The part that isn't spelled
Every language uses pitch, loudness and timing for something — but not for the same thing. In Cantonese and Mandarin pitch is lexical: it belongs to the word. In English, Spanish, Italian and German it is stress that changes words. In Georgian pitch does neither — it marks questions, and nothing else. In French there is no word stress at all. Getting this layer wrong is what makes a sentence with perfect vowels still sound foreign.
| Language | Pitch does… | Stress does… | Rhythm |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgian | marks questions only | nothing contrastive | Syllable-timed, heavy clusters |
| English | intonation only | changes words | Stress-timed |
| French | intonation only | nothing — no word stress | Syllable-timed |
| Spanish | intonation only | changes words | Syllable-timed |
| Italian | intonation only | changes words | Syllable-timed + long consonants |
| German | intonation only | changes words | Stress-timed |
| Malay | intonation only | nothing contrastive | Syllable-timed |
| Japanese | intonation only | nothing contrastive | Mora-timed |
| Mandarin | carries the word (tone) | nothing contrastive | Syllable-timed |
| Cantonese | carries the word (tone) | nothing contrastive | Syllable-timed |
Georgian — No tone at all — pitch is reserved for asking questions
Pitch
Georgian is not tonal: no word changes meaning because of its pitch. Pitch does one job instead, and it is a big one — a yes/no question is marked by INTONATION ALONE. Georgian does not invert the word order, has no question particle like Mandarin 吗, and keeps the same words in the same order; the sentence simply rises at the end. Get the intonation wrong and a question becomes a statement.
Stress
Weak and non-contrastive. Two-syllable words take it on the first syllable; longer words tend toward the third-from-last. No pair of Georgian words is distinguished by stress alone, which is why dictionaries do not mark it. To an English ear Georgian can sound evenly stressed, almost flat — that is correct, not a lack of expression.
Rhythm
Syllable-timed-ish, with famously heavy consonant clusters (გვფრცქვნი) that take time to get through without inserting vowels. The vowels never reduce to schwa the way English ones do.
Hear it
The ◈ button is the synthesiser drawing the pitch contour directly — same words, different melody, which is exactly the point. ▶ uses a real voice if your device has one.
| Pattern | Sentence | What to listen for | Hear |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statement — falling | ის მოდის. is modis. | "He is coming." The pitch settles down at the end. | |
| Question — rising | ის მოდის? is modis? | "Is he coming?" Same words, same order — only the final rise makes it a question. | |
| Question word — falling | ვინ მოდის? vin modis? | With a question word (ვინ 'who') the rise is not needed — it falls, like a statement. English does the same: "Who's coming?" does not rise. |
English — Stress is spelling — move it and you change the word
Pitch
No lexical tone, but intonation carries an enormous amount: rise for yes/no questions, fall for statements and wh-questions, and a whole grammar of contrast ('I didn't say SHE took it').
Stress
Contrastive, and unmarked in writing — the single most common cause of not being understood. Dozens of noun/verb pairs differ only in where the stress goes, and every unstressed vowel collapses to /ə/.
Rhythm
Stress-timed: stressed syllables come at roughly even intervals and everything between them is squeezed. This is why 'a cup of tea' becomes /ə kʌp ə ˈtiː/ and why learners who give every syllable equal weight sound wrong even with perfect vowels.
Minimal pairs by stress
| One | The other | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| record a record (noun) — REcord “That is a new record.” | record to record (verb) — reCORD “I want to record this.” | Same six letters. Stress on the first syllable = the thing; on the second = the action. The rule holds for dozens of pairs. |
| present a present (noun) — PREsent “She gave me a present.” | present to present (verb) — preSENT “I will present the results.” | Also: object / object, contract / contract, permit / permit, increase / increase. |
| desert desert (the sand) — DEsert “They crossed the desert.” | dessert dessert (the pudding) — desSERT “We had ice cream for dessert.” | Spelled differently, but the difference you HEAR is which syllable is strong. |
The pairs that share a spelling are played inside a sentence — a voice reading the bare word has to guess which one you meant, exactly as a reader would.
French — No word stress at all — the group is the unit
Pitch
Intonation only, at the level of the phrase. A yes/no question can be marked by a final rise alone (Tu viens ?), which is why the rise matters more in French than the est-ce que you were taught.
