Tone
Tone is the high, low, falling or rising sound of a word. There are five different patterns of tone in Bongo nouns.
Underlying tone | Surface tone | Number of two syllable nouns | ||
H | High | ráká | shoe | 82 |
L | Low | làndà | stone | 103 |
LH | Low-High | mèhé | spear | 60 |
LHL | Low-High-Low | gꜜánjá | metal | 79 |
HL | High-Low | gbájâ | comb | 4 |
The tone of a word that we hear is called its surface tone. The surface tone of a word changes according to the tone of other words in the sentence. Each word also has underlying tone. This is the original tone assigned to a word which can be different than the tone we hear. The underlying tone of a word is the same in every sentence, but the surface tone of a word can change from one sentence to the next. In the dictionary, the surface tone of nouns is given in-between brackets such as maya [mꜜáyá] yam, and the underline tone is shown in the tone field (of the non-printed dictionary) as letters such as LHL.