system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How are countries that have languages that depend on tone able to have a music industry?

This really may be an absolutely stupid question, but it’s been bugging me for a long time. Mandarin for instance is highly dependent on tone changes to say different words, but (pop)music takes away that ability because it takes away from the tune and melody. How does anybody make music that makes sense? Or can my western ears not pick up the small tonal changes they sing?
gpt
It varies based on the specific language or culture, but since you brought up Mandarin I'll just speak to that.

In Mandarin, tonality is ignored in music. Native speakers can still understand it just fine based on the pronunciation and context, and it very rarely causes any kind of confusion. But Mandarin is pretty simple.

Hmong, for example, has up to 8 tones, and when people write lyrics for the Hmong language they actually do still include tonality. That means the lyrics are usually written out before the melody is worked out, so you can compliment the melody to the tone.

When you translate a song from a non-tonal language into a tonal-language, and you can't change the melody, you have to **severely** limit your vocabulary. The melody dictates the final syllable of every word, so you really have to do a lot of work to match the meaning and the melody.