<p>No.</p>

<p>In songs, most tones disappear. The syllables are sung along the melody of music. We only tell the tone because we can catch what the whole word or sentence is.</p>

<p>In songs, usually the melody should be written to convey the tones of syllables (or syllables chosen to match the melody). Mismatch of melody and lyrics can result in misunderstandings. However, in pop music, not much attention has been paid to this problem.</p>

<p>An interesting <a href="http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/chan9/articles/bls13.htm">paper</a> (that this <a href="http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2010/12/06/tones-in-chinese-songs">blog post</a> pointed me to) claims that in Cantonese pop songs, the melody more closely follows the tones, while in Mandarin songs, the tones just get obliterated.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-25T12:20:39.217Z
+1 for the link to the paper!
hippietrail
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-11T03:41:19.840Z
My full support :- ".... The impressionistic observation that modern Cantonese songs tend to preserve the relative pitch levels and pitch contours of lexical tones is borne out. Furthermore, the effect of foreign melodies and foreign phrases is negligible. Tempo is the only important factor in affecting the tone-melody interface. A loss, or partial loss, of pitch contours occurs on rising tones in faster-paced songs. Nevertheless, crucially, the loss does not result in tonal mismatches. ...."
Henry HO
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-13T08:43:09.313Z
Are not tones just pitches (frequencies)? If you go with the pitches of the song, the tones of the words must give way.
George Chen
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-06T07:41:24.023Z
props to Ohio State, East Asian studies group :)
Mike M
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-06-23T03:27:52.210Z
I can agree with the last part. Vietnamese, my mother tongue is influenced by Cantonese and the "tone" is perserved in songs. There can be slight conflicts but the basic understanding is that the melody must match with the original tone of the spoken words
qkhanhpro
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-12-26T11:05:08.897Z
2014-09-22T22:27:53.867Z
2014-09-22T22:27:53.867Z
fefe
<p>Listen to a slow melodious song like 月亮代表我的心  and you should be able to pick out the tones reasonably well as the background music is quite soft and the words are spoken clearly.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-10-01T12:24:27.663Z
I wanna recommend another slow melodious song 当爱已成往事.
Fangxing
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-03-18T12:53:31.083Z
When I first listened to the song, I thought it was "你吻我" (you kiss me) as opposed to "你问我" (you ask me). But the context made it clear that: 你问我爱你有多深 (you ask me how much I love you).
gonnastop
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-18T20:58:22.423Z
thx for the song, it is beautiful.
Stephane Rolland
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-12-14T20:17:15.287Z
2011-12-14T20:17:15.287Z
going
<p>(I'm not a native speaker of Chinese, but an avid musicologist and student of Chinese.)  </p>

<p>I've heard at least <em>some</em> Chinese pop music where the tones are certainly <em>not</em> obliterated, though I think it's reasonable to suppose this happens at least some of the time.  </p>

<p>My speculation however is that in general something more interesting and complicated happens much of the time: which is that the tonal framework gets modulated and transposed onto the relevant key in the music at the time of performance.  </p>

<p>If the key changes or modulates during the piece, the tonal frame modulates along with it. </p>

<p>The vocalist also has the option to alter the tonal framework's position in the key as the melody progresses.  The tonal framework will function fine as long as the tones are performed in a way which is internally consistent-- ie relative to the other tones performed in the same temporal context.</p>

