A Beginner’s Guide to Taiwanese

Taiwanese is a beautiful and musical language spoken in Taiwan and amongst Taiwanese people around the world. Most speakers of Taiwanese are not aware that there is an established way to phonetically write down the language. We use a system called Modern Taiwanese Language (MTL) to write down Taiwanese. While there is not a single widely adopted system for the written form of the language, this system MTL is a very useful tool for trying to learn Taiwanese as well as record the language. We will write all of the Taiwanese in this web page using MTL. There are several systems that are in use in Taiwan <link>. Unfortunately most Taiwanese speakers will not be able to read this phonetic system but they will understand it when you read it.

Introduction to the Taiwanese Phonetics

We will first introduce all of the phonetic sounds that you will encounter in Taiwanese. Some sounds have an English equivalent while others are totally new sounds to an English speaker.

Let’s start with the consonants.  

Consonants

The ‘k’ and ‘g’ as well as the ‘p’ and ‘b’ are usually hard to differentiate at first. The ‘g’ and the ‘b’ are voiced which means that you try to pronounce the sound before you say the consonant and make it deep and low in your throat. The k and p are not as aspirated as in English but do have a distinct click or pop. Please listen to the example recordings.

Vowels

The single vowels.

The ‘m’ can be both vowel and consonant.

Compound vowels

These vowels are a combination of two vowel sounds.

Nasal vowel

These vowel sounds are made using your nose. Most vowels have a nasal form. A ‘v’ is placed in front of the vowel to designate it.

Ending vowel

Taiwanese has ending nasal vowel sounds using the ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘ng’.

A word or sound unit in Taiwanese is either a

      [Consonant] + [nasal] vowel

      [Consonant] + vowel + [rear nasal ending]

The consonant, nasal or  rear nasal ending can be left out.

Tones

Taiwanese like Mandarin is a tonal language which means that the vowel are pronounced with a distinctive tone that relate a distinctive meaning. A vowel spoken with a different tones has different meanings . Learning to speak and listen for the tones correctly is difficult for an English speaker since there are no tones in English. With practice you will be able to hear and speak it. Taiwanese has 7 tones (mandarin has 4). Again most speakers of Taiwanese are not aware of the different tones but they can all understand it when you pronounce it.  

The tone indicators (f,x,r, etc) are placed after the vowel.

Examples of the seven tones

In MTL there are a few special letters for certain tones.

A word or sound unit is a called a syllable. A syllable changes tone depending on where it is spoken in a sentence. If a syllable is spoken in the middle of a word, phrase or sentence, it changes tone according to the diagram below. If a syllable is spoken at the end of a phrase or sentence, it does not change tones.

The different tones and the changes in Taiwanese are by far the hardest part of learning Taiwanese.

Three Special Symbols

Apostrophe (')

When two syllables are put together, it may be necessary to indicate a syllable boundary with an apostrophe, given the rule that letters must be grouped into a syllable starting from the right.

Example: of + kix vs og + ix

Suppose we want to combine of, meaning “black”, with kix, meaning “mole”. We simply take the modified tone of the first syllable and follow it by the second syllable. The result is okix (meaning “black mole”). Following the rules of MTL reading, kix is the longest possible syllable starting from the right. Thus the first syllable is the simple vowel o and the second syllable is kix, and no apostrophe is needed.

If we combine og (“evil”) and ix (“intention”) without an apostrophe, we also get okix. By the rules of reading MTL, the final syllable appears to be kix. Therefore, we must insert an apostrophe (ok’ix) to indicate that the last syllable is ix. Now we know the first syllable is ok, which is the modified tone of og. The word ok’ix means “evil intention”.

Hyphen (-)

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

Examples: Taioaan-laang (Taiwanese person); Bykog-kongbiin (American citizen).

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

Back-quote (`)

When a word contains a back-quote, all the syllables after the back-quote are accented in a weaker, lower tone -- either a low-falling tone or a low stop. The tone of the syllable before the back-quote remains unchanged.

Example:

Kviaf`sie  - the kviaf is pronounced without any tone changes while the sie is pronounced with a weakened low tone.

In comparision..

Kviaf-sie – the kviaf is pronounced with normal tone change from high to basic while sie is pronounced as a shouting tone.

Kviaf`sie  means scary

Kvaif-sie means scared of dying