Tonal language or pitch accent language. Are tonal languages and pitch accent languages the same? Are Nordic languages tonal languages? Or there is a difference betwen the two terms?

Roney Assis Souza

Mar 20, 2017 5:46 PM

Comments · 2

Tonal languages have a tone on (almost) every syllable. Pitch accent languages only have tones on some syllables. For example in Serbian, only one syllable in each (longer) word is stressed, and only the stressed syllable has a tone. I'm quite sure that Swedish has pitch accent, I'm not sure about Norwegian.

March 20, 2017

Thank you Katarina. So, Swedish cannot be considered a tonal language.

March 20, 2017

Roney Assis Souza

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