Shanghainese
The Shanghai dialect of Wu Chinese is marginally tonal, with characteristics of pitch accent.
Not counting closed syllables (those with a final glottal stop), a Shanghainese word of one syllable may carry one of three tones, high, mid, low. (These tones have a contour in isolation, but for our purposes that can be ignored.) However, low always occurs after voiced consonants, and only there. Thus the only tonal distinction is after voiceless consonants and in vowel-initial syllables, and then there is only a two-way distinction between high and mid. In a polysyllabic word, the tone of the first syllable determines the tone of the entire word. If the first tone is high, following syllables are mid; if mid or low, the second syllable is high, and any following syllables are mid. Thus a mark for high tone is all that is needed to write tone in Shanghainese:
| Romanzi | Hanzi | Pitch pattern | English | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiced initial | zaunheinin | 上海人 | low–high–mid | Shanghai resident (Shanghainese person) |
| No voiced initial (mid tone) | aodaliya | 澳大利亚 | mid–high–mid–mid | Australia |
| No voiced initial (high tone) | kónkonchitso | 公共汽車 | high–mid–mid–mid | bus |
Read more about this topic: Pitch Accent