For instance "I1 can go!" emphasizes that YOU can go.... "I can1 go!" emphasizes the fact that you realize you can go. "I can go2?" makes it sound like you are surprised that you can do it too... *shrugs*
You're picking apart intonations. In fact, a lot of the things you are saying are possible, but strangely, it changes the meaning. Instead of causing meaning between words, we have no particles and use tones to imply mood--which could possibly explain why we have been able to mostly drop the subjunctive mood from our conversation... Never considered it before, but it's possible that our use of tones has taken the place of subjunctive moods. Instead of vanishing, it may have taken a new form.
I'm swear I remember seeing a version of this video in Chinese, about English being a tonal language. I'm now teaching in China and really want to show it to my university kids. Do you have the link on hand? I can't find it on your channel. THANK YOU!
I'm curious, when you gather your information in order to conduct research on tonal quality, are you pulling phonetic patterns and practices from a particular region or is it a more national approach where you find yourself looking into multiple styles, pronunciations etc throughout the US? It just seems to be a bit cumbersome however interesting, I would still beg to differ in thinking that American English could be reduced to convenient formulas in having witnessed the vast variety of sounds.
Wow ok, I sound nothing like you when I speak e.g. The "a" sound in my "can't" sounds like "arm" and I have a definite "t" sound at the end of "can't" - exactly the way you said we don't pronounce it! See I would consider your English accent to be stronger than a lot of people... Maybe if you taught your pupils a version of British English it would be harder for them? I say that only because the way you speak is closer to the sound of Korean than mine! lol
@samgower That's okay, I wasn't talking about your way of speaking. I was talking about our 310 million people, not you guys. I can't (I mean, cunt) believe you just used the word "pupil" is that still in modern English? Okay, I'm just playing with you... it's a joke, don't get upset! Us Americans occasionally like to tell a few jokes, at the expense of, uh, our fellow Britishers over the, uh, pond. huh-huh (Bush-style)
Thanks for the video. It really helps. I am not a native english speak. I always confuse about the tones of english although people said english is monotone. ... um.. maybe it's better to say there is an accent problem rather than a tonal problem. .. : )
Now, I got a question; I dont understand the alophone of the sound "th" since you are saying that the words with "th" sound must be pronounced like a dentalized "t". OK it is fine when you pronounce that way when it assimilates another sound but not always because this 'th' must be fricative or you can't contrast words like "taught" and " thought" mmm coud you explain to me that?
@miguelcardenasa Of course we can tell them apart: taught has an aspirated t IPA: [tʰɑʔ], but thought is not aspirated (th is only aspirated when 'thr'), in IPA: [t̪ɑʔ]. Your English 't' should never be dentalized. English 't' has 6 pronunciations: [tʰ] at word onset/strong syllable, [t] in weak syllables (meeting), [ɾ] between vowels (get out), [ʔ] after /n/ and syllable/word coda (important), [d] in weak syllables after voicing (going to), [n] in weak syllables after /n/ (rental, plenty).
@Glossika Ok, I know that but maybe it is not a dentalized "t" what we pronounce in allophones of "th" but a brief and more stop version of the fricative "th", my first language is spanish (we have dentalized stops) and when I started to learn english I pronunced every "th" as a dentalized "t" or "d" and every teacher who heard me told me that you never pronounce "t" in those contexts.
@polychronio Spanish is more monotone than English. But the most monotone language I've learned so far is Georgian (kartuli ena) of the Caucasian country Georgia.
@polychronio Of course, that's why gringos sound so stupid when they speak Spanish. They put way too much tone onto all the words. If you've gone through any of the government-based Spanish courses, they teach all of this in the phonics section. It's not a question of what languages belong to what "polytone" group, whatever that means, it has to do with the intonation and prosody of the individual language itself.
@Glossika you sound a little mad. it's natural when foreiners speak foreign language, it sounds weird. English speaker don't put way too much tone. English speaker use fewer tones than other languages. spanish has more intonation. English sounds to me like it doesn't have intonation compared with other languages. It's not a bad thing. flat tone language like english sounds more logical.
@polychronio Noticing some basic errors in this discussion. 1) English is a stress timed languages 2) Spanish, French, Italian are syllable timed languages. Tone is NOT distinctive in English--intonation at the phrase can change the Illocutionary Force in English, however. They also inhabit different frequency ranges. Lots of confusion in this discussion is based on not knowing these aspects inside and out.
