This really may be an absolutely stupid question, but it’s been bugging me for a long time. Mandarin for instance is highly dependent on tone changes to say different words, but (pop)music takes away that ability because it takes away from the tune and melody. How does anybody make music that makes sense? Or can my western ears not pick up the small tonal changes they sing?
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In the case of mandarin, when learning the new words the tones are often exaggerated so the learner gets an idea which is the correct tone inflection to use. However in actual use the tones aren’t that heavy. In fact there are plenty of native speakers with accents that dont even use the correct tone inflections. But we can sort of guess which word they used based on the context of the other words in the sentence or phrase. As long as the word sort of sounds right, native speakers can figure out what you’re saying.
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