Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Sing like you mean it! - the Linguistics of Tonal Languages" video.

  1. That's a completely separate issue. Those tones don't belong to the word, they belong to your interpretation of the word and wouldn't show up in the dictionary. Not to mention that many people wouldn't even notice the change at all.
    16
  2. Yes and it can be rather dangerous at times. For example Qǐng wěn versus qǐngwèn. The first is a common mistake that some students make which is basically please kiss and the second one is the intended polite request to ask. Probably not something you want to say to somebody's girlfriend or a big burly fighter. But, if you accidentally swap a 3rd tone for a 4th tone, you'll probably notice the teacher blushing. We can do that a bit in English by using tones to create innuendos, but that's a completely different thing from being a tonal language.
    2
  3. Depends upon the language. Mandarin doesn't seem to care much about the tones when it comes to singing, but some other languages do. I have a feeling it has to do with how many tones there are or really how many distinguishable syllables there are. Tonal languages tend to remain tonal due to it being required to tell syllables apart. We don't need to do it in English because we have about 12k uniquely identifiable syllables without the tones, but a language like Mandarin only has about 1600 if you include the tones and between 4 and 5 hundred if you don't. Which is why it's a good idea to know whether or not the language you're trying to learn features music that includes the tones as there's not much point in using it as study materials if it isn't using the tones.
    1