@polychronio If English is the most monotone language in the world, then nothing in this video makes sense, and you probably speak English like a robot, right?
@polychronio Okay, this is text, not a recording. How could I "sound" mad? I'm sorry to intrude, but what is your native language? I notice you wrote "English speaker don't" which means your subjects and verbs don't agree. You also refer to English speakers as "they".
@Glossika it makes sense as I watch how you speak in the video. that's how I feel when I hear english speaker(especially american english), I always thought they sound like a robot to me. My spanish friends said this to me also. no offense but you sound more calm and logical than other languages. this is how I feel.
I do believe that your usage of the word "tone" is otally wrong in English context. Tonal languages distinguish single lexemes with tone differences. Your example of "two apples" is intonation, not tones, since the word "two" in isolation is not distinguished by tones, be it high, low rising, mid falling or any other of the inapplicable notations you have applied. The word two in different contexts will render different intonations, like in interrogative or imperative sentences.
@theJrLinguist In Optimality the tone exists above the lexical--look at Tone Sandhi, What you two are talking about is a function of stress patterns in English and Force Projection as it is called in Role and Reference Grammar
The "can" vs. "can't" tone/stress problem is something a lot of Taiwanese don't understand, causing problems in comprehension. One phrase with a distinctive tonal contour is the dismissive "I don't know" (or "Idunno"). It's so distinctive, it can be hummed and people understand what you mean.
The difference is only that english only uses tone to distinguish words in the case of homophones like two, too, to, or wear, where, and wear.
I didn't notice that we use tone until I found it hard to understand someone who spoke monotonal with a different accent, who was from Jamaica and had autism.
This is interesting and useful - as well as kind of amusing at points - and I can see how this would be an immensely productive tool in teaching learners from tonal languages conversational English. It's not entirely linguistically based, I feel, but you also can't get too technical in these things, because no one needs that much detail. But good observations. I know people who would benefit from this.
Good point about the tones. I'm surprised that textbooks don't make more use of examples of English tones to teach Chinese ones. Some do though.
The point about what happens to t's in English is correct of course... trouble is that when learners do it it just sounds sloppy unless they get it 100% right.
This could be useful when teaching ESL students to hear the difference between 'can' and 'can't' in American English, as the unreleased nature of the stop consonant makes it hard for the untrained ear to hear the difference. I recognized (and spontaneously produced) the different vowel sound, but I hadn't been able to explain it in a systematical way.
That was very interesting. Particularly the tendency for Americans to be quite lazy with pronunciation of the letter "t". I always assumed this was slang, and that with motivation and instruction they would wish to correctly it. However, you present it as a perfectly standard part of American pronunciation, which is an idea I have never considered before.
@FluentCzech The softening or elision of /t/ in some contexts is a perfectly standard part of American English, or at least some dialects of it. You can even hear it in so-called 'ABC English' or 'General American', which is the closest thing to a standard in American English.
@FluentCzech Although this doesn't happen in British English, I don't think it's a question of 'laziness' in speaking - it's just the way Americans speak. A similar phenomenon occurs in British English with vowels, where the most common vowel is the schwa - think of how the word 'brother' is pronounced - the 'er' at the end becomes a schwa - but it's not 'laziness - again, it's just a feature of the language.
@storebror21 I imagine a good test for that is to ask somebody to speak as clearly as possible and then notice if it changes their pronunciation. I don't believe people would change the way they say "brother", but I do wonder if the "t" in "can't" would be spoken.
@FluentCzech That's an interesting point - certainly a native British speaker wouldn't pronounce the 't' at the end of a contraction such as 'can't - it tends to end up as a glottal stop - pronouncing it would sound a little unnatural - but again, the interesting thing is I've noticed that 't' in such words DOES tend to be pronounced if it's the last word in a sentence, but not if another word follows.
@evankiefl The schwa is the most common vowel sound in the English language and occurs most often whenever a vowel sound (especially e, a, o) is unstressed. For example, it occurs in words such as 'tomorrow', 'postman' and 'brother'.
This seems more to be about intonation than tone....
