Chinese Music – It's Not Dead, It's Misunderstood…
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Project Kino (3/23/26)
From Alex Baumans:
Around the 6:00 (out of 18:10) mark there starts a discussion about how the tonal structure of Chinese influences songwriting and how that makes really catchy tunes difficult. One of the workarounds is of course switch to English.
This presentation is full of excellent insights and analysis, comparing Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and other languages / music. Far too much gratuitous flinging around of the "f" word for my taste.
Selected readings
- "The conundrum of singing with tones" (5/30/25) — with lengthy bibliography
- "Tones and intonation in Sinitic languages" (5/30/25)
- "When intonation overrides tone, part 6" (5/9/21) — and take a look at the previous 5 iterations of this series
Thomas said,
April 26, 2026 @ 9:33 am
While this is an interesting take on the topic, I think that most factors mentioned have not changed in recent years and, for some of them, do not even apply to Mandarin pop songs to the extent that it would be detrimental to the output volume and the (international) success of Chinese pop songs. Chinese music was mostly ballads forty years ago, and back then that wasn't a problem, but now it is? I am not buying any of this.
Joe said,
April 26, 2026 @ 9:48 am
Taiwanese pop music (in Mandarin) is widely enjoyed in many parts of the world, so maybe the relevant question is why that's so much more successful than mainland music in the same language.
Chas Belov said,
April 26, 2026 @ 7:21 pm
Urk, he uses the d-word ("dialect").
I consider it cultural imperialism to define whether a genre is successful by whether it's been successful around the world. Some examples of stuff I had to go hunting for:
– Jaui's pop songs in Mizo, a minority India language (many albums and singles)
– The whole amapiano and deep house genres from South Africa, usually in Zulu (dozens of albums being put out in these related genres for years)
– Thai, a tonal language, has a great rock scene (dozens of albums)
And ¿that business about C-pop switching to English? K-pop and J-pop songs do it all the time, as well as songs in other, non-Asian languages as well. That's about English's spread, not because it's needed for C-pop.
I think YouTubers feeling compelled to put out "X is dead" videos and other YouTubers feeling compelled to put out "No it's not" videos is proof that YouTube is dead. (j/k)
I've been constructing playlists in different languages and, while an appropriate song in an obscure language can be hard to find, there's a wealth of great music in hundreds of languages, including various topolects of Chinese. That they don't show up on Billboard's Hot 100 doesn't mean they're not successful.
English-language pop in the 90s was so bad that I stopped listening to them on the radio. And there's Sturgeon's Law, 90% of anything is crap.
And, oh, yeah, about Jay Chou's singing not being understandable, I've had trouble understanding some English song lyrics since I was a kid growing up in western Pennsylvania. That's why albums started coming with lyric sheets.
Chris Button said,
April 27, 2026 @ 7:55 pm
Some languages use lexical tone; all languages use intonational tone.
It's a shame the creator of the video does not seem aware of this fact. Otherwise, the video could have been insightful from a linguistic perspective (I don't buy his arguments about reasons for international popularity). I'd challenge him to try again and see what he finds out.
Also, for his purposes at least, Cantonese does not have nine lexical tones.
David Marjanović said,
April 28, 2026 @ 10:06 am
The extent varies, though – a lot. English routinely does things that would count as singing, not as speaking, in German. German, meanwhile, is no comparison to Hungarian, which pretty much only uses 3 or 2 pitches depending on the speaker; Finnish uses 2 or even just one, with stress marked by loudness alone for minutes at a time.
Chris Button said,
April 29, 2026 @ 11:33 am
@ David Marjanović
I think you might be confusing syllables bearing "stress" with syllables bearing "accent". They are related but distinct concepts.
Nelson Goering said,
April 29, 2026 @ 1:35 pm
"Thai, a tonal language, has a great rock scene (dozens of albums)"
Well, now I'm curious — any particular recommendations?
AntC said,
April 29, 2026 @ 4:35 pm
The dude at 4:15 seems within a millimetre of putting his finger on what suppresses artistic creativity. But then chickens out. Taiwan still has a vibrant music industry (much smaller than HK ever was, of course).
Chas Belov said,
April 29, 2026 @ 11:21 pm
@Nelson Goering:
Thank you for asking, and yes.
I'll only link the first so as not to throw this post into moderation.
Potato, particularly the song "Soon"
AB Normal
So Cool
Big Ass (particularly their early album "Seven")
Loso
If you see a track or album by a name followed by a group name, for example, Sek Loso, that means a solo effort by member (Sek) of band (Loso), following Thai naming convention for solo artists who are known for their group membership.
Chas Belov said,
April 29, 2026 @ 11:36 pm
I've been listening to those groups since the 90s. For a more contemporary sound, alt-rock group Tilly Birds are my favorites.
