bahasa tonal

Indonesian

Etymology

Compound of bahasa +‎ *tonal, calque of English tonal language.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /baˈhasa ˈtonal/

Noun

bahasa tonal (first-person possessive bahasa tonalku, second-person possessive bahasa tonalmu, third-person possessive bahasa tonalnya)

1. (linguistics) tonal language: languages which use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels

Further reading

• “bahasa tonal” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016.