Re: tonal languages

H.S. writes:

>Steg Belsky wrote:
>  "Douglas Koller, Latin & French"
>  (remember, there is technically no tone 6)
>
>  > How is there no tone 6?
>
>Historical accident, I think. Didn't it come from some Hokkien poem, which
>describes 8 tones but two of them are identical?
Ya beat me to it :)

There is a mnemonic couplet of four characters each (I don't remember
the poem).

Tone1, Tone 2, Tone 3, Tone 4
Tone 5, Tone 6, Tone 7, Tone 8

However, Tone 2 and Tone 6 are identical in modern speech (though
there may be yin/yang distinctions, making the distinction worthwhile
to keep on the historico-linguistic level; on the other hand, with
dictionaries at home, I could be just blowing hypothetical smoke).

Kou