Do you raise the pitch of your voice at the end of a question in Spanish?

[jrhjazznblues]

Rocket Spanish says "you don’t raise the pitch of your voice at the end of a question in Spanish. Rather, you ask the interrogative word in a higher-pitched voice and drop your pitch for the rest of the question." However, there are audio courses for Rocket Spanish, and at the end of every question the speakers raise the pitch of their voice. Is this a mistake, or is it regional?

[aleCcowaN]

It depends on the question itself.

¿Quién vino? lllll
¿Que vino quién? lllll

[wrholt]

As aleC says, it depends on the question.

In addition to aleC's example, there is a difference between yes/no questions and information-seeking questions. The statement you found in Rocket Spanish is typical of information-seeking questions; that is, questions that contain an interrogative word such as qué, quíen, cuándo, dónde and so on. However, as aleC demonstrates, this is not an absolute rule.

On the other hand, yes/no questions frequently have exactly the same words in exactly the same order as a statement, as in this pair of sentences:

Se llama Juan. = "His name is Juan/John."
¿Se llama Juan? = "Is his name Juan/John?"

In speech the only difference between these sentences is their intonation; the statement ends with falling intonation, while the question typically ends with rising intonation.

[Glen]

Maybe it's just the Spanish-speakers I hang around with but they seem to raise the pitch even more than we customarily do in English, depending of course on the level of enthusiasm etc. That's one reason I like the language so much; it's almost musical.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

It may be a matter of regional accents and emphasis on questions. To make a question sound more casual we usually don't raise the pitch much and when we want to make an emphasis on the question we do.

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by Glen

Maybe it's just the Spanish-speakers I hang around with but they seem to raise the pitch even more than we customarily do in English, depending of course on the level of enthusiasm etc. That's one reason I like the language so much; it's almost musical.

There's a use in some places -not very common in my neck of the woods except for rhetorical effect- that prescribes a rising pitch in questions and assertions just to give them a tone of doubt for it to sound more polite or for the person to sound demure, humble or something along those lines.

I've occasionally heard the same in English, as in this bit of Amadeus.