Foochow Romanized, also known as Bàng-uâ-cê (BUC for short; ) or Hók-ciŭ-uâ Lò̤-mā-cê (), is a

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

for the Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min adopted in the middle of the 19th century by Western missionaries. It had varied at different times, and became standardized in the 1890s. Foochow Romanized was mainly used inside of church circles, and was taught in some mission schools in Fuzhou. However, unlike its counterpart

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (; ; ), also sometimes known as the Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien. Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Sout ...

for

Hokkien The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...

, even in its prime days Foochow Romanized was by no means universally understood by Christians. R. S. Maclay, C. C. Baldwin, Samuel H. Leger: Dictionary of the Foochow Dialect, 1929

History

After Fuzhou became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of First Opium War (from 1839 to 1842), many Western missionaries arrived in the city. Faced with widespread illiteracy, they developed Latin alphabets for the Fuzhou dialect. The first attempt in romanizing the Fuzhou dialect was made by the American Methodist M. C. White, who borrowed a system of orthography known as the System of Sir William Jones. In this system, 14 initials were designed exactly according to their voicing and aspiration. , , and stand for , , and ; while the Greek spiritus lenis were affixed to the above initials to represent their aspirated counterparts. Besides the default five vowels of

, four diacritic-marked letters , , and were also introduced, representing , , , and , respectively. This system is described at length in White's linguistic work '' The Chinese Language Spoken at Fuh Chau''. Subsequent missionaries, including Robert S. Maclay from

American Methodist Episcopal Mission American Methodist Episcopal Mission (AMEM; also known as Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church ''MEFB was the missionary society of the Methodist Episcopal Church that was involved in sending workers to countries such as ...

, R. W. Stewart from the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

and

Charles Hartwell Charles Hartwell (; Pinyin: ''Xià Chálǐ''; Foochow Romanized: ''Hâ Chák-lī''; December 19, 1825 - January 30, 1905) was an American Board missionary to Foochow, China in the second half of the 19th century. Life and work Hartwell was ...

from the American Board Mission, further modified White's system in several ways. The most significant change was made for the

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...

consonants, where the spiritus lenis of the aspirated initials was removed and the letters , and substituted for and . In the aspect of vowels, , , and were replaced by , , and . Since the diacritical marks were all shifted to underneath the vowels, this left room above the vowels which was occupied by the newly introduced tonal marks. Thus Foochow Romanized avoids the potentially awkward diacritic stacking seen for instance in the Vietnamese script, where tone and vowel quality marks both sit above the vowel.

Alphabet

The sample characters are taken from the '' Qi Lin Bayin'', a renowned phonology book about the Fuzhou dialect written in the

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

. The pronunciations are recorded in standard

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...

symbols.

Initials

Finals

Finals without codas

Finals with coda

Finals with codas ŋand k

Tones

Note that Foochow Romanized uses the breve, not the caron (ˇ), to indicate Yīnpíng and Yángrù tones of Fuzhou dialect.

Sample text

IPA

References

External links

* Everything You Want To Know About Foochow Romanized (in Foochowese)
Gô Iók Cŭ
The Old Testament, in Foochow Romanized.
Sĭng Iók Cŭ
The New Testament, in Foochow Romanized.
An English-Chinese Dictionary of the Foochow Dialect
by T. B. Adam, 1905 * {{Min Chinese Latin-script orthographies Romanization of Chinese Culture in Fujian