<p>This may seem to be overly analytic, but I think it's just scratching the surface of the complexities in this topic... world of wonders.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-22T06:43:57.997Z
Your answer confuses me.  What do you mean by "tonal framework"? How does it get "modulated"? How would "modulating" into one "key" be any different from "modulating" into another?
Mike Chamberlain
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-22T16:40:22.500Z
wow it's been awhile since I saw this... Kind of like a musical scale, say a major diatonic, we could start the scale on any arbitrary frequency/note we wanted, and the scale would be organised around, in any of a variety of ways -- that note could be the root or it could be some other note in the scale. In the same way, the Putonghua tonal _framework_ is a kind of scale, with all kinds of regional and individual variations/flavours.  So, a singer might be playing around in a diatonic, and simultaneously within a given time window be playing around with the Putonghua tonal system.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-22T16:45:59.800Z
As they progress through their melody along the diatonic, their root frame of reference for the play within the Putonghua tonal scale moves.  And not necessarily in a simplistic way.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-22T16:55:02.637Z
Western music is like this already if you look at it deeply enough. So many examples of chromaticism play, the phenomenon of 'grace notes', continuous modulations of frequency along a variety of curves...  in Jazz, in Appalachian music as well as many other folk traditions it's hardly ever so simplistically adherent to the scales, which are just useful simplifications-- in Beethoven string quartets, there are so many cases where a theme (a kind of fixed pattern) repeated across arbitrary keys/etc. A scale is just a pattern, as is a theme, or a 'tonal system'.  Simultaneous play mark the master
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-22T16:59:29.400Z
Most musicians aren't total geniuses though, so sure, definitely there will be lots of cases (eg in cheap pop) where everything is obliterated but the mickey mouse electronically altered synth melody.  Another example occured to me: in English pop music -- of course English is tonal also-- if the lyric expresses a question then the tone may have a sliding rise at the end of the question to express the interogative.  This wouldn't invalidate them also continuing to adhere more or less to whatever scale they were playing with.  Most 'high quality' pop (eg Beatles) has lots cont modulated notes.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T08:15:11.043Z
It sounds to me that you're using a lot of words to say that a skilled singer can bend the pitch of the note to express the tone.
Mike Chamberlain
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T11:03:02.433Z
"a skilled singer can bend the pitch of the note to express the tone"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(grammar)
That barely makes any sense at all.  Yes, a singer can modulate pitch.  Yes, pitch modulation expresses something..., to say that it expresses 'the tone(s)' is redundant.
This scarcely scratches the surface of what I was getting at.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T12:18:28.557Z
I have read and re-read your answer and comments, multiple times, but still feel completely bamboozled.
Mike Chamberlain
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T13:15:54.310Z
You know those little plastic stencils that allow you to draw some kind of design on a piece of paper ?  That's kind of like a key.  Different keys => different patterns, different stencils. But I can move the stencil to any arbitrary position on the paper without changing the pattern.  Let's say that moving it to the left or right on the paper is like going up or down in frequency.  And moving it up or down on the paper would be kind of like going forward or backwards in the time frame.  This is imperfect analogy, but it might be helpful.  Cont->
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T13:19:32.080Z
So let's say we have a stencil which represents the possibilities with the Putonghua tonal system. You can move it left or right on the paper (up and down in frequency) but once you've chosen your spot, everything you do there is with respect to that reference point.  So you can say one whole sentence with your stencil centred at 440hz, and then move it to 220hz.  Same tonal system but centred around different basis notes/tones.  In the same way you could these stencil reference points based around the major scale.  So, you could say one sentence based around C, another around A, and so on.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T13:23:15.793Z
