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One practical consequence for learners in both directions, since this is not merely a classification exercise.

Speakers of tonal languages learning English often find the intonation system genuinely difficult, because pitch is doing something unfamiliar — spread over a phrase and carrying attitude rather than identity.

And English speakers learning a tonal language frequently produce tones correctly in isolation and then lose them in sentences, because their instinct is to use pitch for sentence-level meaning. Asking a question in Mandarin with an English rising contour changes the words rather than the mood, which is a memorable way to discover the difference.

The distinction is real and it rests on what the pitch is attached to.

In a tonal language, pitch is part of the word itself, in the same way a consonant is. Change it and you have a different word — a different dictionary entry, usually a different written form, with an unrelated meaning. In Mandarin, the same syllable with different tones gives words meaning entirely different things, and they are no more related than "bat" and "bit" are in English.

In English, "sorry" said either way is still the word sorry. It is spelled the same, it appears once in the dictionary, and its core meaning is unchanged. What has changed is the speech act — you are apologising versus requesting repetition — and that is carried by intonation across the whole utterance.

The test that separates them cleanly: in a tonal language, changing the tone gives you a word you would have to look up separately. In English, changing the pitch gives you the same word used differently.

Two more that sit slightly differently and may fit depending on what you meant.

Incorruptible — cannot be induced to act against those principles. Emphasises resistance to pressure and temptation rather than the principles themselves, and it is a strong compliment with almost no negative reading.

Honourable — acts according to a code and can be relied on. Slightly more social than moral; it is about obligations and how one behaves towards others.

If what you admired about the man was that he would not be moved, incorruptible is stronger than principled and carries none of the priggishness. If what you admired was that he held the principles at all, principled is the word.

There is a spoken test that settles it, which is nice because it uses the intonation question from the other thread.

Direct address in English is marked prosodically — a slight break before the term of address, and it sits on its own contour. Say the phrase aloud naturally and you will find yourself doing exactly that: a small pause, then the last word set apart.

If it were a second adjective it would be integrated into the phrase with no break, the way "keep it short and simple" is.

So native speakers already parse it as address without thinking about it, and the punctuation is recording what the speech does.

On whether it leaks: yes, in a specific and well-studied way.

When speakers of gendered languages are asked to describe objects, there is evidence that the grammatical gender in their language subtly influences the adjectives they choose — describing an object as more delicate or more sturdy depending on its gender in their first language. The effect is small, it has been debated, and it does show up in careful experiments.

What definitely happens is that when speaking English, people occasionally reach for he or she for an inanimate object whose gender is strong in their own language. That is a production slip rather than a belief about the object.

And learners frequently assume English pronouns must map onto something, then discover that it covers nearly everything, and that the exceptions — ships, countries, pets — are conventions rather than a system.