Comment on People around the world are trying to learn English because it's the Lingua Franca, but imagine if the Lingua Franca of the world was a Tonal Language and the writing system was Logographic.

Quilotoa@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• ExtremeUnicorn@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  The singer of Chthonic, a Taiwanese metal band, explained this briefly in an acoustic libe recording. You do have to watch out which tone you choose exactly, otherwise the meaning can change drastically. I also think this is part of the “sound” that you get in these cultures.

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• YICHM@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Only if the verse is carefully written.

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  • Quilotoa@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Yeah. I’m guessing it’s harder to write songs in tonal languages.

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    • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You kinda shift the entire pitch of your voice so that the words are still, relative to each other, have the tones and it’s distinguishable to a native speaker intuitively.

      Its easier in Cantonese, 6 tones, you can play around with words to make the tones go high or low, the tones don’t change much from what I’ve noticed in Cantonese songs, yo es sounds almost the same as spoken. In Mandarin, 4 tones, and the tones are much lower and deeper in the sounds, you just have to change the tones a lot to make it higher pitched, you rarely pronunce the tones as-is. Still understandable.

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      • Quilotoa@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Hey, thanks. That makes sense.

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