The major scale itself (in our system) is another stencil, so in our paper and stencils metaphor you might be doing this: 1. put your Putonghua stencil down at a reference point, mark the reference point and then make some marks through the stencil, then 2. pick up the Putonghua stencil and lay the major scale stencil over it, lining up the reference points (you would have a choice). With the major scale stencil in place you could mark a new central reference point where you want to put your Putonghua tonal system stencil down, and then you do just that, and so on.. and so forth.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T13:24:20.557Z
The comment about the Beethoven themes being repeated in arbitrary keys across arbitrary intervals a complicated variation on that.  Also grace notes: in pop or other music: in some coarse or gross sense the song may call for an Aflat or whatever, but the really great singer may as you say do something peculiar 'bending' the note in some way or another, which technically means it's a deviation from the true Aflat or whatever.  A Putonghua 2nd rising tone can be effected easily in this way, also the 4th dropping tone.  All of them really, can be effected as grace notes, with varying deviation.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T13:59:47.363Z
So I think your answer comes down to "yes, tones can be expressed in sung Chinese, by the use of gracenotes or pitch modulation"?
Mike Chamberlain
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T14:40:46.493Z
Again, you are being silly.  Look at your statement--it's a grammatical tautology.  Even in spoken Chinese, there is no way to express tones except by pitch modulation.  Expressing tones _is_ a case of pitch modulation.  The question really is whether or not one can 'play' in the Putonghua tonal system whilst simultaneously 'playing' in say a diatonic scale.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-23T14:44:05.513Z
My answer was yes, and I gave a lot of examples in Western music where the musicians are playing around in more than one 'stencil'/framework at once; the point being that yes, it is musically possible to express Putonghua tones (yes this involves pitch modulation) simultaneous with some kind of melodic traversal of a diatonic scale or whatever--which also involves pitch modulation; as all _non-monotonous_ music involves pitch modulation. Typically this modulation is discrete and scaled by standard intervals but sometimes (in grace notes, chromaticism) it can be subtle and continuous.
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-24T14:21:04.423Z
Sorry, I tried my best to make sense of it all, but my good faith attempts were rebuffed as "tautology" and "silliness". Further, your answer seems to be at odds with all the others. Even as a classically trained musician of 20 years, to me this is mostly incomprehensible. Downvoting.
Mike Chamberlain
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-24T16:38:13.733Z
I call troll. Troll!
Wylie Кулик
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-14T15:37:40.830Z
2012-07-14T15:37:40.830Z
Wylie Кулик
<p>Native speakers can get tones in song by deducing without even realizing, but not by listening - the tones <em>are</em> obliterated as fefe's answer suggested.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-06-21T19:52:19.537Z
2012-06-21T19:52:19.537Z
NS.X.
<p>I am a singer and raised bilingual speaking English and Cantonese. The simple answer would be yes, native speakers would be able to hear tone differences in songs if they listen closely, but how well this can be done will very much depend on quality of the song, namely on how well integrated are the tones between every Chinese spoken lyric to its paired pitch of the melody. Chinese songs, due to the tonal nature of its spoken words, are the one significant issue–which makes them more difficult to write due to the nature of song–and must be written well in order for the lyrics not clash with the melody, thereby making what is sung harder to understand. Singing in Chinese, there is only limited inflections a singer could do to improve the clarity of lyrics in a poorly written song since singing naturally must take over most of the tonal responsibilities in producing resulted sound at the end. The one other thing which Chinese singing would perhaps differ from western singing is that Chinese singing tends to go into its diphthongs earlier when holding a note. Because most Chinese words have diphthong inflections at the end, this does improve diction but sometimes at the expense of fuller tone production, and to choose how far one takes this one way or the other will heavily depend on the technical progression of music and lyrics in each phrase sung at the time.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-02-26T10:24:46.017Z
2018-02-26T10:41:37.283Z
2018-02-26T10:41:37.283Z
T Chan
<p>No. In fact, there are a lot of jokes about misunderstanding of lyrics, see <a href="http://www.iqiyi.com/w_19rrbd82th.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-02-26T10:36:09.067Z
2019-09-24T04:46:31.423Z
2019-09-24T04:46:31.423Z
Xin
<p>Not sure if listening skill to tones in Chinese songs has its own implication, I get the impression that songs are generally harder than daily conversations for a non-native language.</p>

