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Tonal vs. agglutinating languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| jeeb Groupie Joined 5161 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes  | Message 17 of 24 04 November 2010 at 11:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Let me give you a bit tutorial. Do you understand ying-yang? 
ying is represented by the dark side and yang is represented by the bright side. (white side) According to Chinese philosophy, ying can mean dark, soft, woman... yang can mean bright, hard, man... In Cantonese Tone, there are 3 ying and 3 yang. It's very tidy. Ying = Woman = Relatively high pitch Ynag = Man = Relatively low pitch Ying Level Yang Level Ying Rising Yang Rising Ying Departing Yang Departing Why "departing' is called departing? Because it feels like there is kind of air departing from your mouth like water is being splash on the floor. The air will never come back. Yang level will make your voice creaky. Yang rising is like ying rising but it starts with a lower pitch and then goes up to high pitch. Entering/Clipped tones are just syllables with ptk at the end. Like the differences between mad and mat, the ptk shortens the pronunciation of vowels. http://www.cbs.polyu.edu.hk/VTP/hkword/t/t1.htm There're six graphs in here From left to right: Ying level, Ying Rising, Ying departing, Yang level, Yang Rising, Yang departing Now you compare Ying and Yang and then compare Ying level and Yang level/Ying Rising and Yang Rising/Ying Departing and Yang departing I'm learning Tai- Kadai languages myself and I also have problem with tones. Every time when I try to pronounce a word, I will pronounce the whole series, like singing do,re, me, fa, so. Of course, unlike singing, I don't have to hit a particular pitch. Edited by jeeb on 04 November 2010 at 11:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 18 of 24 04 November 2010 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is very dependent on which Cantonese you're speaking. What you're saying holds relatively true for large parts of Guangdong, but more traditional pronunciation will have seven tones (three level, two rising and two falling). Hong Kong Cantonese has three level tones, two rising and one falling or, according to some, four level tones and two rising. At any rate, I haven't learned any agglutinative language yet, but I never found tones very difficult. This might have something to do with Swedish being tonal in many words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeeb Groupie Joined 5161 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes | Message 19 of 24 05 November 2010 at 3:38am | IP Logged | |||||
GZ Cantonese does have seven tones while HK Cantonese has only 6 tones. Some Cantonese dialects even have fewer tones and I suspect they were influenced by Hakka, which has fewer tones than Cantonese. I think Yang level is still a falling tone in HK Cantonese. This is a praat diagram I took from a HK cantonese audio. 
I prefer using ying - yang tone classification because it also introduces Chinese philosophy better. I'm glad you don't find tone difficult. But I suspect there is some kind of placebo effect on the difficulty of Cantonese. People always call "tones = difficult" and therefore it becomes a self- fulfilled prophecy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raчraч Ŋuɲa Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5819 days ago 154 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese | Message 20 of 24 06 November 2010 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
More. Ai-Cham of China has 11 tones. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeeb Groupie Joined 5161 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes | Message 21 of 24 07 November 2010 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai-Cham_language Here said it has six tones. Cantonese is more related to Tai-Kadai languages than Mandarin. Most Tai-Kadai languages has about 5-6 tones and Cantonese shares many basic vocabulary with them. Either Tai-Kadai can be a branch of Chinese language or Cantonese can be considered as hybrid of Tai-Kadai and Chinese languages. And I really hate people say "tone = difficult" First, as in Cantonese and other Tai-Kadai languages, yes, we have more tones than Mandarin but we are more monosyllable. Also, Cantonese has the MAXIMUM of 6 tones. Not every combination has 6 tones. You may hear that Cantonese has nine tones. Traditional scholar put words that end with p, t and k into another tones. As in the case of Cantonese, you can use fewer Chinese words to express an idea. Mandarin is disyllable. That means you have learn 2x of Chinese characters. It's a compensation. More tone = fewer Chinese word. Less tone= More Chinese word 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 22 of 24 08 November 2010 at 5:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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It seems like most people are either saying 'agglutination was never a problem for me, but tones are hard' or the other way around. Of course this depends on each person's native language as well as the languages they've learned before, but maybe it also has something to do with learning styles. I suspect that the analytical type who loves grammar and doesn't mind studying conjugation charts (i.e. the traditional scholastic type of language learner) would prefer agglutinative languages, and might have a hard time with tonal languages (because tones don't follow a textbook pattern, so must be learned individually either by rote memorization or by 'feeling'). On the other hand, the 'play it by ear type' who is put off by the formal study of grammar and relies more on intuition to pick things up might feel that agglutinative languages involve a lot of hard work, but tones come to them quite easily. I know not everyone fits neatly into these two categories and I'm oversimplifying a ton, but it seems plausible to me :) By the way, I'm in the 'agglutinative languages are no problem, tones are hard' camp.
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 23 of 24 08 November 2010 at 6:28am | IP Logged | |||||
I'd say this is a fairly apt summary. Mandarin was the first language I ever tried to self-study and the tones were (and still are) very difficult for me, and I had to give up the language after a couple months because I was so frustrated that I simply could not pronounce anything correctly. On the other hand, agglutination takes a bit of work, but it's very fun and not overly difficult in my opinion. Swahili, Japanese, and Esperanto are all quite interesting to me for that reason, and you can make incredible words like "uliifanyishiaje?" (u + li + i + fany + ish + i + a + je) in Swahili, which means "did you have it done for him?" I like grammar, so that I find agglutinating languages easier is not a surprise. When I finally get back to Mandarin I'm sure I will not have a very easy time remembering those evil tones... Another example would be a friend of mine whose native language is Hmong, which has seven tones. She and I are in the same Japanese class and she thinks it's funny how I can be so good at manipulating the structures of Japanese but can rarely pronounce any of the Hmong words she tells me correctly. She, however, has a lot of difficulty with the agglutinative nature of Japanese but says that she thinks the tones in Mandarin and Cantonese (and so on) are really easy. Edited by ellasevia on 08 November 2010 at 6:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5035 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 24 of 24 20 February 2011 at 3:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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I found agglutinization relatively easy. But the idea of speaking a tonal languages puts the fear in me, even though I have a music background. It's one reason why I picked Japanese instead of any form of Chinese as a language of study.
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