Tone
Does a word's meaning change when your voice goes higher or lower?
Significado
In some languages, a word's meaning depends on how the voice rises, falls, or stays level on its syllables. These pitch patterns, called tones, can distinguish words or mark a grammatical difference. Languages may have many such patterns, only a few, or no tone system at all. Tone concerns pitch patterns carried by words or syllables; Stress and intonation concerns which parts stand out and the melody of a whole sentence.
Como identificar
Listen for words or forms with the same consonants and vowels whose meanings differ because of a regular high, low, rising, or falling pitch pattern.
Na tua língua materna
Portuguese has no tone system in which a fixed pitch pattern distinguishes one word from another. Word identity depends instead on sounds and stress, while sentence intonation helps express questions, statements and attitudes. A change in sentence melody can therefore change the message without creating different words.
Você fechou a janela.
The sentence melody presents this as a statement.
Você fechou a janela?
Question intonation asks whether the same event happened; the words themselves are unchanged.
Na tua língua de aprendizagem
English does not use tone to distinguish words or grammatical forms. Pitch helps express questions, emphasis, and attitude through intonation, the melody of a sentence. A different melody can turn You're ready into a check, but it does not give ready a new word meaning.
You're ready.
With a usual falling melody, this is a statement; ready has no fixed word tone.
You're ready?
A rising melody can make the same words a question asking for confirmation.
Learners whose language gives words fixed tones may carry those patterns into English. This can make statements sound like questions or change the intended emphasis.