Re: Tone Deafness (Malcolm Slaney )

Subject: Re: Tone Deafness
From:    Malcolm Slaney  <malcolm(at)INTERVAL.COM>
Date:    Tue, 5 Dec 1995 14:23:50 -0800

At 4:45 PM 12/5/95, Rebecca Mercuri wrote:
>Is anyone REALLY tone deaf? For example in countries like China with
>zillions of people, and where tone is an important part of the language,
>are people there unable to communicate because they are tone deaf?

How do you whisper a tone language?  Or for that matter, how do you whisper
a question?

There are other clues (formant frequencies?) that might help.  Perhaps tone
deaf people can still tell relative directions, but not intervals?  I'll
have to check out Dan's references.

-- Malcolm