Some languages like Chinese (I think?) are tonal, where a word in a higher pitch will mean something different than the same word in a lower pitch. If this is the case, how do they create songs that sound “normal”? Is the tonal aspect ignored somehow or does it just make songwriting like 3 times as hard?
In: Other
They generally ignore the tones when translating a western song. In a native song the tones are there but the tune is completely eastern and allows for it.
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This question has been asked and answered here several times, such as these:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ua1h6/eli5_in_tonal_languages_like_mandarin_how_do_you/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ua1h6/eli5_in_tonal_languages_like_mandarin_how_do_you/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q24dy/eli5_since_chinese_is_a_tonal_language_how_can/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q24dy/eli5_since_chinese_is_a_tonal_language_how_can/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xx7lr/eli5_how_do_people_sing_in_tonal_languages_if_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xx7lr/eli5_how_do_people_sing_in_tonal_languages_if_the/)
There’s a lot of great info there, check it out!
**TLDR: Usually you sing the melody, omitting the tonal info, and the listener can (usually) tell what word you mean from context so it works fine.**
For the lazy, here’s a top answer from the above links:
>Native Mandarin speaker here. I have some knowledge of other dialects like Cantonese as well.
>Even though Chinese is a tonal language these tones come secondary to the melody of the song. However, speakers will still be able to understand the exact meaning of the song by the pronunciation of the words even without the tonal information. Here, let me give you an example:
>Take a look at [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4_hhPM-6RU&feature=youtube_gdata_player) (thanks for the help!) 没那么简单。 The first five words of the song should be pronounced Mei2 na4 me jian3 dan1 in Mandarin Chinese – but if you take a quick listen you’ll realise that this isn’t the case in the song!!
>A poster here mentioned context – I would respectfully like to clarify what this context involved means. These five words combine to form a completely unambiguous meaning, even though every single word taken individually is a total homophone. For a more Anglo-centric example, imagine the song lyric “I can’t BEAR with you anymore” – no English speaker would confuse that with the four legged furry animal!! Similarly, five very ambiguous individual words come together to provide a clear an unambiguous meaning.
>That’s how speakers of tonal languages distinguish meaning without tone! The first top level reply by /kamiyamato is Not Completely Accurate since there is no REQUIREMENT nor is it necessary for the tones to roughly approximate spoken tones or end higher than they begin in order for speakers to infer the correct and unambiguous meaning. /kamiyamato is also completely erroneous in claiming that most words are made up of only one character, because there are literally hundreds of thousands of words which are made up by joining two or more characters together forming a word with a completely different meaning 🙂
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On this subject, you can listen to **Sa Ding Ding** song “**alive**” in two versions, Mandarin and Tibetan Sanskrit. Same music, different tonal languages.
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