Numerical Values
Tone letters are often transliterated into numerals, particularly in Asian and Mesoamerican tone languages. Until the spread of OpenType computer fonts starting in 2000–2001, tone letters were not practical for many applications. A numerical substitute has been commonly used for tone contours, with a numerical value assigned to the beginning, end, and sometimes middle of the contour. For example, the four Mandarin tones are commonly transcribed as "ma55", "ma35", "ma214", "ma51".
However, such numerical systems are ambiguous. In Asian languages such as Chinese, convention assigns the lowest pitch a 1 and the highest a 5, corresponding to fundamental frequency (f0). Conversely, in Africa the lowest tone is assigned a 5 and the highest a 1. In the case of Mesoamerican languages, the highest tone is tone is 1 but the lowest depends on the number of contrastive pitch levels in the language being transcribed. For example, a Mixtecan language with three level tones will denote them as 1 (high /˥/), 2 (mid /˧/) and 3 (low /˩/). A reader accustomed to Chinese usage will misinterpret the Mixtec low tone as mid, and the high tone as low. Because tone letters are iconic, and musical staves are internationally recognized with high tone at the top and low tone at the bottom, tone letters do not suffer from this ambiguity.
| high-level | high-falling | mid-rising | mid-level | mid-falling | mid-dipping | low-level | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tone letter | ˥ | ˥˩ | ˧˥ | ˧ | ˧˩ | ˨˩˦ | ˩ |
| Chinese convention | 55 (checked 5) |
51 | 35 | 33 (checked 3) |
31 | 214 | 11 (checked 1) |
| African convention | 1 | 15 | 31 | 3 | 35 | 453 | 5 |
Read more about this topic: Tone Letter
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