thanh ngã

Vietnamese

Etymology

thanh (“tone”) +‎ ngã (“to fall; to tumble”). The word ngã literally refers to a person's tripping or collapsing, not the "fall" in pitch of a phonetic "falling" tone contour.

Pronunciation

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [tʰajŋ̟˧˧ ŋaː˦ˀ˥]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [tʰɛɲ˧˧ ŋaː˧˨]
• (Hồ Chí Minh City) IPA^(key): [tʰan˧˧ ŋaː˨˩˦]

Noun

thanh ngã

1. (phonetics) the “broken rising tone” that occurs in the word ngã as a distinctive tone contour in Northern Vietnamese, phonetically marked by a rise in pitch interrupted by a glottal closure, and orthographically marked by the dấu ngã (“tilde”) above a vowel letter

Coordinate terms

• thanh ngang
• thanh huyền
• thanh hỏi
• thanh sắc
• thanh nặng