Tonal language in the context of "Tone pattern"

Wolof (/ˈwoʊlɒf/ WOH-lof; Wolof làkk, وࣷلࣷفْ لࣵکّ) also known as Senegalese is a Niger–Congo language spoken by the Wolof people in much of the West African subregion of Senegambia that is split between the countries of Senegal, The Gambia and Mauritania. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Unlike most other languages of its family, Wolof is not a tonal language.

Wolof is the most widely spoken language in Senegal, spoken natively by the Wolof people (40% of the population) but also by most other Senegalese as a second language. Wolof dialects vary geographically and between rural and urban areas. The principal dialect of Dakar, for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French, and Arabic.

Thai, or Central Thai (historically Siamese; Thai: ภาษาไทย), is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by the Central Thai, Mon, Lao Wiang, and Phuan people in Central Thailand and the vast majority of Thai Chinese enclaves throughout the country. It is the sole official language of Thailand.

Thai is the most spoken of over 60 languages of Thailand by both number of native and overall speakers. Over half of its vocabulary is derived from or borrowed from Pali, Sanskrit, Mon and Old Khmer. It is a tonal and analytic language. Thai has a complex orthography and system of relational markers. Spoken Thai, depending on standard sociolinguistic factors such as age, gender, class, spatial proximity, and the urban/rural divide, is partly mutually intelligible with Lao, Isan, and some fellow Thai topolects. These languages are written with slightly different scripts, but are linguistically similar and effectively form a dialect continuum.

Vocal range is the range of pitches that a human voice can phonate. A common application is within the context of singing, where it is used as a defining characteristic for classifying singing voices into voice types. It is also a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech-language pathology, particularly in relation to the study of tonal languages and certain types of vocal disorders, although it has little practical application in terms of speech.

The Kra–Dai languages (/ˈkrɑː.daɪ/ KRAH-dy, also known as Tai–Kadai /ˈtaɪ.kəˌdaɪ/ TIE-kə-DYE and Daic /ˈdaɪ.ɪk/ DYE-ik), are a language family in mainland Southeast Asia, southern China, and northeastern India. All languages in the family are tonal, including Thai and Lao, the national languages of Thailand and Laos, respectively. Around 93 million people speak Kra–Dai languages; 60% of those speak Thai. Ethnologue lists 95 languages in the family, with 62 of these being in the Tai branch.

Otomi (/ˌoʊtəˈmiː/ OH-tə-MEE; Spanish: Otomí [otoˈmi]) is an Oto-Pamean language spoken by approximately 240,000 indigenous Otomi people in the central altiplano region of Mexico. Otomi consists of several closely related languages, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The word Hñähñu [hɲɑ̃hɲṹ] has been proposed as an endonym, but since it represents the usage of a single dialect, it has not gained wide currency. Linguists have classified the modern dialects into three dialect areas: the Northwestern dialects are spoken in Querétaro, Hidalgo and Guanajuato; the Southwestern dialects are spoken in the State of Mexico; and the Eastern dialects are spoken in the highlands of Veracruz, Puebla, and eastern Hidalgo and villages in Tlaxcala and Mexico states.

Like all other Oto-Manguean languages, Otomi is a tonal language, and most varieties distinguish three tones. Nouns are marked only for possessor; the plural number is marked with a definite article and a verbal suffix, and some dialects keep dual number marking. There is no case marking. Verb morphology is either fusional or agglutinating depending on the analysis. In verb inflection, infixation, consonant mutation, and apocope are prominent processes. The number of irregular verbs is large. A class of morphemes cross-references the grammatical subject in a sentence. These morphemes can be analysed as either proclitics or prefixes and mark tense, aspect and mood. Verbs are inflected for either direct object or dative object (but not for both simultaneously) by suffixes. Grammar also distinguishes between inclusive 'we' and exclusive 'we'.

The Vietnamese alphabet (Vietnamese: chữ Quốc ngữ, chữ Nôm: 𡨸國語, lit. 'script of the national language', IPA: [t͡ɕɨ˦ˀ˥ kuək̚˧˦ ŋɨ˦ˀ˥]) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It is a Latin-based script whose spelling conventions are derived from the orthography of Romance languages such as Portuguese, Italian, and French. It was originally developed by Francisco de Pina and other Jesuit missionaries in the early 17th century.

The Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, including 7 letters using four diacritics: ⟨ă⟩, ⟨â⟩, ⟨ê⟩, ⟨ô⟩, ⟨ơ⟩, ⟨ư⟩, and ⟨đ⟩. There are an additional 5 diacritics used to designate tone (as in ⟨à⟩, ⟨á⟩, ⟨ả⟩, ⟨ã⟩, and ⟨ạ⟩). The complex vowel system and the large number of letters with diacritics, which can stack twice on the same letter (e.g. nhất meaning 'first'), makes it easy to distinguish the Vietnamese orthography from other writing systems that use the Latin alphabet.

Khams Tibetan (Tibetan: ཁམས་སྐད, Wylie: Khams skad, THL: Khamké), Kham dialect is the Tibetic language used by the majority of the people in Kham. Khams is one of the three branches of the traditional classification of Tibetic languages (the other two being Amdo Tibetan and Ü-Tsang Tibetan). In terms of mutual intelligibility, Khams could communicate at a basic level with the Ü-Tsang branch (including Lhasa Tibetan).

Both Khams Tibetan and Lhasa Tibetan evolve to not preserve the word-initial consonant clusters, which makes them very far from Classical Tibetan, especially when compared to the more conservative Amdo Tibetan. Also, Kham and Lhasa Tibetan evolved to be tonal, which Classical Tibetan was not. Khams Tibetan has 80% lexical similarity with Central Tibetan.

Dan /ˈdæn/ is a Southern Mande language spoken primarily in Ivory Coast (~800,000 speakers) and Liberia (150,000–200,000 speakers). There is also a population of about 800 speakers in Guinea. Dan is a tonal language, with 9 to 11 contour and register tones, depending on the dialect.

Alternative names for the language include Yacouba or Yakubasa, Gio, Gyo, Gio-Dan, and Da. Dialects are Gio (Liberian Dan), Gweetaawu (Eastern Dan), Blowo (Western Dan), and Kla. Kla is evidently a distinct language.