You&#x27;re confusing stresses and tones.<p>I think if you say the phrase &quot;to buffalo&quot; and &quot;a buffalo&quot;, you&#x27;ll pronounce those words in the same way. It&#x27;s only when putting a sentence together that you&#x27;ll stress them differently to indicate their usage in that sentence.<p>In tonal languages, you always say the word with the given tone, regardless of context.