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Tone Letter
Tone letters are letters that represent the tones of a language, most commonly in languages with contour tones. __TOC__ Chao tone letters (IPA) A series of iconic tone letters based on a musical staff was devised by Yuen Ren Chao in the 1920s by adding a reference stave to the existing convention of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The stave was adopted by the IPA as an option in 1989 and is now nearly universal. When the contours had been drawn without a staff, it was difficult to discern subtle distinction in pitch. Only nine or so of the possible tones were commonly distinguished: high, medium and low level, (or as dots rather than macrons for 'unaccented' tones); high rising and falling, ; low rising and falling, ; and peaking and dipping, , though more precise notation was found and the IPA specifically provided for mid rising and falling tones if needed. The Chao tone letters were originally x-height, but are now taller to make distinctions in pitch more visible ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Checked Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre and its stress patterns. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ''ignite'' is made of two syllables: ''ig'' and ''nite''. Syllabic writing began several hundred years before the first letters. The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur. This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called "the most important advance in the history of writing". A word that consists of a single syllable (like English ''dog'') is called a monosyllable (and is said to be ''monosyllabic''). Similar terms include disyllable (and ''disyllabic''; also ''bis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Upstep
In linguistics, upstep is a phonemic or phonetic upward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. It is best known in the tonal languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. Upstep is a much rarer phenomenon than its counterpart, downstep. The symbol for upstep in the International Phonetic Alphabet is a superscript upward arrow [] ([]). However, it is common, especially in the early research, to find a superscript (or sometimes subscript) inverted exclamation mark [] ([]) or [], because of typographical constraints. Hausa has upstep because of the interaction of tones when they are placed in context: : :''It's English.'' Upstep is superficially similar to pitch reset, which is nearly universal in the prosody of the world's languages. The most common prosodic contours occur in chunks with gradually declining pitch (here transcribed as a global fall, †˜. Between such chunks, the pitch resets: :Been there. Done that. : Occurrence Upstep occurs in various Sub-Sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Phonetic Association
The International Phonetic Association (IPA; French: ', ''API'') is an organization that promotes the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. The IPA's major contribution to phonetics is the International Phonetic Alphabet—a notational standard for the phonetic representation of all languages. The acronym IPA refers to both the association and the alphabet. On 30 June 2015, it was incorporated as a British private company limited by guarantee. The IPA also publishes the ''Journal of the International Phonetic Association''. In addition, it arranges for the quadrennial International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) through its affiliate, the Permanent Council for the Organization of ICPhS. Early history In 1886, a small group of language teachers in Paris formed an association to encourage the use of phonetic notation in schools to help children acquire realistic pronunciations of foreign languages and also to aid in te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chatino Language
Chatino is a group of indigenous Mesoamerican languages. These languages are a branch of the Zapotecan family within the Oto-Manguean language family. They are natively spoken by 45,000 Chatino people, whose communities are located in the southern portion of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The Chatinos have close cultural and linguistic ties with the Zapotec people, whose languages form the other branch of the Zapotecan language family. Chatinos call their language ''chaqF tnyaJ''. Chatino is recognized as a national language in Mexico. Varieties The Chatino languages are a group of three languages: Zenzontepec Chatino, spoken in about 10 communities in the district of Sola de Vega; Tataltepec Chatino, spoken in Tataltepec de Valdés; and a group of dialects collectively called the Eastern Chatino language, spoken in about 15–17 communities. Egland & Bartholomew (1983) conducted mutual intelligibility tests on the basis of which they concluded that four varieties of Chatino cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amuzgoan Languages
Amuzgo is an Oto-Manguean language spoken in the Costa Chica region of the Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca by about 44,000 speakers. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Amuzgo is a tonal language. From syntactical point of view Amuzgo can be considered as an active language. The name Amuzgo is claimed to be a Nahuatl exonym but its meaning is shrouded in controversy; multiple proposals have been made, including 'moss-in'. A significant percentage of the Amuzgo speakers are monolingual; the remainder also speak Spanish. Four varieties of Amuzgo are officially recognized by the governmental agency, the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas IndÃgenas (INALI). They are: * (i) Northern Amuzgo (amuzgo del norte, commonly known as Guerrero or (from its major town) Xochistlahuaca Amuzgo); * (ii) Southern Amuzgo (amuzgo del sur, heretofore classified as a subdialect of Northern Amuzgo); * (iii) Upper Eastern Amuzgo (amuzgo alto del este, commonly known as Oaxaca Amuzgo or San Pedro Amu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinantecan Languages