R3D54ND 2 weeks ago
For instance "I1 can go!" emphasizes that YOU can go.... "I can1 go!" emphasizes the fact that you realize you can go. "I can go2?" makes it sound like you are surprised that you can do it too... *shrugs*
Taricus 2 months ago
You're picking apart intonations. In fact, a lot of the things you are saying are possible, but strangely, it changes the meaning. Instead of causing meaning between words, we have no particles and use tones to imply mood--which could possibly explain why we have been able to mostly drop the subjunctive mood from our conversation... Never considered it before, but it's possible that our use of tones has taken the place of subjunctive moods. Instead of vanishing, it may have taken a new form.
Taricus 2 months ago
I've noticed that almost all Germanic languages are very "tonal." And of course Norwegian and Swedish are actually quasi-tonal (pitch accent).
gariadara 2 months ago
Hi there Mike,
I'm swear I remember seeing a version of this video in Chinese, about English being a tonal language. I'm now teaching in China and really want to show it to my university kids. Do you have the link on hand? I can't find it on your channel. THANK YOU!
americaninkorea 4 months ago
@americaninkorea I've published new findings and will be filming videos for those soon in Chinese.
Glossika 4 months ago
I'm curious, when you gather your information in order to conduct research on tonal quality, are you pulling phonetic patterns and practices from a particular region or is it a more national approach where you find yourself looking into multiple styles, pronunciations etc throughout the US? It just seems to be a bit cumbersome however interesting, I would still beg to differ in thinking that American English could be reduced to convenient formulas in having witnessed the vast variety of sounds.
jacobytyler 4 months ago
Wow ok, I sound nothing like you when I speak e.g. The "a" sound in my "can't" sounds like "arm" and I have a definite "t" sound at the end of "can't" - exactly the way you said we don't pronounce it! See I would consider your English accent to be stronger than a lot of people... Maybe if you taught your pupils a version of British English it would be harder for them? I say that only because the way you speak is closer to the sound of Korean than mine! lol
samgower 5 months ago
@samgower That's okay, I wasn't talking about your way of speaking. I was talking about our 310 million people, not you guys. I can't (I mean, cunt) believe you just used the word "pupil" is that still in modern English? Okay, I'm just playing with you... it's a joke, don't get upset! Us Americans occasionally like to tell a few jokes, at the expense of, uh, our fellow Britishers over the, uh, pond. huh-huh (Bush-style)
Glossika 5 months ago
@Glossika haha lol I guess you would say student? OK you win, 310 million is a lot of people :P
samgower 5 months ago
Thanks for the video. It really helps. I am not a native english speak. I always confuse about the tones of english although people said english is monotone. ... um.. maybe it's better to say there is an accent problem rather than a tonal problem. .. : )
kankenkankenkanken 6 months ago
Very interesting video, everything makes sense.
Now, I got a question; I dont understand the alophone of the sound "th" since you are saying that the words with "th" sound must be pronounced like a dentalized "t". OK it is fine when you pronounce that way when it assimilates another sound but not always because this 'th' must be fricative or you can't contrast words like "taught" and " thought" mmm coud you explain to me that?
miguelcardenasa 7 months ago
@miguelcardenasa Of course we can tell them apart: taught has an aspirated t IPA: [tʰɑʔ], but thought is not aspirated (th is only aspirated when 'thr'), in IPA: [t̪ɑʔ]. Your English 't' should never be dentalized. English 't' has 6 pronunciations: [tʰ] at word onset/strong syllable, [t] in weak syllables (meeting), [ɾ] between vowels (get out), [ʔ] after /n/ and syllable/word coda (important), [d] in weak syllables after voicing (going to), [n] in weak syllables after /n/ (rental, plenty).
Glossika 7 months ago
@Glossika Ok, I know that but maybe it is not a dentalized "t" what we pronounce in allophones of "th" but a brief and more stop version of the fricative "th", my first language is spanish (we have dentalized stops) and when I started to learn english I pronunced every "th" as a dentalized "t" or "d" and every teacher who heard me told me that you never pronounce "t" in those contexts.
miguelcardenasa 7 months ago
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7:31 "You might sound Mexican, but that's okay"
mindyapwn 7 months ago
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mindyapwn 7 months ago
Très intéressant ! "Nobody says it's gonna take ti-ime" :D
thegrengren 7 months ago
English especially american english is the most mono-tone language in the world.
polychronio 9 months ago
@polychronio Spanish is more monotone than English. But the most monotone language I've learned so far is Georgian (kartuli ena) of the Caucasian country Georgia.
