I want to learn Chinese and have a Chinese co-worker but she just laughs when I repeat the sounds she's making. She says I'm saying something entirely different because of the inflection.
Tags: co worker, inflection
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November 9th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Most Chinese languages depend on tonality. The same word can have very different meanings depending on its tonality, whether it is with a rising, level or falling tone, and on its pitch, high or low. Inflection in languages is something else, rather like the differences between "I want. he wants, we wanted." Chinese has even less of this than we do
This website has a good, if longer discussion
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761565543/chinese_language.html