Gail Shaw wrote:
> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
> news:47a2f325$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> To speak French, you have to actually speak in a
>> French accent, or nobody knows what you're saying. Which actually makes
>> sense, really...
> 
> Try Thai. It's a tonal language. The same sounding word has different
> meanings if you say it with a high pitch, medium pitch, low pitch, rising or
> falling.

Chinese is the same way.

In other languages, saying a vowel in a word quickly or slowly changes 
the meaning of the word.  This is originally where short and long vowels 
came from in English, but over the course of centuries of slow 
alteration the short and long versions of each vowel acquired different 
tonal qualities and lost the difference in actual length.

Regards,
John

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