<p>To answer the first part of your question: native speaker can not tell the lyrics all the time. One particularly interesting case is the songs by Jay Chou, who is one of the most famous Chinese singers since 2000. As a native speaker, I can only get about 10%-30% of the lyrics by only listening to his rap songs.</p>

<p>However, tones seem not to be problem, rather, it is the speed that makes the difficulty for native speakers. Personally, I do not really find tones as the problem. Perhaps only when listen to special dialects, nonstandard tones may be problematic.</p>

<p>To improve, the suggestion could be similar as what you thought. Start with easier ones and try to understand in the context. This process should be very similar to or same as general listening skill.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-12-14T21:03:10.310Z
+1 for using Jay Chou as an example.
StarCub
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-12-14T20:23:26.300Z
2011-12-14T21:13:10.947Z
2011-12-14T21:13:10.947Z
Flake
<p>I already have a hard time distinguishing tones in normal speech. This gets significantly worse when I listen to Chinese songs, since the melody masks tones even further. </p>

<p>Yes, I understand that context will help distinguish words from one another. But almost always I have to look up the lyrics to know exactly what they are singing about. </p>

<p>Can native Chinese speakers tell tones apart in songs? How can I improve my tone-listening skills (in music)?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-03-20T09:08:29.637Z
http://topic.weibo.com/hotchpotch/21423?hasori=1&refer=index_hot_new You might find this entertaining haha!
gonnastop
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-12-14T21:07:19.613Z
It's totally ok if you couldn't tell. Even many native speakers can't.
Kabie
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-07-24T17:36:33.823Z
It's remarkably hard to get a straight answer to this.
Andrew
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-09T17:35:50.657Z
Not really. For example: 灯，等灯等灯sounds really really like the advertisement song of Intel Pentium processors.
nalzok
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-10-05T08:24:05.367Z
Ever wonder why nursery rhymes and not "adult" songs were used to teach children about music and learn to sing? The idea is to "train" the ear when young.
Wayne Cheah
<mandarin><tones>
Can native Chinese speakers distinguish tones in songs?
# Can native Chinese speakers distinguish tones in songs?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2011-12-14)

I already have a hard time distinguishing tones in normal speech. This gets significantly worse when I listen to Chinese songs, since the melody masks tones even further.

Yes, I understand that context will help distinguish words from one another. But almost always I have to look up the lyrics to know exactly what they are singing about.

Can native Chinese speakers tell tones apart in songs? How can I improve my tone-listening skills (in music)?

**Tags:** mandarin, tones

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: It's totally ok if you couldn't tell. Even many native speakers can't.  
> **username_1**: http://topic.weibo.com/hotchpotch/21423?hasori=1&refer=index_hot_new You might find this entertaining haha!  
> **username_4**: Not really. For example: 灯，等灯等灯sounds really really like the advertisement song of Intel Pentium processors.  
> **username_3**: It's remarkably hard to get a straight answer to this.  
> **username_5**: Ever wonder why nursery rhymes and not "adult" songs were used to teach children about music and learn to sing? The idea is to "train" the ear when young.  

---

## 7 answers

### Answer by username_20 on 2011-12-14. Score: 21 | Accepted answer

Not sure if listening skill to tones in Chinese songs has its own implication, I get the impression that songs are generally harder than daily conversations for a non-native language.

To answer the first part of your question: native speaker can not tell the lyrics all the time. One particularly interesting case is the songs by Jay Chou, who is one of the most famous Chinese singers since 2000. As a native speaker, I can only get about 10%-30% of the lyrics by only listening to his rap songs.

However, tones seem not to be problem, rather, it is the speed that makes the difficulty for native speakers. Personally, I do not really find tones as the problem. Perhaps only when listen to special dialects, nonstandard tones may be problematic.

To improve, the suggestion could be similar as what you thought. Start with easier ones and try to understand in the context. This process should be very similar to or same as general listening skill.

> **Comments:**
> **username_21**: +1 for using Jay Chou as an example.  

---

### Answer by username_6 on 2011-12-26. Score: 33

No.

In songs, most tones disappear. The syllables are sung along the melody of music. We only tell the tone because we can catch what the whole word or sentence is.

In songs, usually the melody should be written to convey the tones of syllables (or syllables chosen to match the melody). Mismatch of melody and lyrics can result in misunderstandings. However, in pop music, not much attention has been paid to this problem.

An interesting [paper](http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/chan9/articles/bls13.htm) (that this [blog post](http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2010/12/06/tones-in-chinese-songs) pointed me to) claims that in Cantonese pop songs, the melody more closely follows the tones, while in Mandarin songs, the tones just get obliterated.

> **Comments:**
> **username_7**: +1 for the link to the paper!  
> **username_8**: My full support :- ".... The impressionistic observation that modern Cantonese songs tend to preserve the relative pitch levels and pitch contours of lexical tones is borne out. Furthermore, the effect of foreign melodies and foreign phrases is negligible. Tempo is the only important factor in affecting the tone-melody interface. A loss, or partial loss, of pitch contours occurs on rising tones in faster-paced songs. Nevertheless, crucially, the loss does not result in tonal mismatches. ...."  
> **username_9**: Are not tones just pitches (frequencies)? If you go with the pitches of the song, the tones of the words must give way.  
> **username_10**: props to Ohio State, East Asian studies group :)  
> **username_11**: I can agree with the last part. Vietnamese, my mother tongue is influenced by Cantonese and the "tone" is perserved in songs. There can be slight conflicts but the basic understanding is that the melody must match with the original tone of the spoken words  

---

### Answer by username_12 on 2011-12-14. Score: 7

Listen to a slow melodious song like 月亮代表我的心  and you should be able to pick out the tones reasonably well as the background music is quite soft and the words are spoken clearly.