Glossika 9 months ago
@Glossika spanish is more monotone than english??? spanish is of the most polytoned languages.... latin languages are polytone languages...
polychronio 9 months ago
@polychronio Of course, that's why gringos sound so stupid when they speak Spanish. They put way too much tone onto all the words. If you've gone through any of the government-based Spanish courses, they teach all of this in the phonics section. It's not a question of what languages belong to what "polytone" group, whatever that means, it has to do with the intonation and prosody of the individual language itself.
Glossika 9 months ago
@Glossika you sound a little mad. it's natural when foreiners speak foreign language, it sounds weird. English speaker don't put way too much tone. English speaker use fewer tones than other languages. spanish has more intonation. English sounds to me like it doesn't have intonation compared with other languages. It's not a bad thing. flat tone language like english sounds more logical.
polychronio 9 months ago
@polychronio Noticing some basic errors in this discussion. 1) English is a stress timed languages 2) Spanish, French, Italian are syllable timed languages. Tone is NOT distinctive in English--intonation at the phrase can change the Illocutionary Force in English, however. They also inhabit different frequency ranges. Lots of confusion in this discussion is based on not knowing these aspects inside and out.
christopheclugston 4 months ago
@polychronio If English is the most monotone language in the world, then nothing in this video makes sense, and you probably speak English like a robot, right?
Glossika 9 months ago 3
Comment removed
polychronio 9 months ago
@polychronio Okay, this is text, not a recording. How could I "sound" mad? I'm sorry to intrude, but what is your native language? I notice you wrote "English speaker don't" which means your subjects and verbs don't agree. You also refer to English speakers as "they".
Glossika 9 months ago
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@Glossika it makes sense as I watch how you speak in the video. that's how I feel when I hear english speaker(especially american english), I always thought they sound like a robot to me. My spanish friends said this to me also. no offense but you sound more calm and logical than other languages. this is how I feel.
polychronio 9 months ago
@Glossika
I think the very only monotonic english accent is "Cybermanish" from Doctor Who
mongolxel 4 months ago
I do believe that your usage of the word "tone" is otally wrong in English context. Tonal languages distinguish single lexemes with tone differences. Your example of "two apples" is intonation, not tones, since the word "two" in isolation is not distinguished by tones, be it high, low rising, mid falling or any other of the inapplicable notations you have applied. The word two in different contexts will render different intonations, like in interrogative or imperative sentences.
theJrLinguist 1 year ago
@theJrLinguist You just summed up what I already said in the video. As I mentioned it's syntactic not lexical.
Glossika 1 year ago
@Glossika Ya, in that case the word "tone" is a misnomer, since tones are necessarily lexical.
theJrLinguist 1 year ago
@theJrLinguist In Optimality the tone exists above the lexical--look at Tone Sandhi, What you two are talking about is a function of stress patterns in English and Force Projection as it is called in Role and Reference Grammar
christopheclugston 4 months ago
For "hear" and "here" , I think they sound exactly the same in various contexts
dicipline8888 1 year ago
Are you a linguist???
memphisdarkwolf 1 year ago
That's why it's so hard to get rid of the accent in any language! All the phonetics can be picked up quite easily, bu these intonations...
ComradeA 1 year ago
Definitely one of the most interesting videos on YouTube.
Thanks Glossika.
Olonnais 1 year ago
The "can" vs. "can't" tone/stress problem is something a lot of Taiwanese don't understand, causing problems in comprehension. One phrase with a distinctive tonal contour is the dismissive "I don't know" (or "Idunno"). It's so distinctive, it can be hummed and people understand what you mean.
criskity 1 year ago
@criskity Great example. I'll add it to my inventory.
Glossika 1 year ago
The concept of tonal language went above my head before but now I get it. Thanks for posting the vid.
Bawadari 1 year ago
wonderful vid to me o.o
makotodenka 1 year ago
The difference is only that english only uses tone to distinguish words in the case of homophones like two, too, to, or wear, where, and wear.
