Table of all MLT finals
A table of all the finals in Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT/MTL) has been compiled. The final contains the vowel, tone, and any consonant endings. We found 266 commonly-used finals in the Taiwanese dictionary. If you fold in the tones (or count only the basic and high-short tones), there are 70.
- Here is an abridged table of the finals (PDF).
- Here is a companion chart (PDF) illustrating 166 finals using words from Practical Taiwanese Conversation.
Method
266 distinct finals were found in the main entries of Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan. First, 17,916 rows in the two main sections (starting with #1 & #50001) were considered. Each TRS word was broken down into pre-sandhi syllables, yielding a total of 35,859 syllables, from which 2,080 distinct syllables were counted. Each syllable was then converted into MTL and broken into initial and final parts. Finally, the finals were counted.
- The ten most frequent finals (across the headwords) are: ar, ie, eeng, ii, ofng, i, efng, ix, o, and af tied with aau. Ar was found 997 times, af and aau 395 times.
- The nine least frequent, found only once, are: oafng, ob, om, oom, vaai, vau, viao, voq, vuix. They belong to words: oafng, lob, om, toom, pefngpeqkvaai, liengvau, gviao, `hvoq, khvuieoah.
- Data: Frequency count (ODS), and table (PDF)