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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • The higher pitch for the entire sentence is another option in my Spanish, but indicates outrage.

    The version where you hear it’s supposed to be a question from the word “dijiste” is more of a request for information, like if your mom yelled something and you’re not sure if she said “No me molestes” or “No te sorpreses” or something else that sounds vaguely similar or if she was actually yelling at a fly that was going on her nerves.

    The sentence overall becomes more melodic, with the stressed syllables getting a higher pitch and more defined stress.


  • In spanish questions intonation changes occur only on the last word(s), not the whole sentence. I’m not a linguistic, but I think it’s so you can be sure a sentence is a question from the start.

    That might be the case in the dialect you’re familiar with, but “¿Me dijiste que no te moleste?” has a different intonation to “Me dijiste que no te moleste.” in my Spanish (starting from “dijiste”).

    As for English, questions normally start either with a question word or a (auxiliary) verb, while affirmations normally start with the subject. See “You told me not to bother you.” vs. “Did you tell me not to bother you?”. Using just intonation is possible (“You told me not to bother you?!??”), but when in writing, it’s usually formatted in a way that highlights it because it usually indicates outrage/disbelief.