taiwanchurch.org -- Phonetic Script for Taiwanese (Hokkien/Minnan) Language

NOTE: In addition to the most widespread romanization, that of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan, I have developed a new script that more accurately captures the relation between different phonetic sounds. It is based on one created by the Oxford philologist and writer, J.R.R.Tolkien, though I've modified some things, particularly vowel sounds. My philosophy on Romanizations: They are good for rendering names into English but I think it is really bad as far as regular usage. The Pinyin of China for Mandarin does not match up with the common English phonetic representation of letters and so Chinese-speakers trying to learn English who were first taught Pinyin get confused, and English-speakers learning Mandarin get confused. It slows the whole process down. As you peruse the Taiwanese Romanization table below, I think you will see what I mean. Things are not always as they seem. In contrast, in Taiwan for Mandarin they teach a distinct phonetic script called "BoPoMoFo" (from the first four letters), also called "ChuYinFuHow" from the Mandarin name of the system. It takes a little to learn, but then once you know it, you can completely accurately represent the sounds with no cross-language confusion. Taiwanese does not have such a system, so I have developed one. I did not use a modified "BoPoMoFo" for the same reason, but chose a script which is unique, and also very well represents relations between different phonetic sounds. - Joel Linton, Jan. 1, 2004 For an example of how the script looks, here is a calligraphy page using the Script with Chinese character glosses. It is from the Taiwanese Bible: Colossians 1:13-14. [the image uses 400K of memory]

One more rule about Tones: When words are combined in a sentence, the last word of a phrase (or wherever you pause) is pronounced with the original tone. The tones of the words before are changed in a consistent manner. 1 changes to 7 2 changes to 1 3 changes to 2 4 w/ -h ending becomes 2 4 w/ -p,k,t endings becomes 8 5 flattens to 7 7 goes to 3 8 goes to 3

Typing Rules For typing emails without a speciallized font, use the PCT romanization. Type the vowels and consonants first. Then add any vowel markings... Add a period immediatly after the o vowel "o." to show a glottal "o" Add an asterisk "*" after the syllable to indicate nasalized vowels. Then you finally indicate tone markings listed after their tone number below. I think putting the actual tone markings instead of the tone number makes it easier to read on emails. Connect words with a tilda "~" 1 (no marking) 2 / 3 \ 4 ending in h,k,t,p 5 ^ 7 - 8 ending in h', k', t', p' Now you can email your friends using Taiwanese. Here is an example from the Taiwanese Bible. Can you read it? So./ sim/~phoa*\ e^, chiu-~si- kng jip' se\~kan, iah' lang^ ai\ am\ khah ke\~thau^ ti- kng, in~ui- i so./ kia*^ siu- chek~pi-. Tok'~tok' kia*^ chin~li/ e^ lang^ chiu-~kun- kng, lai^ hian/~beng^ i e^ so./ kia*^ si- ti- Siong-~te\ lai^ kia*^. Iok~han- 3:19-21 Check out other Taiwanese quotes: twverse1.html