Re: Phonological Relay Proposal

"SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:
> Certainly.  My chinese friend Xingxing always tells me my tones are all
> wrong, but she can understand me.
Which Chinese?  Mandarin?  I read that in Mandarin pop songs, tone is
typically ignored, while in Cantonese pop songs, it is not ignored.  My
question for the Siniticists here is - does tone have less functional
load in Mandarin than in Cantonese?  I know that Mandarin has a stronger
tendency to use disyllables (historically compounds of monosyllables),
does that make tone generally redundnant, or at least, relative to other
"dialects"?

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