Tone Sandhi in English

Many people who are unfamiliar with tonal languages like Penang Hokkien struggle to master tones. We often say that English is a non-tonal language. In fact this is only partially true. I want to point out to you tone changes in English which, I hope can help you learn Penang Hokkien better.

If you observe English closely, you will realize that it tonal properties in how you pronounce the words, the same way as in Penang Hokkien. The difference is that words in English are always regular in its tone pattern. Rather than having five different types of tone changes, as in Penang Hokkien, English has only one.

You will notice that words of one syllable, when standalone, are usually pronounced in the Penang Hokkien 4th tone, for example tree4 , bird4 , road4 . If a word has two syllables, their syllables are uttered according to a 1-4 tone pattern, hence ap1ple4 , i1ron4 , care1ful4 . Words with three syllables follow the 1-1-4 pattern, pine1ap1ple4 , co1co1nut4 .

When two English words are placed together to form a compound, the final syllable of the preceding word changes from tone 4 to tone 1, the same as in Penang Hokkien.

bird1 cage4 , not bird4 cage4

ap1ple1 pie4 , not ap1ple4 pie4

co1co1nut1 tree4 , not co1co1nut4 tree4 .

As seen from the examples above, English observes a subset of the tonal rules that are apparent in Penang Hokkien, which is, tone 4 becomes tone 1. It is therefore much simpler than Penang Hokkien, where in addition to tone 4 becoming tone 1, also has words ending in tone 1 (which becomes tone 3), tone 2 (which becomes tone 3), tone 3 (which becomes tone 1) and tone 33 (which remains tone 33).

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