Pitch-accent language

Language that uses pitch changes for accent This article uses parenthetical referencing, which is deprecated on Wikipedia. Please help improve this article if you can. (April 2026) (Learn how and when to remove this message) , / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (linguistic tone) rather than by volume or length, as in some other languages like English. Pitch-accent languages also contrast with fully tonal languages like Vietnamese, Central Thai and Standard Chinese, in which practically every syllable can have an independent tone. Some scholars have claimed that the term "pitch accent" is not coherently defined and that pitch-accent languages are a sub-category of tonal languages in general. Languages that have been described as pitch-accent languages include: most dialects of Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Baltic languages, Ancient Greek, Vedic Sanskrit, Tlingit, Turkish, Japanese, Limburgish, Norwegian, Swedish, Western Basque, Yaqui, certain dialects of Korean, Shanghainese, and Livo