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>I did learn some Japanese, grammar and all at some point so I appreciate your comments and also agree with them. I do not know Mandarin or Thai or tonal languages so I don't know the difficulty.
It is just so conceptually different to have the pitch/tone of a word determine its meaning. The word 'ma' in Thai can mean mother, dog, horse, or come depending on the tone. Thai has only 5 tones. Lao has 7 or 9. I think Mandarin has 5 and Cantonese 9. I've never been able to hear the distinction of more than 7 and then only in controlled drills. You can get it from context, usually, but when speaking it is unlikely you'll get it right except by accident <g> unless you've spoken it from childhood.
We are so used to changing the pitch of a word to inflect meaning to the sentence that it is a hard habit to break.
It also explains why vocal music in Chinese is really awful to Western ears. <g>
I am told there is a sound in Arabic that if you don't start making in before you are 7 you will never get it correct.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
