DiPT and Tonal Languages

[Vader]

If a speaker of a tonal language (that is, a language in which pitch distinguishes words, i.e. the same sound at different pitches means different things) takes DiPT, are they rendered incapable of understanding verbal communication? This might be a long shot, but are there any speakers of such languages on here who have experience of DiPT and can shed some light?

 

[IamMe90]

Does DiPT alter tonalities relatively or absolutely? (IE does it alter different tonalities to the same levels or alter all tonalities by the same factor?) That would be an important question to ask.

 

[Vader]

No, I don't think the distortion is proportionate, the perceived pitch is not determined by the actual pitch. I think.

 

[TheAppleCore]

^ You're suggesting that DiPT causes tone-deafness? That it would make a lower and a higher pitch completely indistinguishable from one another?

I've never taken DiPT so I don't know how this works. I would actually be a little frightened to muck with that particular perceptual mechanism, because as it stands I've got a very good ear for musical pitch and harmony.

 

[greenmeanies]

o da nit spook i tanol lingooge. bet o amagoni thut at cald send halorias, look sameen jest fickad orund wath tho viwals.

(i do not speak a tonal language. but i imagine that it could sound hilarious, like someone just fucked around with the vowels)

 

[QuasiModo]

The fuck is a tonal language?

 

[greenmeanies]

Chinese and Vietnamese are both tonal I believe. This means that two different words may share a consonant/vowel association, but are different in pitch (as if you were singing the sentence). Rising tone, falling tone, etc.

English is a "stress accent" language; we place more importance on the loudness of different parts of words, instead of tone. But we do distinguish tones-- "This is Sparta?" vs "This is, like, SO Sparta!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics)

 

[HeavilySedated]

by no means. same way we can understand people with speech impediments, so will a speaker of a tonal language be able to understand speech which lacks certain vowels by making the connection in the brain. it might be a little bit harder, as is sometimes understanding people with foreign accents, but i don't see why it would be rendered impossible. i have never tried dipt though, so who knows.

 

[✰hyperobjects✰]

This would make for a really cool experiment. I study Mandarin Chinese, and yes, all varieties of Chinese (Mandarin, Yue, Wu, Min) are tonal, along with Vietnamese and Thai and others. It's been about 5 years since I've tasted DiPT but in the TIKHAL entry on it, it talks about an experiment done trying to measure how DiPT distorts audio perception and it was shown to have an alinear distortion effect:

(TIHKAL #4)
I have been told by an adventurous graduate student that a study has been made with two subjects who had absolute pitch, employing a piano and a sine-wave generator as a sound source. He wanted to explore the possibility that some relationship could be developed between the pitch of the note provided and the apparent pitch of the note perceived. No meaningful relationship was found, except for the reinforcement that the observed drop in pitch was not linear, in that true distortion rather than simple pitch dropping was always observed. Most interesting was the plot of the error for each note against the elapsed time. This provided what could be seen as an almost-quantitative measurement of the drug's intensity and chronology.


Hokkien Chinese dialects have 8 tones, whereas Mandarin only has 4. With Mandarin the tones are: rising, falling, down-up, and flat. Hokkien has those 4 + each are further distinguished by their range of pitch. I would imagine a language that had more discrepancies in the contour/tone of a word would be more likely to become garbled when on DiPT. It's important to note though too that tonal languages don't describe tonality in the same way the term is used in music theory. In music theory, a C note has a very specific resonant frequency which gives a sound it's recognizable identity whereas in language tonality is much more of a co-determinate relational identity. I've talked to many people who study music formally and don't use psychedelics who say that they can't hear the tones in the vocals in Mandarin music. I think it's because they are expecting to perceived a fixed resonant frequency of sound that can label something like a C note. but anyways.

I have also worked with Heimia salicifolia (sinicuichi) which actually gave me more pronounced auditory hallucinations than DiPT and would be also interesting to experiment with this plant and also with DiPT and tonal languages to see if a native speaker can still understand what's being said. How would you design such an experiment?

 

[!!4iV4HF9R34g]

I don't know about physical tonal languages like Chinese and whatnot, but I feel like I know what you mean.. I've been learning to Hear and Speak a Language. (;
And now I'm very interested in DiPT, because of the question you posed. I'd like to become more adept with this Language, and psychedelics tend to allow it to Manifest very loudly haha. However, the effects fade.. Maybe DiPT, acting in focus on Sound, may have a drastic effect on this??

Dammit, another compound to research... And I still need my nootropics, too! Arrrgh, so many.. Need. More. Money. >.< Haha!

 

[psood0nym]

I doubt it would make tonal languages incomprehensible because the meaning conveyed by the pitch is relative to the speaker's voice and higher level (sentence level, social level) contextual cues would be resistant to whatever distortion DiPT caused. For DiPT to start to cause real issues I'd think the perceived pitch would need to fluctuate quickly and randomly, and I don't think that's what happens. In a test where only single words free from context from tonal languages were enunciated through a speaker by different people and DiPT tripping participants were asked to identify which version of the words were said a small effect might be observed relative to psuedo-controls tripping on other psychedelics.

 

[!!4iV4HF9R34g]

Hahaha, alright. Thanks for a good answer.