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Re:China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon by dilemma on Tuesday December 13, 2016 @07:36PM (#13172757)
All languages have tones. See how the 'a' sound is different in 'car' and 'can', or 'make'?
Re:China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon by grzm on Tuesday December 13, 2016 @07:59PM (#13172886)
That's not the same thing. That's an inconsistent mapping of sounds (phonemes) to symbols (and one of the reasons English can be so frustrating to learn). Tones when referring to linguistics are changes in pitch to distinguish words. Given that these differences in pitch (tonemes) are created with the same system (mouth, tongue, lips, vocal chords, &c) as phonemes, you can argue that they're the same, but it's an important enough distinction that linguists find it meaningful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics)

Re:China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon by lacampbell on Tuesday December 13, 2016 @07:55PM (#13172865)
That's not a tone in the sense of how mandarin has them. A better approximation of tones in english is saying these phrases out loud:

"Yes!" "Yes?" "Yes..."