How are tone languages sung?
[Previous] [Next] [Index] [–markrose] It varies. Tones are basically ignored in Mandarin Chinese songs, for instance. (Does this make them hard to understand? Often, yes.) However, Cantonese songs are generally written in such a way as to preserve the relative pitch of successive syllables. E.g. a low tone following a high tone will be on a lower note. For more, see Marjorie Chan’s paper on Tone and Melody in Cantonese.
