Pitch accent in the context of "Central Franconian dialects"

Ancient Greek phonology is the reconstructed phonology or pronunciation of Ancient Greek. This article mostly deals with the pronunciation of the standard Attic dialect of the fifth century BC, used by Plato and other Classical Greek writers, and touches on other dialects spoken at the same time or earlier. The pronunciation of Ancient Greek is not known from direct observation, but determined from other types of evidence. Some details regarding the pronunciation of Attic Greek and other Ancient Greek dialects are unknown, but it is generally agreed that Attic Greek had certain features not present in English or Modern Greek, such as a three-way distinction between voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops (such as /b p pʰ/, as in English "bot, spot, pot"); a distinction between single and double consonants and short and long vowels in most positions in a word; and a word accent that involved pitch.

Koine Greek, the variety of Greek used after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, is sometimes included in Ancient Greek, but its pronunciation is described in Koine Greek phonology. For disagreements with the reconstruction given here, see below.

The Mandinka language (Mandinka kaŋo; Ajami: مَانْدِينْكَا كَانْجَوْ; Glottocode: mand1436; ISO 639-3: mnk), also known as the Gambian or Mandingo, is a Mande language spoken by the Mandinka people of northern Guinea-Bissau, the Casamance region of Senegal, and The Gambia where it is one of the principal languages.

Mandinka belongs to the Manding branch of Mande and is similar to Kassonke but with only 5 instead of 7 vowels, due to lacking the ATR distinction. The varieties spoken in the West Northern bank region in the Gambia borders on a pitch accent due to its proximity with non-tonal neighboring languages like Wolof.

Penult is a linguistics term for the second-to-last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of penultimate, which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main stress falls on the penult in such English words as banána, and Mississíppi, and just about all words ending in -ic such as músic, frántic, and phonétic. Occasionally, "penult" refers to the last word but one of a sentence.

The terms are often used in reference to languages like Latin and Ancient Greek, whose position of the pitch accent or stress of a word falls only on one of the last three syllables, and sometimes in discussing poetic meter.

Blackfoot, also called Niitsíʼpowahsin (ᖹᒧᐧᑲᖷᐦᓱᐡ) or Siksiká (/ˈsɪksəkə/ SIK-sə-kə; Blackfoot: [sɪksiká], ᓱᖽᐧᖿ), is an Algonquian language spoken by the Blackfoot or Niitsitapi people, who currently live in the northwestern plains of North America. There are four dialects, three of which are spoken in Alberta, Canada, and one of which is spoken in the United States: Siksiká / ᓱᖽᐧᖿ (Blackfoot), to the southeast of Calgary, Alberta; Kainai / ᖿᐟᖻ (Blood, Many Chiefs), spoken in Alberta between Cardston and Lethbridge; Aapátohsipikani / ᖳᑫᒪᐦᓱᑯᖿᖹ (Northern Piegan), to the west of Fort MacLeod which is Brocket (Piikani) and Aamsskáápipikani / ᖳᐢᐧᖿᑯᑯᖿᖹ (Southern Piegan), in northwestern Montana. The name Blackfoot probably comes from the blackened soles of the leather shoes that the people wore.

There is a distinct difference between Old Blackfoot (also called High Blackfoot), the dialect spoken by many older speakers, and New Blackfoot (also called Modern Blackfoot), the dialect spoken by younger speakers. Among the Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is relatively divergent in phonology and lexicon. The language has a fairly small phoneme inventory, consisting of 11 basic consonants and three basic vowels that have contrastive length counterparts. Blackfoot is a pitch accent language. Blackfoot language has been declining in the number of native speakers and is classified as either a threatened or endangered language, depending on the source used.

In linguistics, speech synthesis, and music, the pitch contour of a sound is a function or curve that tracks the perceived pitch of the sound over time. Pitch contour may include multiple sounds utilizing many pitches, and can relate the frequency function at one point in time to the frequency function at a later point.

It is fundamental to the linguistic concept of tone, where the pitch or change in pitch of a speech unit over time affects the semantic meaning of a sound. It also indicates intonation in pitch accent languages.

Central or Middle Franconian (German: mittelfränkische Dialekte, mittelfränkische Mundarten, mittelfränkische Mundart, Mittelfränkisch) refers to the following continuum of West Central German dialects:

• Ripuarian (spoken in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in eastern Belgium, and the southeastern tip of Dutch Limburg)
• Moselle Franconian (in German Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, in eastern Belgium and French Lorraine)
  • Luxembourgish (in Luxembourg and the adjacent areas of Belgium and France)

Luxembourgish is often included within Moselle Franconian, but sometimes regarded as a separate group. The German-speaking Community of Belgium comprises both Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian dialects. The Central Franconian dialects are part of a continuum stretching from the Low Franconian language area in the northwest to the Rhine Franconian dialects in the southeast.Along with Limburgish, Central Franconian has a simple tone system called pitch accent.

Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language with four national standards. The Eastern Herzegovinian Neo-Shtokavian dialect forms the basis for Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian (the four national standards). Standard Serbo-Croatian has 30 phonemes according to the traditional analysis: 25 consonants and 5 vowels (or 10, if long vowels are analysed as distinct phonemes). It features four types of pitch accent, although it is not the characteristics of all dialects.

Angel Danish (German: Angeldänisch, Danish: Angeldansk or Angelbomål) was a variant of South Jutlandic spoken in the regions of Angeln and Schwansen in Southern Schleswig partly until the 20th century. Both landscapes belonged to the Danish Duchy of Schleswig until 1864, since then to Germany.

Characteristic of Angel Danish was, among other things, the tonal pitch accent (like in the Danish dialects of Als and Langeland as well as in Swedish and Norwegian) and the fricative for the hard G (like today in the Angel Low German). There were also elevations from /o/ to /u/ (instead of Danish honning it was hunne in Angel Danish, cf. Icelandic hunang). There were also older Nordic forms such as hvénner (German wenn, Danish hvornår, Old Norse hvenær), mjølk (German Milch, Danish mælk, Old Norse mjólk) or gut (German Junge, Danish dreng, Norwegian gutt). However, there were also adoptions from German such as teller (Danish tallerken) or hunger (Danish sult).