Originally posted by PhaTz
Right. It's kind of like how in English you raise your voice up slightly when asking a question, and make other such tonal changes depending on the context of what you're saying. In Chinese, the words themselves already rely heavily on those tones, so they add a syllable at the end to do the adjusting. If you changed the tone of the words in the actual sentence, you might change the meaning of the word itself.
Comment