Chas Belov said,
April 30, 2026 @ 2:51 am
Also, wanted to note my perception of English content in east and southeast Asian popular music that there doesn't seem to be much concern with rhyming. That said, I'm haven't really looked at it that closely, nor have I compared it to English content in European non-English countries or for that matter current English popular music. It's just a perception.
David Marjanović said,
April 30, 2026 @ 10:49 am
I don't understand what you're talking about in this case. Are you using one of these words for phonemic and the other for non-phonemic stress? (Hungarian and Two-Pitch Finnish stress the first syllable of every content word and mark this by both increased loudness and high pitch; One-Pitch Finnish uses loudness alone. Three-Pitch Hungarian adds a third, even higher pitch for sentence-level stress.)
Chris Button said,
April 30, 2026 @ 2:14 pm
A stressed syllable may attract a pitch change or a contour change, but it doesn't have to attract one.
David Marjanović said,
May 2, 2026 @ 10:11 am
It has to attract something – a pitch change, increased volume, increased length, or some combination – or it isn't stressed (at least not in a particular context; grammars about in rules that redistribute stress).
By "accented", do you specifically mean a pitch change?
Chris Button said,
May 2, 2026 @ 2:06 pm
It seems like you're still conflating things.
I recommend John Wells' book on intonation, which is an instructional book for non-linguists or linguistics students.
Chris Button said,
May 3, 2026 @ 6:50 am
@ David Marjanović
Apologies for short-changing you there and then sounding patronizing. It's sometimes hard on a forum to avoid unintentionally coming across in such a way, but I should have waited until I had more time to write a proper post.
I used to use the Wells book when teaching (English) intonation during a brief career hiatus back in the day. The book is the best thing I came across on the topic back then. I personally found the "London school" approach to intonation as by far the best (although I should admit that I'm a big fan of Wells' work on phonetics in general).
It's not that it "has to attract something". It already stands out as stressed. However, as a stressed syllable, it can "attract" an accentual or pitch/contour tone change.
Take the word acˈcel.e.ˈrate, which has two stressed syllables.
Sometimes the stress is mistakenly distinguished as a primary (ˈ) and a secondary (ˌ) stress as aˌcel.eˈrate.
In fact, there is no primary/secondary distinction. But, when uttered in isolation, the final stress attracts a sentence-ending falling tone (\) and the first stress may attract a pitch change (⁻) as a⁻cel.e\rate. It is the falling tone that is mistakenly identified as "primary" stress.
The pitch/contour tone changes can, and will very often, extend across unstressed syllables, but it is the stressed syllables that attract the changes.
But I would now recommend reading from the experts, such as Wells (and his London-school predecessors), rather than listening to me.
I have visited Finland, and I don't recall Finnish speakers sounding like monotone robots :)
But, more seriously, yes rearranging word order or using function words can avoid the need for certain tone changes.
Languages with lexical tone do of course pose more challenges when addressing intonational tone, and they often do make use of function words, etc.
Take péngyǒu (meaning "friend") in Beijing Mandarin. The second syllable may be unstressed and therefore lose its lexical tone as péngyou. You might compare it to how the unstressed syllables in a⁻cel.e\rate can't attract tone either.
Where it gets challenging is how intonational tone can then warp lexical tone. I recall reading some good stuff by Paul Kratochvil about Chinese intonation back in the day.
To be clear, I'm no expert. I just wanted to suggest that the creator of the video revisit the topic with an awareness that intonation also exists in Chinese.
Chris Button said,
May 3, 2026 @ 7:09 am
And for a relevant Japanese tidbit:
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=73453#comment-1641201
David Marjanović said,
May 3, 2026 @ 7:27 am
Fair enough, and I haven't read as much Wells as I'd like! (I was a regular reader of his phonetic blog.) And yes, there's intonation in Chinese.
What's utterly counterintuitive to me is that anyone would claim accelerate has primary stress on the last instead of the second syllable.
The stressed syllables still stand out – as louder if nothing else.
David Marjanović said,
May 3, 2026 @ 7:40 am
…my actual point was, before we both got sidetracked, that languages vary in how much, or to the best of my knowledge even whether, they do such things as sentence-ending falling tones or other intonational pitch changes.
German does all of them – but with noticeably smaller ranges than English…
Chris Button said,
May 3, 2026 @ 7:44 am
Yes! I just realized that I had made that blunder and came back to correct it. Your post beat me to it!
It is ac\cel.e.rate . I blame it on morning brain fog over here :)
A correct example would be ˈcon.deˈscend.ing (or as you often mistakenly find ˌcon.deˈscend.ing with the artificial primary/secondary distinction).