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: When I first listened to the song, I thought it was "你吻我" (you kiss me) as opposed to "你问我" (you ask me). But the context made it clear that: 你问我爱你有多深 (you ask me how much I love you).  
> **username_14**: thx for the song, it is beautiful.  
> **username_13**: I wanna recommend another slow melodious song 当爱已成往事.  

---

### Answer by username_15 on 2012-07-14. Score: 5

(I'm not a native speaker of Chinese, but an avid musicologist and student of Chinese.)

I've heard at least *some* Chinese pop music where the tones are certainly *not* obliterated, though I think it's reasonable to suppose this happens at least some of the time.

My speculation however is that in general something more interesting and complicated happens much of the time: which is that the tonal framework gets modulated and transposed onto the relevant key in the music at the time of performance.

If the key changes or modulates during the piece, the tonal frame modulates along with it.

The vocalist also has the option to alter the tonal framework's position in the key as the melody progresses. The tonal framework will function fine as long as the tones are performed in a way which is internally consistent-- ie relative to the other tones performed in the same temporal context.

This may seem to be overly analytic, but I think it's just scratching the surface of the complexities in this topic... world of wonders.

> **Comments:**
> **username_16**: Your answer confuses me.  What do you mean by "tonal framework"? How does it get "modulated"? How would "modulating" into one "key" be any different from "modulating" into another?  
> **username_15**: wow it's been awhile since I saw this... Kind of like a musical scale, say a major diatonic, we could start the scale on any arbitrary frequency/note we wanted, and the scale would be organised around, in any of a variety of ways -- that note could be the root or it could be some other note in the scale. In the same way, the Putonghua tonal _framework_ is a kind of scale, with all kinds of regional and individual variations/flavours.  So, a singer might be playing around in a diatonic, and simultaneously within a given time window be playing around with the Putonghua tonal system.  
> **username_15**: As they progress through their melody along the diatonic, their root frame of reference for the play within the Putonghua tonal scale moves.  And not necessarily in a simplistic way.  
> **username_15**: Western music is like this already if you look at it deeply enough. So many examples of chromaticism play, the phenomenon of 'grace notes', continuous modulations of frequency along a variety of curves...  in Jazz, in Appalachian music as well as many other folk traditions it's hardly ever so simplistically adherent to the scales, which are just useful simplifications-- in Beethoven string quartets, there are so many cases where a theme (a kind of fixed pattern) repeated across arbitrary keys/etc. A scale is just a pattern, as is a theme, or a 'tonal system'.  Simultaneous play mark the master  
> **username_15**: Most musicians aren't total geniuses though, so sure, definitely there will be lots of cases (eg in cheap pop) where everything is obliterated but the mickey mouse electronically altered synth melody.  Another example occured to me: in English pop music -- of course English is tonal also-- if the lyric expresses a question then the tone may have a sliding rise at the end of the question to express the interogative.  This wouldn't invalidate them also continuing to adhere more or less to whatever scale they were playing with.  Most 'high quality' pop (eg Beatles) has lots cont modulated notes.  
> **username_16**: It sounds to me that you're using a lot of words to say that a skilled singer can bend the pitch of the note to express the tone.  
> **username_15**: "a skilled singer can bend the pitch of the note to express the tone" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(grammar) That barely makes any sense at all.  Yes, a singer can modulate pitch.  Yes, pitch modulation expresses something..., to say that it expresses 'the tone(s)' is redundant. This scarcely scratches the surface of what I was getting at.  
> **username_16**: I have read and re-read your answer and comments, multiple times, but still feel completely bamboozled.  
> **username_15**: You know those little plastic stencils that allow you to draw some kind of design on a piece of paper ?  That's kind of like a key.  Different keys => different patterns, different stencils. But I can move the stencil to any arbitrary position on the paper without changing the pattern.  Let's say that moving it to the left or right on the paper is like username_12 up or down in frequency.  And moving it up or down on the paper would be kind of like username_12 forward or backwards in the time frame.  This is imperfect analogy, but it might be helpful.  Cont->  
> **username_15**: So let's say we have a stencil which represents the possibilities with the Putonghua tonal system. You can move it left or right on the paper (up and down in frequency) but once you've chosen your spot, everything you do there is with respect to that reference point.  So you can say one whole sentence with your stencil centred at 440hz, and then move it to 220hz.  Same tonal system but centred around different basis notes/tones.  In the same way you could these stencil reference points based around the major scale.  So, you could say one sentence based around C, another around A, and so on.  
> **username_15**: The major scale itself (in our system) is another stencil, so in our paper and stencils metaphor you might be doing this: 1. put your Putonghua stencil down at a reference point, mark the reference point and then make some marks through the stencil, then 2. pick up the Putonghua stencil and lay the major scale stencil over it, lining up the reference points (you would have a choice). With the major scale stencil in place you could mark a new central reference point where you want to put your Putonghua tonal system stencil down, and then you do just that, and so on.. and so forth.  
> **username_15**: The comment about the Beethoven themes being repeated in arbitrary keys across arbitrary intervals a complicated variation on that.  Also grace notes: in pop or other music: in some coarse or gross sense the song may call for an Aflat or whatever, but the really great singer may as you say do something peculiar 'bending' the note in some way or another, which technically means it's a deviation from the true Aflat or whatever.  A Putonghua 2nd rising tone can be effected easily in this way, also the 4th dropping tone.  All of them really, can be effected as grace notes, with varying deviation.  
> **username_16**: So I think your answer comes down to "yes, tones can be expressed in sung Chinese, by the use of gracenotes or pitch modulation"?  
> **username_15**: Again, you are being silly.  Look at your statement--it's a grammatical tautology.  Even in spoken Chinese, there is no way to express tones except by pitch modulation.  Expressing tones _is_ a case of pitch modulation.  The question really is whether or not one can 'play' in the Putonghua tonal system whilst simultaneously 'playing' in say a diatonic scale.  
> **username_15**: My answer was yes, and I gave a lot of examples in Western music where the musicians are playing around in more than one 'stencil'/framework at once; the point being that yes, it is musically possible to express Putonghua tones (yes this involves pitch modulation) simultaneous with some kind of melodic traversal of a diatonic scale or whatever--which also involves pitch modulation; as all _non-monotonous_ music involves pitch modulation. Typically this modulation is discrete and scaled by standard intervals but sometimes (in grace notes, chromaticism) it can be subtle and continuous.  
> **username_16**: Sorry, I tried my best to make sense of it all, but my good faith attempts were rebuffed as "tautology" and "silliness". Further, your answer seems to be at odds with all the others. Even as a classically trained musician of 20 years, to me this is mostly incomprehensible. Downvoting.  
> **username_15**: I call troll. Troll!  

