A Beginner's Guide to Taiwanese: Difference between revisions

A Beginner's Guide to Taiwanese (view source)

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→‎How to make a syllable: put Syllable structure at end

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 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: ''{{x|gaau}}'', ''{{x|jidthaau}}'', ''{{x|na'aau}}''.
-=== Review all the tones ===
+===== Special vowels =====
-Go back again to the [[:File:Seven Tones of Taiwanese.pdf|''Seven Tones'' chart]] and see how much you can now read. After you know this chart, any syllable you see will just boil down to a final either with or without a consonant in front.
-You may have noticed some spellings a little different from what we taught so far. Let's look at those next.
-=== Special vowels ===
 For certain vowels in certain tones, the following ornamental substitutions/shortcuts are used:
 * [[shouting tone]]: ''ie'', ''uo'', ''ea'', ''ae'', ''ao'', when they end the syllable
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 [[File:y yn kym titw zhwn.mp3|thumb|none|y, yn, kym, titw, zhwn]]
 As the shouting substitutions happen only when they end the syllable, you still have ''{{x|irm}}'', ''{{x|irn}}'', and ''{{x|urn}}'', not ''iem'', etc.
+=== Syllable structure ===
+A syllable in Taiwanese is either:
+* [consonant] + [nasal] vowel
+* [consonant] + vowel + [rear nasal ending]
+where the brackets mean the consonant, nasal or rear nasal ending can be left out. Therefore:
+* a vowel is required
+* there is no "double nasal" (more than one ''m'', ''n'', ''ng'', or ''v'') in the final part after the initial consonant
+Finally, syllables usually don't have both a nasal initial consonant and nasal final, except for various tones of ''{{x|mng}}'' and ''[[ng|nng]]''. For example, ''man'' and ''mang'' are not valid.
 == Tone sandhi ==