Comment on Is there a culture/country that doesn't have sarcasm in its language?

• Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Non-tonal simply means the denotation isn’t carried by tone.

  John McWhorter has a few courses in The Great Courses catalog about language - its pretty fascinating stuff. He covers things like tonal languages, and how even for a linguist like himself, they’re tough to learn.

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• ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  True, otherwise it would be monotone, though some people speak in a monotone voice that can put you to sleep.

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  • DKKHGGGj@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Me as a native finnish speaker making every english speaker in a meeting unsure of my meanig

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    • ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Can you explain please?

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      • jbrains@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Finnish people are stereotyped to sound monotone, enunciate clearly, speak directly, and tersely. This makes them seem unfriendly.

        And then they expect you to stay 3 m away from them at all times, which intensifies their seeming unfriendliness.

        At least these are the memes.

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      • DKKHGGGj@sopuli.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        As others explained, finnish is pretty flat and that carries to the other languages I speak. To english mostly, I refuse to speak swedish

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• lemming@anarchist.nexus ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  They absolutely do. Even within the same language, regional accents have different prosodies.
  I recall reading a Nature article about how neonatal babies have different prosodies based on their parents spoken language that they pick up prenatally! How nuts is that!? Brains are cool.

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  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Wow. Off to searching for articles in Nature! Hello rabbit hole…

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• lol_idk@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Huh

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