The Chinantec or Chinantecan languages constitute a branch of the Oto-Manguean family. Though traditionally considered a single language, '' Ethnologue'' lists 14 partially mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinantec.Palancar, Enrique L. (2014). Revisiting the Complexity of the Chinantecan Verb Conjugation Classes. In Jean-Léo Léonard & Alain Kihm (Eds.), ''Patterns in Mesoamerican Morphology'' (pp. 77–102). HAL 01100738 The languages are spoken by the indigenous Chinantec people who live in Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán, Ixtlán de Juárez, Tuxtepec and Choapan, and in Staten Island, New York. Internal classification Egland and Bartholomew (1978) established fourteen Chinantec languages on the basis of 80% mutual intelligibility. '' Ethnologue'' found that one that had not been adequately compared (Tlaltepusco) was not distinct, but split another (Lalana from Tepinapa). At a looser criterion of 70% intelligibility, Lalana–Tepina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mixtecan Languages
The Mixtecan languages constitute a branch of the Oto-Manguean language family of Mexico. They include the Trique (or Triqui) languages, spoken by about 24,500 people; Cuicatec, spoken by about 15,000 people; and the large expanse of Mixtec languages, spoken by about 511,000 people. The relationship between Trique, Cuicatec, and Mixtec, is an open question. Unpublished research by Terrence Kaufman in the 1980s supported grouping Cuicatec and Mixtec together. Proto-Mixtecan The ''urheimat'' of the Oto-Manguean family may be the valley of Tehuacán in Puebla state. This site was one of the places of the domestication of maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maÃz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th .... The thousand-year presence of Oto-Manguean-speaking groups in this region makes it probable that they wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otomanguean
The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of the family, which is now extinct, was spoken as far south as Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Oto-Manguean is widely viewed as a proven language family. However, this status has been recently challenged. The highest number of speakers of Oto-Manguean languages today are found in the state of Oaxaca where the two largest branches, the Zapotecan and Mixtecan languages, are spoken by almost 1.5 million people combined. In central Mexico, particularly in the states of Mexico, Hidalgo and Querétaro, the languages of the Oto-Pamean branch are spoken: the Otomi and the closely related Mazahua have over 500,000 speakers combined. Some Oto-Manguean languages are moribund or highly endangered; for example, Ixcatec and Matlatzinca each has fewer than 250 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. The specification germinated at Microsoft, with Adobe Systems also contributing by the time of the public announcement in 1996. Because of wide availability and typographic flexibility, including provisions for handling the diverse behaviors of all the world's writing systems, OpenType fonts are used commonly on major computer platforms. History OpenType's origins date to Microsoft's attempt to license Apple's advanced typography technology GX Typography in the early 1990s. Those negotiations failed, motivating Microsoft to forge ahead with its own technology, dubbed "TrueType Open" in 1994. Adobe joined Microsoft in those efforts in 1996, adding support for the glyph outline technology used in its Type 1 fonts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neutral Tone
This article summarizes the phonology (the sound system, or in more general terms, the pronunciation) of Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin). Standard Chinese phonology is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Actual production varies widely among speakers, as they introduce elements of their native varieties (although television and radio announcers are chosen for their ability to produce the standard variety). Elements of the sound system include not only the segments – the vowels and consonants – of the language but also the tones that are applied to each syllable. Standard Chinese has four main tones, in addition to a neutral tone used on weak syllables. This article represents phonetic values using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), noting correspondences chiefly with the Pinyin system for transcription of Chinese text. For correspondences with other systems, see the relevant articles, such as Wade–Giles, Bopomofo (Zhuyin), Gwoyeu Romatzyh, etc., and R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone Sandhi
Tone sandhi is a phonological change occurring in tonal languages, in which the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes change based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. It usually simplifies a bidirectional tone into a one-direction tone. It is a type of sandhi, or fusional change, from the Sanskrit word for "joining". Languages with tone sandhi Tone sandhi occurs to some extent in nearly all tonal languages, manifesting itself in different ways. Tonal languages, characterized by their use of pitch to affect meaning, appear all over the world, especially in the Niger-Congo language family of Africa, and the Sino-Tibetan language family of East Asia, as well as other East Asian languages such as Kra-Dai, Vietnamese, and Papuan languages. Tonal languages are also found in many Oto-Manguean and other languages of Central America, as well as in parts of North America (such as Athabaskan in British Columbia, Canada), and Europe. Many North American a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese form, to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, but pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written in the Latin script, and is also used in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The word ' () literally means "Han language" (i.e. Chinese language), while ' () means "spelled sounds". The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international standard ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
