Half the languages in the world are tonal

Tone languages are languages (like Chinese, Thai, Yoruba, and Zulu) in which the pitch or “tone” of words and syllables makes a difference to word meaning. For example, in Chinese huār (with a high level pitch) means ‘flower’ and huàr (with a falling pitch) means ‘picture’. (Go here for another Chinese example, with sound files.) In Yoruba, igba spoken with different tones means different things (recordings courtesy of Dr. Lawrence Olufemi Adewole of Ile-Ife University, Nigeria): LowHigh = a kind of tree, MidMid = '200', MidHigh = 'gourd' and LowLow = 'time'. In non-tonal languages (like English or Spanish), pitch is only used at the sentence level, for emphasis and overall meanings like questioning. Roughly half the languages in the world are tonal and half are non-tonal, but they’re fairly unevenly distributed: tone languages are the norm in sub-Saharan Africa and are common in Southeast Asia and among Native American languages especially in parts of Central and South America. Non-tone languages are the norm in Europe and Central, South and West Asia, and among the aboriginal languages of Australia.