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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 basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are most often consonants). In phonology and studies of languages, syllables are often considered the "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre; properties such as stress, tone and reduplication operate on syllables and their parts. 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''. Most languages of the world use relatively simple syllable structures that often alternate between vowels and consonants. Despite being present in virtually all human languages, syllables still have no precise definition that is valid for all known languages. A common criterion for finding syllable boundarie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