I didn't notice that we use tone until I found it hard to understand someone who spoke monotonal with a different accent, who was from Jamaica and had autism.
spartacandream 1 year ago
As a Taiwanese American, i've always noticed the tonal properties in the English language. But you have quantified it.
paiwanhan 1 year ago
謝謝, 是非常好幫助我學會英語。
chenbaosen 1 year ago
This is interesting and useful - as well as kind of amusing at points - and I can see how this would be an immensely productive tool in teaching learners from tonal languages conversational English. It's not entirely linguistically based, I feel, but you also can't get too technical in these things, because no one needs that much detail. But good observations. I know people who would benefit from this.
bcreative08 1 year ago
Good point about the tones. I'm surprised that textbooks don't make more use of examples of English tones to teach Chinese ones. Some do though.
The point about what happens to t's in English is correct of course... trouble is that when learners do it it just sounds sloppy unless they get it 100% right.
espukr 1 year ago
This was actually a very cool video! Great job!
Theta910 1 year ago
please make more videos on the subject & thank you very much for this lesson.
ula58 1 year ago
Amazing video. One of the best ones. Thank you!
AvanRJ 1 year ago
great explanation!i even laughed a few times.thanks.
meyiyiyi55 1 year ago
great video! one of your best ones
a question: how do these postlexical processes work in a tonal language? what do you do to emphasize things without messing up with the meanings?
Aonykenk 1 year ago
Quite interesting.
steve4nlanguage 1 year ago
A wonderful, eye-opening video.
getreallanguage 1 year ago
This could be useful when teaching ESL students to hear the difference between 'can' and 'can't' in American English, as the unreleased nature of the stop consonant makes it hard for the untrained ear to hear the difference. I recognized (and spontaneously produced) the different vowel sound, but I hadn't been able to explain it in a systematical way.
getreallanguage 1 year ago
Thanks for that one. This video was really insightfull.
AndreR241 1 year ago
This is an amazing concept, english as a tonal language.
zocurtis 1 year ago
That was very interesting. Particularly the tendency for Americans to be quite lazy with pronunciation of the letter "t". I always assumed this was slang, and that with motivation and instruction they would wish to correctly it. However, you present it as a perfectly standard part of American pronunciation, which is an idea I have never considered before.
FluentCzech 1 year ago
@FluentCzech The softening or elision of /t/ in some contexts is a perfectly standard part of American English, or at least some dialects of it. You can even hear it in so-called 'ABC English' or 'General American', which is the closest thing to a standard in American English.
getreallanguage 1 year ago
@FluentCzech I recommend you run a youtube search for 'American Tongues', a very interesting documentary on American English dialects.
getreallanguage 1 year ago
@FluentCzech Although this doesn't happen in British English, I don't think it's a question of 'laziness' in speaking - it's just the way Americans speak. A similar phenomenon occurs in British English with vowels, where the most common vowel is the schwa - think of how the word 'brother' is pronounced - the 'er' at the end becomes a schwa - but it's not 'laziness - again, it's just a feature of the language.
storebror21 1 year ago
@storebror21 I imagine a good test for that is to ask somebody to speak as clearly as possible and then notice if it changes their pronunciation. I don't believe people would change the way they say "brother", but I do wonder if the "t" in "can't" would be spoken.
FluentCzech 1 year ago
@FluentCzech That's an interesting point - certainly a native British speaker wouldn't pronounce the 't' at the end of a contraction such as 'can't - it tends to end up as a glottal stop - pronouncing it would sound a little unnatural - but again, the interesting thing is I've noticed that 't' in such words DOES tend to be pronounced if it's the last word in a sentence, but not if another word follows.
storebror21 1 year ago
@storebror21 WHAT? schwa? could you please explain this better. I don't see how a british english speaker would replace er with schwa.
evankiefl 1 year ago
@evankiefl The schwa is the most common vowel sound in the English language and occurs most often whenever a vowel sound (especially e, a, o) is unstressed. For example, it occurs in words such as 'tomorrow', 'postman' and 'brother'.
storebror21 1 year ago
@evankiefl
for example in the UK, the word 'better' sounds like "betta"
jradetzky 1 year ago
@jradetzky Actually that is a glottal stop that is used in the London accent
christopheclugston 4 months ago