Vietnamese edit

Etymology edit

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 edit

Noun edit

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 edit