Tones 7, 8, and 9 respectively.In more modern textbooks they are subsumed under Tone 1 (high), Tone 3 (mid) and Tone 6(low) respectively: Tone 1)dàk 德‘morals’; Tone 3)gip 劫‘rob’; Tone 6)gihk 极 ‘excellent’. Hence the disagreement over six or nine tones. Seven or ten tone analysis: There was once a tendency to distinguish between a high level and a high falling tone. This gave a total of 10 tones if the clipped tones were numbered separately or 7 if they were not.It is now generally agreed that there is no such distinction and that T1 can be either highlevel or high falling. Therefore nowadays a six tone analysis is usual." Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/45193450/A-Brief-Comparison-of-Can tonese-vs-Mandarin 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 11 14 July 2012 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's a great help thank you. It's the high falling tone that was giving me a headache! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 6 of 11 14 July 2012 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Tones are phonemic in Cantonese, unless I'm horribly mistaken. What I wrote applies to tones as well. What jeff_lindqvist wrote is exactly what I meant - different analyses will give different number of phonemes. As I said - don't waste your time with arguments about what is phonemic and just learn how the words sound. Edited by LaughingChimp on 14 July 2012 at 8:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 11 14 July 2012 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ahh ok I see, i'm pretty clueless about phonemes etc, I had no idea they were anything to do with tones! However i'd still like to find out, all the material that I have found that teaches Cantonese starts with tones so there must be some value in trying to learn them I figure! Thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 8 of 11 14 July 2012 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Of course that tones are important, they are as improtsnt as consonants and vowels. Phonemes are not necessarily just vowels and consonants, many languages have phonemic tone, phonation, tongue root position, vowel or consonant length...
Languages have many more sounds than they have phonemes, phonemes are an abstract construct, the minimal set of sounds that is sufficient to distinguish all the words. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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