15-03-2026, 11:33 PM
The neutral tone is barely used in Mandarin, words like 'ma' and 'le'. Alternatively when an inherent tone is not uttered.
It is common in Thai and there are other common SE Asian languages with 5 or 6 tones.
Furthermore, in Thai, vowels can be short or long, leading to change of meaning.
Example: short khao (falling tone) is the verb to enter. long khao (falling tone) is the noun rice.
Short syllables almost exclusively have the high or low tone, so this leads to seven combinations, but also here not all seven will exist for each syllable. In fact this would be rare.
I do not know how all this is in Cantonese or Vietnamese.
All this just to say that the math is not so straightforward.
It is common in Thai and there are other common SE Asian languages with 5 or 6 tones.
Furthermore, in Thai, vowels can be short or long, leading to change of meaning.
Example: short khao (falling tone) is the verb to enter. long khao (falling tone) is the noun rice.
Short syllables almost exclusively have the high or low tone, so this leads to seven combinations, but also here not all seven will exist for each syllable. In fact this would be rare.
I do not know how all this is in Cantonese or Vietnamese.
All this just to say that the math is not so straightforward.
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