Stress
This is the one that surprises everyone: French words have NO fixed stress. Prominence lands on the last syllable of the rhythmic GROUP, not of the word — so the same word is stressed differently depending on where it sits. 'Un chocolat' stresses -lat; 'un chocolat chaud' moves it to chaud and the word chocolat loses it entirely. There are no French minimal pairs by stress, because there is nothing to contrast.
Rhythm
Syllable-timed: every syllable takes roughly the same time and vowels do not reduce. Hearing a French speaker give equal weight to English syllables — and an English speaker stress the first syllable of French words — is this difference in both directions.
Watch the stress move
| One | The other | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| un chocolat stress on the LAST syllable of the group: choco-LAT | un chocolat chaud the group grew — now it is choco-lat-CHAUD | The word did not change; the group did. This is why 'French has stress on the last syllable' is a half-truth — it is the last syllable of the phrase. |
Spanish — Stress is contrastive — and the written accent tells you where
Pitch
No lexical tone. Intonation marks questions, helped by the opening ¿ so you know a rise is coming before you start reading aloud.
Stress
Fully contrastive, and mercifully written: if a word breaks the default pattern (stress on the second-to-last syllable for vowel/-n/-s endings, on the last otherwise) it carries an accent. Three-way minimal sets are common and the accent is the only thing separating them.
Rhythm
Syllable-timed, with five pure vowels that never reduce — the clarity that makes Spanish easy to hear and hard to speak fast.
Minimal pairs by stress
| One | The other | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| término term (noun) — TÉR-mi-no | terminó he/she finished — ter-mi-NÓ “Él terminó el trabajo.” | And in the middle: termino 'I finish'. Three words, one spelling skeleton, three stress positions. |
| papa potato / the Pope | papá dad | One syllable of difference in prominence, and you have changed the subject entirely. |
| hablo I speak | habló he/she spoke | Present or past, decided by stress. This pattern runs through the whole verb system. |
Italian — Stress is contrastive but usually unwritten — you learn it per word
Pitch
No lexical tone; intonation does questions, and Italian leans on it heavily since word order often does not change.
Stress
Contrastive. The default is the second-to-last syllable, and the accent is only written when the stress falls on the LAST one (città, perché). Words stressed on the third-from-last (àncora, prìncipi) are common and unmarked — the dictionary is the only way to know.
Rhythm
Syllable-timed, with the extra wrinkle that double consonants are genuinely held longer (palla vs pala) — length is doing work here that stress does elsewhere.
Minimal pairs by stress
| One | The other | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| ancora again / still — an-CO-ra | àncora anchor — ÀN-co-ra | The famous pair. Both are spelled ancora in normal writing; only context and stress separate them. |
| principi principles — prin-CÌ-pi | principi princes — PRÌN-ci-pi | Identical in print. You are expected to work it out from the sentence. |
| capitano captain — ca-pi-TA-no | capitano they happen — ca-PÌ-ta-no | A noun or a verb, decided entirely by which syllable you lean on. |
German — Stress decides whether the prefix leaves the verb
Pitch
No lexical tone. Intonation marks questions, but German also inverts the verb, so the rise is doing less work than in Georgian or French.
Stress
Contrastive in a very German way: with separable-vs-inseparable prefix verbs, the stress tells you which grammar you are in — and therefore what the sentence means. Otherwise stress sits on the stem syllable, and the unstressed prefixes (be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent-) never take it.
Rhythm
Stress-timed like English, with strong reduction in unstressed syllables (-en → /n̩/) and a glottal stop before vowel-initial words that gives German its clipped edge: 'am Abend' = /am ˈʔaːbn̩t/.
Minimal pairs by stress
| One | The other | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Er fährt das Schild um. ÚMfahren — he knocks the sign over (separable, stress on um-) | Er umfährt das Schild. umFÁHREN — he drives around the sign (inseparable, stress on -fährt) | The same verb, opposite outcomes for the sign. Stress is the only spoken clue — and it is why the prefix physically moves in one and not the other. |
| Ich übersetze den Text. überSÉTZEN — I translate the text | Ich setze über. ÜBERsetzen — I ferry across | Same pattern: unstressed prefix = figurative and inseparable; stressed prefix = literal and separable. |
Malay — Nothing hidden — no tone, and stress that never changes a word
Pitch
No lexical tone. Questions are marked by particles (-kah) or plain intonation; the rise is optional rather than load-bearing.
