A Beginner's Guide to Taiwanese

Lier! 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 the Modern Literal Taiwanese writing system, which we call MTL for "Modern Taiwanese Language".

"Hello" in Taiwanese, written Lie hør!

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 to be able to; ...
o ho rain; to give; ...
ø 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; ...
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 () 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.

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

External links