Do you use the same adjectives (high/low) for space and pitch in languages other than English?

February 19, 2011 12:44 PM

LanguageFilter: A friend of mine was asking her various polyglot friends this question, and I thought I could help her get a wider scope: "In English, we describe high pitch and low pitch sounds with the same terms we use for things that are high and low in space ("high" and "low" could describe space or pitch). Is this also a convention in your language(s)?"
posted by tumbleweedjack to Writing & Language (24 answers total)

No, not in French. (Aigu and grave.)
posted by pewpew at 12:53 PM on February 19, 2011

As far as I know it is true in Japanese:

彼女の声は調子が高い［低い］｜She has a high-pitched [low-pitched] voice.
(高い=takai=high, 低い=hikui=low)
彼らは声の調子を上げた［下げた］｜They raised [lowered] their voices.
(上げた＝ageta=raised, 下げた＝sageta=lowered)

Taken from example sentences here.
posted by dubitable at 12:57 PM on February 19, 2011

I suspect you'll see a lot of words for "sharp" and "flat." (Aigu means "sharp," for example.)
posted by Sys Rq at 1:05 PM on February 19, 2011

Sort-of-yes for Swedish, although "high" and "low" are more often used to describe loudness, not pitch.
posted by martinrebas at 1:06 PM on February 19, 2011

Same as English in German and Dutch. I remember that my (now) ex once had trouble teaching some kid music basics, because that girl just didn't get why a melody that squeaked was "high".
Apparently, it is an abstraction, although I've lost the skill to feel it that way.

[Yeah, the Swedish high [volume] and low [volume] was something I had to get used to when I entered the country with almost no idea about the language, and the first thing I had to do was lead some music rehearsals. That was then, that.]
posted by Namlit at 1:14 PM on February 19, 2011

I'd have to get out the textbook I use to remember exactly where in sub-Saharan Africa, but there are places that use the words for thin and thick to describe high and low pitch respectively.
posted by umbú at 1:23 PM on February 19, 2011

In Portuguese, there's agudo and grave, but there's alto and baixo too (high and low), which can be used for pitch and volume. I guess agudo and grave are used more often to avoid confusion.

In the informal register, we say fino and grosso (thin and thick).
posted by TheGoodBlood at 1:35 PM on February 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

In Lithuanian, aukštas (high) is used for both pitch and space, just like in English.
posted by av123 at 1:36 PM on February 19, 2011

The Metaphor of "High and "Low" in Pitch, by by David Huron
posted by TheGoodBlood at 1:40 PM on February 19, 2011 [5 favorites]

From Wikipedia, on pitch:

From a purely physical point of view, since pitch is such a close proxy for frequency, it is almost entirely determined by how quickly the sound wave is making the air vibrate and has nothing to do with vertical height. That is, "high" pitch actually just means very-rapid oscillation, and "low" pitch corresponds to less-rapid oscillation. Despite that, the idiom relating vertical height to sound pitch is shared by most languages. At least in English, it is just one of many deep conceptual metaphors which involve up/down. The exact etymological history of the musical sense of high and low pitch is still unclear. There is evidence that humans do actually perceive the source that a sound is coming from to be located slightly higher or lower in vertical space when the sound frequency is increased or decreased.

posted by iamkimiam at 1:42 PM on February 19, 2011

martinrebas: Sort-of-yes for Swedish, although "high" and "low" are more often used to describe loudness, not pitch.

In Icelandic "high" (hár) and "low" (lágur) are used to descrive pitch, not volume (for volume you use hávært and lágvært). You also use hár and lágur for position in space as well.
posted by Kattullus at 1:55 PM on February 19, 2011

In Chinese, gao (高）and di (底 ) are used for high and low pitches and also for height.
posted by just.good.enough at 1:57 PM on February 19, 2011

Addendum to Kattullus' well-written answer: Some people don't differentiate between spatially-high-and-high-in-pitch hár and high-volume hávær, and just say hár interchangeably. Then you have to do a little dance to figure out which one it was - squeakier hár or stronger hár?
posted by krilli at 2:11 PM on February 19, 2011

A related concept is descending and ascending sequences of pitches. I recall there is more variation on that, because an "ascending" melodic line could be perceived as the listener "descending" relative to it.
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:17 PM on February 19, 2011

What exactly is the metaphor going on with these words in French?

In my dictionary "aigu " translates (in addition to "high pitched") as "Sharp", "Keen","Critical" or sloping up from left to right like this "é". Meanwhile the non-musical meanings for "grave" are "serious" or "sober" or sloping down from left to right like this "è". The pair of those meanings that feels like opposites is the one relating to angle. Is that the one which is intended?
posted by rongorongo at 2:22 PM on February 19, 2011

Thick (gruesa) and Thin (delgada) in Spanish. High and low is to determine loudness.
posted by ratita at 2:49 PM on February 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

In Norwegian you could refer to light and dark tones, light being the higher frequencies.

High and low are sometimes used to indicate frequency, but usually to express loudness. When we use both, the setup is: High/low would represent the loudness, and light/dark the frequency.

Ie a "high, light note" in Norwegian would literaly mean a "loud, high-frequency note".
posted by gmm at 5:10 PM on February 19, 2011

I now want to piggyback on this and ask what the words for major and minor are in other languages. I seem to remember in French they equate to "hard" and "soft"?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:28 PM on February 19, 2011

German/Latin, (not French). Dur (major majeur) and moll (minor mineur).
posted by Namlit at 5:37 PM on February 19, 2011

I now want to piggyback on this and ask what the words for major and minor are in other languages. I seem to remember in French they equate to "hard" and "soft"?

According to my French dictionary, it's "majeur" and "mineur". However, in Swedish, you say "dur" and "moll", which is close to "hard" and "soft" in both French and Latin.
posted by martinrebas at 5:37 PM on February 19, 2011

According to this book people who play the kora (West African stringed instrument) call the low pitched strings high and the high pitched strings low; I don't know if this happens in any West African language or if it's strictly the kora players who use this convention.
posted by mskyle at 7:03 PM on February 19, 2011

Yes, the same in Russian (high/low = vysokiy/nizkiy).
posted by rainy at 8:09 PM on February 19, 2011

The same is true in Finnish, korkea (high) and matala (low), both in pitch and space.
posted by keijo at 11:02 PM on February 19, 2011

In my dictionary "aigu " translates (in addition to "high pitched") as "Sharp", "Keen","Critical" or sloping up from left to right like this "é". Meanwhile the non-musical meanings for "grave" are "serious" or "sober" or sloping down from left to right like this "è". The pair of those meanings that feels like opposites is the one relating to angle. Is that the one which is intended?

Not sure I understand your question... but basically aigu means "high-pitched, high, sharp, intense, squeaky" and grave means "low-pitched, low, grave, deep, bad, serious."

é = accent aigu (goes up), è = accent grave (goes down). It's not an angle thing.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 11:46 AM on February 20, 2011