A Beginner's Guide to Taiwanese

"Hello" in Taiwanese, written Lie hør! in MLT

Li hø! Taiwanese is a beautiful and musical language spoken in Taiwan and by Taiwanese people around the world. This Beginner's Guide to Taiwanese will provide you with a brief introduction to the spoken language as well as a system for writing Taiwanese called Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT), also known as "Modern Taiwanese Language" (MTL).

Most speakers of Taiwanese aren't aware that there are several writing systems for the language. Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ), also known as Church Romanization, might be the most popular romanization, though the government is now promoting a similar system called Tâi-lô. We're going to use MTL here because we found it very useful while studying Taiwanese at the Washington DC Taiwanese School, and we think it could help you too. True, most Taiwanese speakers won't be able to read any of these systems, but they will probably understand you better because you learned one.

How to make a syllable

Let's learn how to write any syllable using the MLT alphabet. The three important parts of a syllable we will look at first are: starting consonant, vowel, and ending consonant. We will talk about tones later.

Initial consonants

A syllable can start with one of 18 initial consonants. Some sounds have an approximation in English, while others may be more exotic. For now, you can just ignore the silent indicators (mainly f, x, r, v).

Consonants

Examples

MTL	Approx.	Example	Meaning
p	spin	papaf	father
ph	pin	phaq	to hit
m	Mimi	mi	noodle
b	mumble	baq	meat
t	stem	tit	straight
th	Thomas	theh	to take
n	neat	nii	year
l	lima	laang	person
k	ski	kaf	to add
kh	key	khix	to go
h	heap	hii	fish
g	gaggle	go	five
c(i)	gee	ciaf	here
ch(i)	cheese	chiaf	car
s	she / saw	si	is; yes
j	vision / zeta	jit	sun; day
z	yards	zef	this
zh	Tsai (Ts'ai)	zhaix	vegetable

The p vs. b and k vs. g may be hard to differentiate at first. They are part of a three-way distinction, going from muddy to plain to aspirated.

• b and g are voiced: the vocal cords vibrate along with the consonant
• p, t, k are unvoiced, crisp but not aspirated
• ph, th, kh, ch, and zh are aspirated, having a strong burst of breath

Vowels

A syllable in Taiwanese can't go without having a vowel. This chart, Seven Tones of Taiwanese, shows how to write any vowel in any tone. For now, just look at the basic tone, and the five categories: simple, compound, plus three categories ending in nasals.

Single vowels

These are the pure vowel sounds.

Vowels

Examples

MTL	Example	Meaning
a	ma	also; to scold
i	si	is; yes; ...
u	u	to have
e	e	below; under; ...
o	ho	rain; to give; ...
ø	tø	at once; ...
m	m	not; will not
ng	mng	to ask

• We saw m- earlier as a consonant, but here it's the vowel.
• In fact, both m and ng are complete syllables and complete words.
• We will see -m and -ng as nasal final consonants (NFCs).

Compound vowels

These vowels are a combination of multiple pure vowel sounds.

MTL	Example	Meaning
ai	lai	sharp
au	au	back
ia	ia	to spread
iu	siu	receive; accept; ...
iø	biø	temple
iau	liau	material/stuff
ui	ui	stomach
oa	toa	big
oe	hoe	meeting
oai	hoai	bad; rotten. see phørhoai

Vowel plus nasal final consonant

Several vowels can be capped with a nasal final consonant (NFC), either -m, -n, or -ng.

Final	Example	Meaning
am	lam	to mix
im	akim	aunt
iam	liam	to nag
an	ban	slow
in	kin	near
un	tun	dull
ien	lien	to practice
oan	goan	wish
ang	bang	dream
eng	teng	hard
ong	gong	dumb
iang	liang	bright
iong	iong	to use

Some pointers:

• ien (from ia + n = ian): used to sound like "yan", then "yen", now usually "en"
• eng (from e + ng): used to sound as written, now is a little more like "ieng", but not quite "ing"

Nasal vowels

These vowel sounds are made using your nose. Most vowels from the first two groups can be nasalized, indicated by the letter v (read like "you" in English but nasal), chosen because it looks like the Greek letter "nu" (ν). The word for nose is phvi, which also means "to smell".

MTL	Example	Meaning
va	va	filling (for dumplings etc.)
vi	hvi	ear
ve	gve	stiff
vo	kiaugvo	proud; arrogant; haughty
vai	vai	to carry on back
vau	liengvau	lotus root
via	kvia	classifier for luggage, clothes, events
viu	sviu	to think
viau	gviaw	itchy. see gviaugviaw (sensation of tickling; ticklish)
voa	voa	to exchange
voai	svoai	mango

Tones

Taiwanese is a tonal language which means that pitch is used to convey meaning. Many words are differentiated solely by tone (e.g., all seven tones of si). Learning to speak and hear the tones of Taiwanese correctly is often difficult for beginners. With practice you will be able to hear and speak them. Again most speakers of Taiwanese are not aware of the different tones but they can all understand you when you pronounce them correctly.

