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My native language does not have tones. Why tones are part of Chinese language? How the tones were started initially?

Is it because they do not have so many words?

In my native language full sentences tone changes normally more than words. But in general

  1. The first tone is for general discussion, no high feelings are Low feelings.
  2. Second tone or rising tone is to raise voice, question aggressively...
  3. Third tone is respect
  4. Fourth is like commanding.

In world how many languages have tones? What happens if I just hear the voice of word from dictionary voice and follow the same?

user27485
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  • What is your native language? – Wayne Cheah Mar 21 '21 at 07:07
  • Telugu - An Indian Language – user27485 Mar 21 '21 at 07:25
  • Thank you. In my view, your question is practically impossible to answer. It's like asking why there are no tones in Telugu. Let's see what other contributors have to say. – Wayne Cheah Mar 21 '21 at 11:16
  • The second set of questions is more suitable for Linguistics SE. The first part might be answerable here – blackgreen Mar 21 '21 at 11:40
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    To understand how tones emerge (tonogenesis), you may want to read this: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4906. To understand why Mandarin has exactly four tones (but some other dialects have more/fewer), you may want to read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/3w6ga8/tone_splitsmergers_in_chinese/. – L Parker Mar 21 '21 at 11:44
  • I don't know the Indian language, but most languages have "accent" to make the speech be more easily understood through the different tones/tunes. I think your claim on your language could be false, otherwise, when Indian speaks, everybody will likely fall in sleep by the "mono-tone/tune" :) – r13 Mar 21 '21 at 18:25
  • r13, Tones and tunes are different, they are not same. All 25+ Indian languages plus English and other languages does not have these 4 tones. But all we have is different pitch, tunes etc But tone never changes the meaning of a word but feelings

    Please listen to sample music and lyrics of Indian Music and you will be amazed, and it make you sleep or it will make you active, energetic, but not just changing the 4 tones as such.

     – user27485 Mar 21 '21 at 23:37
  • A tone is a single sound/note, but a tune is a progression of notes (like a song - it is also an informal term for song). – user27485 Mar 21 '21 at 23:38
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    Please note the difference between ‘tones’ and ‘intonation’: https://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/cgi-bin/moreabout.pl?tyimuh=intonation – L Parker Mar 21 '21 at 23:40
  • In India, Punjabi is well known for relatively recent tonogenesis: ਘਡ਼ੀ & ਕਡ਼ੀ vs ਕਡ਼੍ਹੀ and ਝਾ & ਚਾ vs ਚਾਹ are good examples. – Michaelyus Mar 23 '21 at 09:26
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    @27485 I think you are right. English does not have tone, but "accent". – r13 Mar 23 '21 at 12:25

2 Answers2

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Old Chinese did not have tones but had consonant clusters, and a larger number of consonants. It gradually lost consonants and simplified all consonant clusters to single consonants and had to disambiguate words by tone.

kwaalaateimaa
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My personal opinion is the dearth of syllables in Chinese.

Whereas English has 10000+ different sounds, Chinese only has about 400. To increment the expressive possibilities, tones developed. Still, assuming every syllable in Chinese has 5 tones (not always the case), Chinese still only has 2000 syllables.

Using Pinyin input, enter yao, or zhi. There are an amazing number of words.

The third tone is only the third tone when a word is pronounced alone. In combination with other characters, it is not pronounced as a third tone.

English, with its constant use of stress and schwa highlights the important content words.

Chinese uses tones to direct you to the intended meaning.

Just my amateur opinion!

Pedroski
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  • Chinese language is merging the words like 2 character words, 3 character words. So without tones chinese can understand most of the words without tones also? Like how English we can understand without perfect grammar? – user27485 Mar 22 '21 at 00:33
  • "The third tone is only the third tone when a word is pronounced alone. In combination with other characters, it is not pronounced as a third tone." May I ask, what do you mean by this? – MuchAppreciated25 Mar 22 '21 at 20:45
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    @MuchAppreciated25 third tones are only pronounced "falling-rising" when they are said by themselves, in actual speech they are more of a low flat or a low flat that rises towards the end. So treat first tones as high flats and third tones as low flats unless the third tone is said by itself, then you emphasize the falling-rising nature – 小奥利奥 Mar 23 '21 at 23:12