1545: The Most Tonal Languages Mar 7, 2019

Languages native to every continent, except for mainland Australia, have some tonal systems or another, but some of these are simpler than others. While plenty of these only have one or two distinctions, the Hmong language has at least seven or eight tones. Some languages in Asia have six tones, so this isn't significantly higher than those necessarily, but with distinctions between words like pitch, length of vowels, or even case-endings, people tend to opt for simplicity, or are limited by the average person's ability to listen, remember, and reproduce all of the distinctions. Ultimately, even though it does allow for more short words, distinctions like tone are unnecessary enough to have somewhat of an upper limit.

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