"У нас в эстонском есть не только краткие, долгие и очень долгие гласные, не только краткие, долгие и очень долгие согласные, но и краткие, долгие и очень долгие паузы".
А вот в тамильском языке без всяких анекдотов:
Pause is a significant feature in the Tamil intonation system. Its behavior or the place of occurrence gives different nuances of meaning in discourse. It influences the semantics of the sentences in discourse. Different types of pause, which are predominant, have been distinguished in Tamil, Each type of pause has been shown with an appropriate symbol indicated against it. The types and symbols of pause listed in Tamil are:
| Type | Symbol | |
|---|---|---|
| i) | terminal pause | # |
| ii) | natural pause | † |
| iii) | hesitation pause | . . . |
| iv) | emotive pause | * |
| v) | attitude pause | @ |
| vi) | searching pause | - |
| vii) | semantic pause | + |
| viii) | accent pause | ∧ |
Of these the emotion and attitude types are marked with the respective symbols viz. *and@. followed by the letters indicating the 'nature' of emotion/attitude intoned in the utterances. For example, the emotion happiness will be marked as *H and the attitude 'sarcasm' as@S and so no so forth.
(www.ciil-lisindia.net/Tamil/Tamil.html)