Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 13:40:03 -0500 (EST) with NJE id 8852 for CONLANG@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU; Thu, 4 Dec 1997 12:55:28 -0500 ; Thu, 4 Dec 1997 12:55:50 -0500 (EST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 11:55:14 -0600 Reply-To: Constructed Languages List Sender: Constructed Languages List From: Pytr Klark Subject: Tones was: Re: NGL: Proposal: Syllabic and Word Structure To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG In-Reply-To: X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1746 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Dec 4 13:40:33 1997 X-From-Space-Address: owner-conlang@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU > Searching on Internet, I found a site with words in Thai, Vietnamese, > Chinese in wav files. I liked very much the tonal languages. Is it possible > to use all existent tones in a language? Possible, sure, but I wouldn't recommend it. I think the max number of tones used by any one language is seven (or was it nine) for a dialect of Cantonese. Someone more knowledgable will surely correct me if I err. anyways, that (to my English mind, which we all know is essentially Chinese spoken in the first tone) is a lot of tones. Of course, if you have no intention of speaking the language, then you could very well inflict your imaginary speakers with twenty different tones. Of course, I wonder how long a language with twenty different pitches for "ma" (to take the infamous example from Chinese) would stay unchanged. Not long, I imagine. Anyways, there really isn't a list of existing tones. You can pretty much make up your own. You can have high, mid, low, falling, rising, high falling, mid falling, low falling, high rising, mid rising, low rising, etc., etc., etc. You can make tones based around the octave or some other system of notes for a musical language. Solresol was tonal, right? Or was it just supposed to be sung/spoken in different pitches? :Peter _____ _______________________________________________________ | \ O) Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we ) _|__/ | tap crude rythems for bears to dance to, while we | / |eter | long to make music that will melt the stars. | | | | - Gustave Flaubert, "Madame Bovary" | \___lark (_______________________________________________________(O