Table of all MLT finals
A table of all finals in Taiwanese is presented in the following files using the MTL writing system. In MTL, the final contains the vowel, tone, and any consonant endings. There are 266 commonly-used finals found in the dictionary. If you drop the tones (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)