Comment by ronyeh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ronyeh | Hacker News Reader

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I like to tell complete newbies that Cantonese roughly has "4 tones."

- High level

- Mid level

- Low (includes "low falling" and "low level")

- Rising (includes "low rising" and "mid rising")

I've combined similar tones into the Low and Rising categories. If you are a non-native Cantonese speaker, and don't differentiate between "low falling" and "low level", native Cantonese speakers will still understand you.

It's difficult for a non-native speaker to distinguish between "low rising" and "mid rising".... so just treat it as a rising tone. I'm a native speaker and sometimes I forget which type of rising tone a particular word is.... I didn't learn it that way, haha. I just learned to say the word the same way my parents did.

The 7th, 8th, and 9th tones are short versions of the three level tones, and they all end in a consonant (like "k"). If you pronounced them the same, but make the syllable very short, you'll be fine.

So yeah.... think of it as 4 tones, just like Mandarin. Three different level tones at high, middle, low pitches, and one rising tone :-).

> If you are a non-native Cantonese speaker, and don't differentiate between "low falling" and "low level", native Cantonese speakers will still understand you.

Whilst it is true that in the case of Cantonese some tones can be misused without the loss of the comprehension in a conversion, and the non-native speaker will still be understood if the surrounding context is clear and concise, that is not the case with the low falling tone, which is the most unforgiving of all. Cantonese speakers are prone to get thoroughly confused when the low falling tone is substituted for a flat low tone or a low rising one. Consider 墳墓 and 分母 when the context is insufficient to deduce which word was actually meant; it is perhaps not the best example but I can't think of a better one at the moment.

EDIT: 大麻, 大馬 and 大媽 from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35870392 are better examples.

> It's difficult for a non-native speaker to distinguish between "low rising" and "mid rising".... so just treat it as a rising tone. I'm a native speaker and sometimes I forget which type of rising tone a particular word is.... I didn't learn it that way, haha.

Most native speakers of tonal languages are not even aware of the fact their native language has tones. They don't think about it, they don't think about the tones. Tones are a concept for speakers of languages that do not have the tones in the first place.

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