MTL Toolbox

MTL Toolbox (https://learntaiwanese.org/MTLtoolbox/info.html) is software and data to help work with written Taiwanese using the MTL writing system and other romanizations for Taiwanese.

Features

• six Taiwanese dictionaries spanning from Japanese era to present day
• full-text search engine accepts written Taiwanese as well as English, and Harnji
• audio from latest government-compiled dictionary
• word unjoiner to aid learning and searching at syllable level
• Seven Tones soundboard: table of all MLT finals with examples

How to search

• try typing in or clicking these words (from Practical Taiwanese Conversation)
  • goar
  • lie
  • ee
  • si
  • hør

• try the following words (see tone sandhi to read about joining of syllables)
  • chviafmng
  • tøsia
  • køefcie
  • siøfciar
  • øextaxng

Data

Local copies of:

• HTB: Hiexntai-buun Dictionary
• DFT: Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan (originally TL with MTL annotations)
• MK: Maryknoll Taiwanese-English Dictionary (originally POJ with MTL annotations)
• EDUTECH: Liim Keahioong (2001-2003) EDUTECH: Taiwanese-English Dictionary Searched with Concise Atonal Spelling. MLT, unified spellings (øe), no unjoined
• Embree, Bernard L. M. (1973). A Dictionary of Southern Min: based on current usage in Taiwan and checked against the earlier works of Carstairs Douglas, Thomas Barclay, and Ernest Tipson. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Language Institute.
• Tai-Nichi Daijiten (originally Taiwanese kana, the data is Taiwanese Han-lo, Lim (2008))

We also support searching online with conversion to POJ/TL:

• Lim (2019): Tai-Nichi Daijiten
• Taibuun/Hoabuun Svoarterng Sutiern

Technical Notes

• FTS4 full-text searches: SQLite FTS3 and FTS4 Extensions
• Token prefix queries: use the asterisk ('*') at the end. Similar to but not same as the wildcard character in operating systems (normal wildcard search not currently supported by FTS)
  • Example: Taioa*
• Specify a column-name followed by a colon (':')
  • Example: thj:頭* (you should see all DFT entries starting with this Harnji)

See Also

• Taiwanese-English dictionaries

Acknowledgements

• The MTL Toolbox uses data from the Maryknoll Taiwanese-English Dictionary, which was generously released to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.