adjective
- not using changes in pitch to distinguish word meanings
Usage: linguistics
Examples
- English is a nontonal language, unlike Mandarin Chinese.
- Most European languages are nontonal in nature.
- The linguist studied the differences between tonal and nontonal languages.
- Spanish is considered a nontonal language by most scholars.
- Nontonal languages rely on stress and intonation rather than pitch changes.
- The researcher compared tonal languages like Thai with nontonal ones like German.