So English is a Tonal Language?

Huh? Yeah, that's what I said too. I think I'm more fascinated with the way Ukrainians speak English than with the Ukrainian language itself. Maybe since so many people speak English here, I could just learn the Urkainian accent, and that would work, hey?

On Saturday night, at Ruth's birthday party (not the cliff one, the other one we went to), I have a conversation with a few of the Ukrainian girls about languages.

"So we hear you can speak several languages?" One of them asks. My eyebrows lift.

"Ummm, well...English, and, uh...English!" I say. (I took Spanish in highschool like everybody else, but I can't really speak it, unfortunately).

"Well, somebody said you learned Chinese or something..." Hmm. I ponder that a moment.

"Well, I did go to Hong Kong for five weeks," I reply, "But I didn't learn any Chinese-- it's a tonal language. The words hae different meaning depending on the tone you say them in. I was afraid I would say the wrong thing!"

"But English is like a tonal language, too," she says.

"Huh?"

"It's a tonal language. You have "ship" on the water and then "ship," the animal."

"No, no. Those are two different words," I tell her. "They sound close, but they're two different words. "Ship" and "ShEEp." And they're spelled different."

"Ship, Ship. Same word." Then Tanya chimes in.

"Then you have "bed" and "bed"-- you sleep in a bed, and then bed like...(she contorts her tongue and made a nasty face.)"

"But that's "bed" and "Baaaad!"" I protest."

"Bed, bed, whatever!" Tanya rolls her eyes in helpless semi-disgust.

My sense of linguistic heritage is sagging limply floorward. But I see what she means. If you grow up on the Slavic alphabet, English is pretty much a tonal language!