A Beginner's Guide to Taiwanese

"Hello" in Taiwanese, written Lie hør!

Lie hør! 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 writing system called Modern Taiwanese Language (MTL).

Most speakers of Taiwanese are not aware that there exist several ways to write it down. MTL and Taiwanese Romanization System both derive from Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ), which had over 100,000 users in the mid-20th century. While no single system has been widely adopted (whether romanized or in Han characters), MTL is a very useful tool for learning Taiwanese. Most Taiwanese speakers may not be able to read any of these systems but will understand you better because you used it.

Phonology

We will first introduce all of the phonetic sounds of Taiwanese, using the MTL alphabet. Some sounds have an approximation in English, while others may be less familiar. In the examples, we have underlined indicators (mainly f, r, x, v) that are silent, which we will explain later.

Initial consonants

Here are the 18 initial consonants in MTL, which come at the beginning of the syllable.

Consonants

File:ConExp.mp3

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.

• The muddy b and g are voiced, meaning the vocal cords vibrate along with the consonant.
• The plain p and k (and t) are unvoiced, not as aspirated as in English, but do have a distinct click or pop.
• The aspirated consonants are composed of the plain symbol followed by h.

Note that s and j appear twice: these are slightly different when followed by an i vs other vowels.

Vowels

Single vowels

These are the pure vowel sounds.

MTL	Example	Meaning
a	ka	to bite
i	hvi	ear
u	u	to have
e	ke	low
o	lo	road
ø	hør	good
m	m	no
ng	hng	far

We saw m earlier as a consonant, but it can stand alone as a vowel. In fact, both m and ng are complete syllables and complete words. We will see them both again later as final consonants.

Compound vowels

These vowels are a combination of two (or three) pure vowel sounds.

MTL	Example	Meaning
ai	lai	sharp
au	au	back
ia	ia	to spread
iu	chviu	elephant
iø	kiøo	bridge
iau	liau	material/stuff
ui	ui	stomach
oa	toa	big
oe	hoe	meeting
oai	koaix	weird

Nasal vowels

These vowel sounds are made using your nose. Most vowels have a nasal form. A v, similar in appearance to the Greek letter "nu" (ν), is placed in front of the vowel to designate it.

MTL	Example	Meaning
va	va	filling (for dumplings etc.)
vi	hvi	ear
ve	gve	stiff
vo	gvo	to comprehend
vai	vai	to carry on back
vau	gvau	lotus root
via	thviaf	to listen
viu	sviu	to think
viau	gviaugviaw	itchy
voa	voa	to exchange
voai	kvoaimngg	to close a door

Vowel plus nasal final consonant

The following finals are composed of vowels capped with m, n, or ng serving as a nasal final consonant (NFC).

Final	Example	Meaning
am	lam	to mix
im	a'kim	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

Notes: ien is often spoken without the i. Also, eng sounds similar to the first part of "English" (Engbuun).

Syllabic structure

A complete syllable in Taiwanese requires only a vowel at the bare minimum. In MTL, syllables follow one of these two patterns, where items in brackets are optional:

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

Syllables generally have only one nasal part, and never the nasal indicator (v) and a nasal final consonant (m, n, ng) at the same time. See ng for the few syllables with more than one nasal part.

A word can be formed with one or more syllables, but two syllables is most typical. We will explain below how every syllable has a distinct tone.

Tones

Taiwanese is a tonal language which means that pitch is used to convey meaning. Many words are differentiated solely by tone. Learning to speak and hear the tones of Taiwanese correctly is often difficult for an English speaker. 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.

Taiwanese has seven tones: five long tones and two short tones. Here are the tones in their classic order:

File:Seven Tones.mp3

1. af, 2. ar, 3. ax, 4. aq, 5. aa, 7. a, 8. ah

The letters f, r and x are silent tone indicators for long tones. Short tones always end with a stop (the ending letter tells both consonant and tone).

