Recurring Thoughts About Language

[Jeremy]

Every once in a while (typically at ~3AM when I can't sleep), one or both of these questions will pop into my head. I thought of them years ago, and I've never been able to find out a definitive answer to either one. I'm hoping that someone here knows one or both of the answers.

- Is tone deafness considered a speech impediment for speakers of tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese?

- Are there any languages that distinguish between how an in-law is related to you (e.g., the spouse of your sibling versus the sibling of your spouse)? In English, both the brother of your spouse and your sibling's husband are referred to as your brother-in-law. Are there any languages that have distinct terms for the two relationships?

[Ayshe]

Jeremy wrote: "Are there any languages that distinguish between how an in-law is related to you (e.g., the spouse of your sibling versus the sibling of your spouse)? In English, both the brother of your spouse and your sibling's husband are referred to as your brother-in-law. Are there any languages that have distinct terms for the two relationships? "

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but Turkish and Bulgarian have several different words for those, for example:
Turkish:
Baldız: sister of the wife
Enişte: Husband of the sister, or husband of an aunt
Görümce: sister of the husband
Kayın (Kayınço): brother-in-law, brother of spouse or husband.
Kayınbirader: brother in law.

Bulgarian:
шурей - brother of the wife
девер - brother of the husband
Балдъза - wife's sister
Зълва - husband's sister

[Jeremy]

Thanks, Ayshe. That was a lot more specific than I had hoped for.
I didn't expect anyone to actually provide a lexicon. I was just curious if there were any languages that had differing terms for the various relationships, rather than just lumping everything under the equivalent of XXXX-in-law.

[Rachel]

Jeremy, here is a link to an article which goes some way to answering your first question: http://pinyin.info/news/2005/tonal-la...

The short version is that being tone deaf may make it a little harder to understand the meanings of words, but most people appear to figure it out from context.

[Jeremy]

Rachel wrote: "Jeremy, here is a link to an article which goes some way to answering your first question: http://pinyin.info/news/2005/tonal-la...

The short version is that being tone deaf..."

Thanks for the info, Rachel. I actually hadn't even considered issues with understanding, I was more wondering about speaking. If you can't distinguish between tones, how can you effectively communicate in a tonal language?

[Rachel]

That's a really interesting question. If you google something like "tone deaf speakers of Mandarin" there are a few online discussions which might be useful. I also found some very academic articles which, not being a linguist, I could make very little sense of.