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Why didn’t Korean and Japanese become tonal? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Qinshi Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5754 days ago 115 posts - 183 votes  Speaks: Vietnamese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 38 19 October 2010 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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^ That.
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| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 10 of 38 31 October 2010 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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An interesting thing: Vietnamese has become tonal, it was originally not tonal, but Chinese influence made it tonal.
As for Korea and Japan, they were n't occupied by China so long time (were they at all? Sorry I don't know their history (Japan was certainly not) . So there is no reason for them to become tonal. On a side note One of Korean dialects (Kyeongsam province?) IS tonal (!). 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 11 of 38 01 November 2010 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
Some Korean dialects have pitch indeed, but they aren't tonal. Also, I am somewhat skeptical of the claim that Vietnamese was once without tones. What I understand about language and language evolution would lead me to think that the bulk of the monosyllabic, tonal languages of East Asia arose from the splitting of already tonal language(s) into dialects and eventually into languages, probably way before Vietnamese could be called Vietnamese. The idea that one of those monosyllabic languages (Vietnamese) would not have tones, only to acquire them later through influence from Chinese (which Chinese?), is somewhat perplexing. But I'm no specialist of East Asian languages so if you have any links to enlighten me/us on the issue, please share them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 12 of 38 01 November 2010 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Settlement of modern-day Japan and Korea dates back way before Russian existed, of course. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Skauld Tetraglot Newbie Greece sokail-t3h-noobie.de Joined 5377 days ago 3 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Greek*, Japanese, FrenchB2, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 13 of 38 02 November 2010 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, that's my point exactly. I was trying to clarify that the modern political map of the world is not the same it was a thousand years ago (or even just five years for that mater...). Thus many (if not most of the) languages of the world may have originated in a region now occupied by a different nation/population/country/state/whatever. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7133 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek | Message 14 of 38 03 November 2010 at 2:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Something to keep in mind: Chinese was not always tonal. Chinese (or Sinitic as some
people would call it) in Confucius' time definitely was not tonal. There are 6th century AD authors who write about tono-genesis in Chinese. But generally, other languages may have borrowed words but they adapted the words to fit into their own languages. Just like in English we don't pronounce Paris the way the French do, but instead, we anglicize it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6585 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 15 of 38 15 November 2010 at 5:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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Slendar,
from what I've learned, it is not absolutely sure, whether the Chinese language spoken at the time of Confucius was or wasn't tonal. From what I've learned the only thing people doing research on the history of Chinese language seem to agree when it comes to this topic is that Old Chinese didn't have the 入声 tone and some theories say that if there was no 入声 then there was no 去声 as well and as a consequence some go as far as to say that Old Chinese had no tones at all. However, we are talking 2500 plus years back and since none of us have been there, no one will tell for sure so saying that the language at the time of Confucius 'definitely' wasn't tonal is a little far stretched. Clumsy: I'm a little reluctant to believe that Vietnamese developed tones because of the influence of Chinese. The vocabulary of Vietnamese has been influenced for hundreds and hundreds of years which can be easily proven, but a development of tones in a language that wasn't tonal before? I don't know. I could ask why Mongolian, Uyghur or Manchu didn't become tonal, where the influence of Chinese is also indisputable and took place over a long period of time, yet these languages have no tones. Parts of Korea were occupied as early as Sui/Tang dynasty China (7th century ad). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pantherus Newbie Australia Joined 5103 days ago 13 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 16 of 38 15 December 2010 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I know that in Japanese, for words with the exact same spelling (あめ means candy and rain, and はし means bridge and chopsticks), there are pitch differences, so as to distinguish between the two easily. However, Japanese and Korean were spoken languages before they were introduced to their first writing system (Chinese). So, who knows? I'm glad that Japanese and Korean are tonal, because some day I hope to learn Mandarin and Cantonese, and I'd imagine if all four were tonal, I'd get a bit bored.
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