#	Tones	Description	MTL	Example
1	high	level (55 or 44)	f (silent)	khaf (leg; foot)
2	shouting	sharply downward (51)	r (silent)	ar (仔)
3	low falling	somewhat downward (31)	x (silent)	pax (leopard)
4	short low	(3ʔ)	ends with q, b, d or g	aq (a duck)
5	curving	mid, downward, then upward (24)	doubling of vowel	gaau (extraordinary)
7	basic	mid-level (33)	default	toa
8	short high	(5ʔ)	ends with h, p, t or k	ah (a box)

Here are the tones in a different order. Can you tell the difference?

File:Tones1235784.mp3

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

Long tones

Here are some common examples of the long tones:

Tone	Example	Meaning
1. high	hiaf	there
2. shouting	zar	early
3. low-falling	zhaix	vegetable
5. curving	hii	fish
7. basic	si	is

The tone indicators always come to the right of the vowel, with one exception. To indicate the curving tone of a compound vowel, normally its last letter is repeated. But when there is an a, it is the one repeated, even when it doesn't sit at the very end of the vowel. For example: gaau, jidthaau, na'aau.

Short tones

Here are some examples of the short tones:

Pitch	-h	-p	-t	-k
8. high	ciah (to eat)	ap (a box)	lat (strength)	bak (ink)
4. low	phaq (to hit)	ciab (juice)	kad (knot)	kag (horn)

The ending letter tells both consonant and pitch. The 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. The low short tones end with q, b, d, and g, which are the same stops, respectively.

Special vowels

For certain vowels in certain tones, there are a few substitutions/shortcuts: five for the shouting-out tone, plus two in the high tone. There is also a shortcut for the curving tone of ø.

File:SpecialVowl.mp3

the five special shouting-tone vowels: ae, ie, uo, ea, ao

File:Special vowels high.mp3

two high-tone shortcuts (y, w) and curving tone of ø (øo)

Vowel#	Before	After	Example	Meaning
ai2	air	ae	hae	sea
i2	ir	ie	lie	you
u2	ur	uo	kuo	(of time) long
e2	er	ea	bea	horse
au2	aur	ao	kao	dog
i1	if	y	y, yn	he / she / it, they
u1	uf	w	wtiu, wn	universe, kindness
ø5	øø	øo	kiøo	bridge

All five shouting substitutions happen only when they end the syllable, so you still have irm, irn, and urn. In contrast, the high subs carry through, so you will see ym, yn, and wn.

Now that you've learned all the vowels and the tones, you might be interested in what we call a "final". This is the rear part of the syllable that includes everything except the initial consonant. So, in MTL, the final uniquely spells out the vowel, tone, and any consonant endings.

There are about 70 commonly-used finals if you ignore the different tones. A complete table of all the finals in all tones is given here.

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 is referred to as tone sandhi, which is extensive in Taiwanese.

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.

Three special symbols

Apostrophe (')

When two syllables are put together, an apostrophe may be used to indicate a syllable boundary if there's any ambiguity. The rule in MTL is that letters are grouped into a syllable starting from the right. Here's one case where a consonant could be part of the first or second syllable.

Okix, meaning "black mole", comes from of (烏; "black") plus kix (痣; "mole"). We simply take the sandhi-modified first syllable (of -> o) and follow it by the second syllable, to get okix. Reading this word, we know the longest syllable starting from the right is kix.

But, there are two other syllables we could combine to get the same result. If we combine og (惡; "evil") and ix (意; "intention") without using an apostrophe, we would also get okix. Clearly, we don't want this. It looks like the k belongs with the second vowel i instead of o.

That's where the apostrophe comes in to save the day. By writing ok'ix with an apostrophe, we keep "evil intention", or "malice", distinct from the harmless okix.

Hyphen (-)

A hyphen is used to join two, or more isolated words to make a new compound word with its own meaning. For example:

• File:Taioaan-laang.mp3 Taioaan + laang = Taioaan-laang (Taiwanese person)
• File:Bykog-kongbiin.mp3 Bykog + kongbiin = Bykog-kongbiin (American citizen).

When reading these hyphenated words, the syllable directly before the hyphen must undergo tone change.

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.

Further study

• Practical Taiwanese Conversation
• Taiwanese-English Dictionaries
• Frequently-used Taiwanese monosyllables

External links

• HTML version