tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...

s, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use. *In contemporary

standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...

(Mandarin), the tones are numbered from 1 to 4. They are descended from but not identical to the historical

four tones 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 wid ...

Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...

, namely ''level'' (), ''rising'' (), ''departing'' (), and '' entering'' (), each split into ''yin'' () and ''yang'' () registers, and the categories of ''high'' and ''low'' syllables. * Standard Vietnamese has six tones, known as ngang, sắc, huyền, hỏi, ngã, and nặng tones. *

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

has five phonemic tones: mid, low, falling, high and rising, sometimes referred to in older reference works as rectus, gravis, circumflexus, altus and demissus, respectively.Frankfurter, Oscar. Elements of Siamese grammar with appendices. American Presbyterian mission press, 190

(Full text available on Google Books) The table shows an example of both the phoneme, phonemic tones and their

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

realization, in the

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

References

{{Reflist Tone (linguistics) Linguistics terminology Chinese language Vietnamese language

See also

References