Tone
Dialects are classified as North Gyeongsang or South Gyeongsang based on pitch accent. North Gyeongsang has high tone, low tone (short vowel), and low tone (long vowel), whereas South Gyeongsang has high, mid, and low tone. For example, South Gyeongsang distinguishes sóni 'guest', sōni 'hand', and sòni 'grandchild'. Pitch accent plays a grammatical role as well, for example distinguishing causative and passive as in jép-pida 'make s.o. catch' and jepída 'be caught'.
In North Gyeongsang, any syllable may have pitch accent in the form of a high tone, as may the two initial syllables. For example, in trisyllabic words, there are four possible tone patterns:
- 메누리 ('daughter-in-law')
- 어무이 ('mother')
- 원어민 ('native speaker')
- 오래비 ('elder brother')
Read more about this topic: Gyeongsang Dialect
Famous quotes containing the word tone:
“It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: “Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think,” and the like.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“We often contradict an opinion when it is actually only the tone with which it was put forward that is uncongenial to us.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn’t prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C)