In Chinese it can be even worse. Mandarin has four different "tones"
for each syllable, Taiwanese has 8, and Cantonese has up to 11! Unlike
Japanese, if you don't get the tones right in Chinese, most likely they
will have no clue at all what you're saying even if you get all the
syllables right!
len
On 12/14/2011 7:41 PM, Tim Selander wrote:
(I should probably let one of the native Japanese people on this list
answer, but...)
I don't know French, and am not precisely sure what you mean by 'tonic
accents' and am not a linguist, so don't know the proper term, but in
Japanese each syllable of a word has exactly the same beat or rhythm,
so it sounds rather staccato to an English speaker.
But the voice can rise in pitch, stay flat, or drop in pitch for each
syllable. To foreign ears, it is a very, very slight change -- but of
course a very obvious change to native speakers. And that slight
change in pitch can completely change the meaning of a word. The
language has a gazzillion (yes, I believe that is the proper technical
term ;-) homonyms. Just one example:
"Hashi" = chopsticks
"Hashi" = bridge
"Hashi" = the edge, like the edge of a table
and the slight up/down/flat pitch combinations of the two syllables
determines which word, (chopsticks, bridge or edge), you are saying.
HTH
Tim Selander
Tokyo, Japan
On 12/15/11 8:51 AM, Bob Sneidar wrote:
I have heard that Japanese has no tonic accents. Is that true?
Bob
On Dec 14, 2011, at 3:29 PM, Francis Nugent Dixon wrote:
Hi from Beautiful Brittany.
Michael wrote :
I'm not interested in the translations, just the quality of the
French accent.
Michael, it's the best French speech I have ever heard (I have 45
years of
French, in France, under my belt !)
However, computer speech is monotonous (great difficulty in placing
tonic
accents).
I think the weather will change tomorrow
i THINK the weather will change tomorrow
i think the WEATHER will change tomorrow
i think the weather will CHANGE tomorrow
i think the weather will change TOMORROW
Same sentence - at least five ways of saying it !
And this is just the tonic accent in a complete word. When you have a
multi-syllable word, placement of the tonic accent is capital.
Take any three or four syllable word and say it with the tonic accent
in the wrong place. Odds are that even an Englishman would say ......
"I beg your pardon" !
Although tonic accents are far less important to French speech, they
do exist !
However, forgetting the tonic accent, the FRENCH accent on this site
is damned good !
HTH
-Francis
"Nothing should ever be done for the first time !"
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