Your first reaction might well be one of puzzlement: Why shouldn’t it be possible to sing in Mandarin? What’s the issue here?

The issue, of course, is tones. As you probably know, Chinese in general — and Mandarin in particular — is a tonal language. That means that two entirely different words can have exactly the same phonemes in the same order but are still pronounced differently; for instance, one syllable may have a rising tone and the other a high steady tone so they are not homophones. Example: as shown in the video below, four distinct words that are all pronounced /mi/ in Mandarin are not homophones; /mi/ means “meow” if spoken with a high steady tone, “confused” with a rising tone, “rice” with a falling and then rising tone, and finally “secret” with a falling tone, as shown both graphically and auditorily in the video.

So the issue about singing is probably obvious at this point (the issue, not the solution). What if the music requires a rising tone but the language requires a falling tone? Does /mi/ then mean “confused” or “secret”? (And Mandarin is far from the only case or the most complicated: many tonal languages have five or even seven or more tones.)

Well, the answer is simple and obvious.

Hah! It turns out that it actually is neither simple nor obvious. Watch and listen to the video. And don’t stop at the two-minute point, where it seems to be done! There’s more to come in the next ten minutes.

Categories: Linguistics