High, low, contours and downstep: the melody changes the meaning.
Bamum is a tone language. Two pitches are written into the lexicon: high (marked ´) and low (marked `). Change the melody and you change the word.
| Mark | Name | Value |
|---|---|---|
| á | acute accent | high tone |
| à | grave accent | low tone |
| ā | macron | mid tone |
| â | circumflex | falling (high → low) |
| ǎ | caron | rising (low → high) |
On two syllables all four combinations occur: HH, LL, LH, HL. On three syllables, six patterns out of eight are possible — only *HLH and *LHL are missing.
⬇️ Bamum also has downstep (marked ↓): a following high tone is realised one step lower than the previous one, and the pitch never climbs back up. You can see it in pə́↓tɯ́tɯ́ "small trees".