Asklemmy

I cannot tell the difference between scent, sent, cent, they sound the same.

This reminded me of my ex though - his name was Don and down here the boy name Don and the girl name Dawn sound the same. This made him so mad because where he came from (also in the US) they sounded completely different. He pronounced the girl name Dawn almost like "Dwan" and the boy one Dahn, sort of nasally.

So I can believe they sound different in different places but it would not be related to the volume or pitch. Rising pitch at the end of a phrase makes it a question so it has meaning in that way, and some words can change based on which syllable gets the accent - object, content, project as examples.

Modern Greek actually uses a symbol called tonos (in English I have seen it be referred to as an acute accent) that goes over the vowels and denotes the vowel which is pronounced with more emphasis. The pitch does not change much, so I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about.

It looks like this:

• α, ά
• ε, έ
• η, ή
• ι, ί
• ο, ό
• υ, ύ
• ω, ώ

Only words with more than one syllable take an acute accent (there are some exceptions to this). Its placement actually can have difference in the meaning of the word in some cases, for example:

• Χαμόγελα (chamógela) translates to: Smiles. (Used as a noun, meaning many smiles)
• Χαμογέλα (chamogéla) translates to: Smile. (Used as a verb, we' re telling someone to smile)
• Χαμογελά (chamogelá) translates to: He/She/It smiles. (Should be obvious, but it's also used as a verb here)

It's overall pretty helpful and I wish more languages had this, so non-native speakers could deduce the correct pronunciation of a word just by seeing it written.

I've only ever heard Japanese, Chinese, etc. described as tonal languages, not pitch accents.

You're wondering about languages in the Indo-European language group making distinctions between homonyms/homophones by tone. Tone has a different function in those languages, such as expressing inquiry.

In English, syllable emphasis can be used to distinguish between homonyms (verb presENT vs noun PRESent) and would-be homophones (desSERT vs DEsert)

Wikipedia has a nice article about it. It's rare in European languages, but it does exist

Scent, cent, sent all sound identical in English, thus why spelling is a challenge in English.

Same as Know and No.

Most people say Whole and Hole the exact same, except certain regions will pronounce the WH as the true Whuh sound. The Family Guy show pokes fun of this with the CoolWhip word.

Then there is the Welsh speaking the English language where they say Ear, Year, Here the exact same way. LOL (as Yuhr)

If pitch made differences in meaning at the word level, it would be called a tonal language afaik

English has pitch for other aspects of speech, such as indicating emphasis or what sentences are questions. Try saying "you did it" with an emphasis on the first word, without changing the volume or tempo: it'll change pitch. If you raise the "it" instead, you get a question sentence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_declarative). The pitch could make a difference for how you understand a word, like you'd not think the person said "what's that cent?" (same set of base sounds but, due to the question pitch, it's more likely "... scent?"), but it's not a fixed property of the word like in a tonal language

Variants of "mhm" are also tonal to me. I don't know if this works the same in any English-speaking region but, where I'm from, "hm" with

• rising pitch is "I don't understand"
• high-low-high is enthusiastic agreement
• low pitch is like acknowledgment that you've heard the person (and don't voice an objection), and
• low-low with a pause between means "no"

Not sure that's considered a word, though

Unrelated but this reminds me of a thing that happened earlier today while we were playing a board game. European languages aren't considered click languages, but we still have them. One player asked a question of another, and someone from Turkey tsk'd. They made no other sound or head movement. Apparently this meant "no"! Native DE/NL speakers won't understand that this is an answer to a question. We do use tsk here, just for other purposes. Was interesting to notice the culture difference!

Pitch accents are a system of speaking. They apply to all of the words. Every word has a tone, even if the tone is flat. If you don't say the word in the correct tone, you said the wrong word. It is not the same thing as stressing a word.

Swedish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vu1S-IEvw8