That would then give you ⁻con.de\scend.ing
Chris Button said,
May 3, 2026 @ 8:19 am
Actually, I think I was thinking of ac⁻cel.e.\rat.ion
Also, I just checked, and John Wells uses the primary and secondary stress markers in his LPD dictionary. But he uses them with the following note: "The stresses marked in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (LPD) are lexical (= potential) stresses. Whether they are realized as accents depends on intonation."
So LPD has (albeit using IPA symbols):
acˈcel.e.rate
acˌcel.eˈrat.ion
ˌcon.deˈscend
Which as sentence final words or as words uttered in isolation would have the falling tone (\) on the syllables with (ˈ).
I don't think there is a question of "whether" they do it. I think the point that they "vary in how much" goes without saying.
Chris Button said,
May 3, 2026 @ 8:34 am
I personally think it would be less confusing if LPD simply marked the stress consistently as (ˈ):
acˈcel.e.rate
acˈcel.eˈrat.ion
ˈcon.deˈscend
But since the dictionary is not focused on intonation, I suppose the use of the primary (ˈ) versus secondary (ˌ) markers is perhaps less confusing to the average user.
Nelson Goering said,
May 4, 2026 @ 3:44 am
"I think you might be confusing syllables bearing "stress" with syllables bearing "accent". They are related but distinct concepts."
The idea that "accent" is a clear category distinct from "stress" is at least doubtful, and rests mainly on the attempt to distinguish two (and only two) phonetic realizations of syllable prominence. The safer practice is to just use accent and stress as synonyms, and talk about pitch and tone when you want to talk about pitch and tone. Stress/accent may, of course, often have a great deal to do with pitch and tone (and with loudness, length, vocal precision/control, and various phonological factors concerning segment realizations, probably among other things).
Chris Button said,
May 4, 2026 @ 5:43 am
@ Nelson Goering
It's not that simple. What about when one of the hallmarks of a stressed syllable is different pitch or contour tone?
In a language with lexical tone, such as the Mandarin and Japanese examples above, an unstressed syllable may perhaps no longer bear lexical tone (compare a reduction to schwa in English).
And in a language without lexical tone, such as English, a stressed syllable may also have pitch prominence in addition to other prosodic features (loudness, duration, etc.) An accented syllable can then modify that pitch prominence in various ways.
Nelson Goering said,
May 4, 2026 @ 7:45 am
"What about when one of the hallmarks of a stressed syllable is different pitch or contour tone?"
Then we have a relationship between stress and tone… It actually is pretty much that simple.
The basic issue is that "tone", "pitch" and "stress" are all useful phonological categories, but "accent" isn't.
Nelson Goering said,
May 4, 2026 @ 7:49 am
("Then we have a relationship between stress and tone" should be "Then we have a relationship between stress and tone/pitch", obviously.)
Chris Button said,
May 4, 2026 @ 8:22 am
All syllables–stressed or unstressed–have a pitch or tone of some sort. Stressed syllables may be accented to trigger a contour/pitch change that may then spread across other–stressed or unstressed–syllables.
Nelson Goering said,
May 4, 2026 @ 8:38 am
You can say all that without the word "accented"! You've got the phonological ingredients of stress and pitch, and interactions between them, such as some stressed syllables potentially being marked for phonological pitch or tone (which needn't imply that all stressed syllables in a given language are).
Nelson Goering said,
May 4, 2026 @ 8:49 am
But maybe it would be better to get concrete. Can you give an example where you think "accent" plays a role that isn't reducible to stress or (phonological) pitch, separately or in interaction? None of the examples discussed so far in this thread do this.
Chris Button said,
May 4, 2026 @ 10:10 am
You can say all that without using the word "stress" too. But why use a long-winded esoteric description each time? Call it what you will, accent is about changing the prominence of stressed syllables (and all the knock-on effects those changes have across an intonation phrase).
Nelson Goering said,
May 4, 2026 @ 1:23 pm
I think that's a willful misinterpretation of what I'd said. The point is that can say all that without the word, *and* without any long or cumbersome workaround — indeed, without losing anything at all, analytically speaking.
"accent is about changing the prominence of stressed syllables"
Please give an actual example of what this means (as stated, even with your previous posts for context this could mean several radically different things).
Chris Button said,
May 4, 2026 @ 3:37 pm
Not willful. But I unfortunately can't do better for now than willfully point you in the direction of the references cited above.
David Marjanović said,
May 5, 2026 @ 9:40 am
Well, I've heard Hungarian stay in the same two pitches for minutes on end, and I've heard English with no other trace of a Finnish accent stay in the same pitch for minutes on end… the latter didn't sound monotonous, but that's because it varied volume, not pitch.