As you may have noticed from the Seven Tones chart, there are five long tones and two short tones:

• f, x and r are silent tone indicators for long tones
• short tones always end with a stop letter that tells both consonant and pitch

af, a, ax, ar, aa, ah, aq

#	Tones	Description	MTL	Example	Animal
1	high	level (55 or 44)	f (silent)	khaf (leg; foot)	say (lion)
7	basic	mid-level (33)	default	toa (big)	chviu (elephant)
3	low falling	somewhat downward (31)	x (silent)	khax (to knock)	pax (leopard)
2	shouting	sharply downward (51)	r (silent)	ar (仔)	hor (tiger)
5	curving	mid, downward, up (214)	doubling of vowel	gaau (extraordinary)	hiim (bear)
8	short high	(5ʔ)	ends with h, p, t or k	ah (a box)	lok (deer)
4	short low	(3ʔ)	ends with q, b, d or g	aq (a duck)	piq (snapping turtle)

say, chviu, pax, hor, hiim, lok, piq

Short tones

Let's look at the short tones first:

Pitch	-h	-p	-t	-k
8. high	ciah (to eat)	zap (ten)	lat (strength)	hak (study)
4. low	phaq (to hit)	ciab (juice)	pad (eight)	kag (horn)

• high short tones end with h (glottal stop), p, t and k, which are stops sounding similar to how they're used as an initial consonant
• low short tones end with q, b, d, and g, which are the same stops as above, but signal the vowel is low pitch
• iet and ek, the short tones of ien and eng, may sound more like et and iek

Long tones

Here are some common examples of the long tones:

Tone	Example	Meaning
1. high	ciaf	here
7. basic	si	is
3. low-falling	khix	to go
2. shouting	goar	I; me
5. curving	ee	possessive particle

The tone indicators always come to the right of the vowel, with one exception. To indicate the curving tone of a compound vowel, double the a if present, or else the last vowel letter. For example: cviaa, laai, ngg.

Special vowels

For certain vowels in certain tones, some ornamental substitutions/shortcuts are used. Refer to the Seven Tones chart.

• y, w: high tone of i and u
• ie, uo, ea: shouting tone of i, u, e
• ae, ao: shortcuts for "a + ie" and "a + uo"
• øo: shortcut for "øø"
• None of these apply with NFCs except: ym, yn, wn

Syll. Tail	Shortcut	Example	Meaning
if, ifm, ifn	y, ym, yn	ty, kym, cyn	pig, gold, very
uf, ufn	w, wn	titw, zhwn	spider, springtime
ir	ie	lie	you; ...
ur	uo	kuo	(of time) long
er	ea	boea	tail
air	ae	hae	sea
aur	ao	kao	dog. nine
øø	øo	kiøo	bridge; eggplant

Syllable structure

A syllable in Taiwanese is either:

• [initial] + vowel + [nasal final consonant]
• [initial] + [v] + vowel

Anything in square brackets is optional. This means:

• a vowel is always required
• v, -m, -n, and -ng are mutually exclusive

Also, we almost never find more than one nasal:

• e.g. man and mang don't exist (but ban and bang do exist)
• the only exceptions are the various tones of mng and nng

Tone sandhi

The seven tones, and how they change due to tone sandhi.

The basic unit of speech is the syllable, which can change tone depending on its environment. This process is generally called tone sandhi ("sandhi" is from the Sanskrit word for "joining") and in Taiwanese the rules for it are extensive.

Generally, a syllable inside of a word changes tone according to the Tone Circles. For example, the single-syllable word for "duck" (bird): aq. Its original tone is low-short. After adding the suffix ar, the tone becomes high-short: ah'ar.

More examples:

• jit (sun) + thaau (head) = jidthaau (the sun)
• cit (one) + sud (a bit) + ar = cidsut'ar (a little amount of something)

Inside a sentence, the last syllable of most nouns don't change tone. But if that noun is actually used as an adjective, it will. For example, in cidsut'ar png (a bit of rice), the ar changes to high tone when spoken. Furthermore, in ciah cidsut'ar png, the verb ciah (to eat) changes to low-short tone when spoken.

You may have realized by now that tone change is connected to grammar. These tone changes are probably by far the hardest part of learning Taiwanese.

Special punctuation marks

Apostrophe (')

When two syllables are put together, sometimes one letter might appear to be connected to the right syllable when it shouldn't be. The apostrophe is used to remove the ambiguity. For example:

• of (烏; "black") + kix (痣; "mole") = o'kix = okix
• og (惡; "evil") + ix (意; "intention") = ok'ix

In MTL, we group the letters starting from the right into the longest syllable. So reading okix, the second syllable is kix. Then the first syllable is o. There's no need to write o'kix.

If you drop the apostrophe from ok'ix, it would be okix, so the apostrophe needs to stay.

Hyphen (-)

A hyphen is used to join two, or more isolated words to make a new compound word with its own meaning. When reading a hyphenated word, the syllable just before the hyphen should change tone. For example: Taioaan + laang = Taioaan-laang (Taiwanese person) The last syllable of Taioaan changes tone when spoken, so the compound word sounds like Taioanlaang.

Backquote (`)

When a word contains a backquote, all the syllables after it are accented in a weaker, lower tone -- either a low-falling tone or a low stop. The tone of the syllable before the backquote remains unchanged.

Example:

• kviaf`sie ((v.) to freak someone out) - kviaf keeps its high tone but sie is pronounced with a weakened low tone.

• kviasie ((adj.) scared of death) – kviaf is pronounced with normal tone change from high to basic while sie is pronounced as a shouting tone. Kiasi is Hokkien phrase that describes the attitude of being overly afraid or timid.

Next steps

• Greeting Phrases in Taiwanese
• Practical Taiwanese Conversation
• Introduction to Taiwanese Vocabulary

External links

• A Beginner's Guide to Taiwanese, version 1.0: 2017
• WDCTS - MLT Introduction, Useful Handout, Videos & References. (in Chinese)
• Modern Literal Taiwanese Foundation (MLTF). Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT) Handbook
• Liim Keahioong (1990). Textbook of Modern Literal Taiwanese. Tainan, Taiwan: Ta-hsia Press.