---

### Answer by username_17 on 2012-06-21. Score: 3

Native speakers can get tones in song by deducing without even realizing, but not by listening - the tones *are* obliterated as username_6's answer suggested.


---

### Answer by username_18 on 2018-02-26. Score: 2

I am a singer and raised bilingual speaking English and Cantonese. The simple answer would be yes, native speakers would be able to hear tone differences in songs if they listen closely, but how well this can be done will very much depend on quality of the song, namely on how well integrated are the tones between every Chinese spoken lyric to its paired pitch of the melody. Chinese songs, due to the tonal nature of its spoken words, are the one significant issue–which makes them more difficult to write due to the nature of song–and must be written well in order for the lyrics not clash with the melody, thereby making what is sung harder to understand. Singing in Chinese, there is only limited inflections a singer could do to improve the clarity of lyrics in a poorly written song since singing naturally must take over most of the tonal responsibilities in producing resulted sound at the end. The one other thing which Chinese singing would perhaps differ from western singing is that Chinese singing tends to go into its diphthongs earlier when holding a note. Because most Chinese words have diphthong inflections at the end, this does improve diction but sometimes at the expense of fuller tone production, and to choose how far one takes this one way or the other will heavily depend on the technical progression of music and lyrics in each phrase sung at the time.


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### Answer by username_19 on 2018-02-26. Score: 1

No. In fact, there are a lot of jokes about misunderstanding of lyrics, see [this](http://www.iqiyi.com/w_19rrbd82th.html)


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