Stress
Light and non-contrastive, usually on the second-to-last syllable — and it shifts when suffixes are added, without any effect on meaning. No Malay pair is distinguished by stress, which is one of the reasons Malay is regularly called the most approachable major language to pronounce.
Rhythm
Syllable-timed and even. Combined with a small sound inventory and no consonant clusters, this is why Malay is easy to hear accurately from day one.
Japanese — Pitch ACCENT — not tone, but it still changes words
Pitch
Japanese sits between the tone languages and the stress languages, and gets its own name for it: pitch accent. A word has at most ONE place where the pitch drops, and where that drop falls is part of the word. 箸 hashi (drop after ha) is chopsticks; 橋 hashi (drop after shi) is a bridge; 端 hashi (no drop) is the edge. Unlike Cantonese there is no contour to learn per syllable — only 'where does it fall, if at all'. Tokyo and Osaka disagree about the answer for many words, and both are correct.
Stress
No stress in the English sense — syllables are not louder or longer, so a Japanese speaker reading English tends to flatten it, and an English speaker reading Japanese tends to hammer syllables that should be even.
Rhythm
MORA-timed, not syllable-timed: every beat gets equal time, and ん, っ and the second half of a long vowel are each a full beat of their own. とうきょう Tōkyō is four beats; きって kitte 'stamp' is three, and kite (kite 'come') is two — different words. This is the single most important thing to get right, ahead of any vowel.
Hear it
The ◈ button is the synthesiser drawing the pitch contour directly — same words, different melody, which is exactly the point. ▶ uses a real voice if your device has one.
| Pattern | Sentence | What to listen for | Hear |
|---|---|---|---|
| 箸 hashi — chopsticks (drop after HA) | はし hashi | High then low. Tokyo speakers call this 頭高 atamadaka, 'head-high'. | |
| 橋 hashi — bridge (drop after SHI) | はし hashi | Low then high — and the drop lands on the particle that follows: hashi GA. | |
| 端 hashi — edge (no drop) | はし hashi | Flat: the accentless pattern 平板 heiban. Three identical syllables, three words. |
Minimal pairs by stress
| One | The other | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| きって kitte — stamp (3 beats: ki-t-te) | きて kite — come! (2 beats: ki-te) | The っ is a full beat of silence. Skip it and you have asked for a different word entirely — length, not stress, is doing the work. |
| おばあさん obāsan — grandmother (5 beats) | おばさん obasan — aunt (4 beats) | One extra beat of vowel. Getting it wrong ages someone by a generation. |
Mandarin — Pitch is lexical — see the tone lab
🎵 Pitch belongs to the word here. Open the tone lab →
Pitch
Four tones plus a neutral one; the pitch IS part of the word. Intonation still exists on top (a question can raise the whole phrase) but it can never overwrite a tone.
Stress
Stress is a matter of length and clarity rather than pitch: a stressed syllable holds its full tone, an unstressed one goes neutral and short.
Rhythm
Syllable-timed, one syllable per character, with tone sandhi reshaping sequences (third + third → second + third).
Cantonese — Pitch is lexical — see the tone lab
🎵 Pitch belongs to the word here. Open the tone lab →
Pitch
Six pitch shapes (nine traditional categories). Because the tone space is already crowded, Cantonese leans on sentence-final particles rather than intonation to carry mood — 呀, 喇, 咩, 囉 do the job a rising pitch does in English.
Stress
No contrastive stress; prominence comes from particles and from changed tone (變調) lifting a syllable to tone 2.
Rhythm
Syllable-timed, with checked syllables (-p -t -k) noticeably shorter than open ones.
Why this page exists
It started as a request for a tone lab for Georgian. Georgian has no tones — but it does have a prosodic system worth a page: it is the only language here where a yes/no question is marked by pitch and nothing else. Sorting out which languages use pitch for words, which use stress for words, and which use neither turned out to be more useful than pretending they all do the same thing.