Daī-ghî tōng-iōng pīng-im ( abbr: DT; ) is an

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

in the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

for

Taiwanese Hokkien Taiwanese Hokkien ( , ), or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taigi ( zh, c=臺語, tl=Tâi-gí), Taiwanese Southern Min ( zh, c=臺灣閩南語, tl=Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí), Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively ...

based upon Tongyong Pinyin. It is able to use the

to indicate the proper variation of pitch with nine

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

symbols.Wells,J.C.,"Orthographic diacritics and multilingual computing",Dept. of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London,UK,200

Phonology

DT in its present form has 17 initials, 18 finals and 8 tones.

Tone number

Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese is a tonal language. In Taiwanese, which has nine tones and two extra tones, neutral tone and

nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are p ...

Tone definition

Tone marks

Tones are expressed by

s; checked syllables (i.e. those ending with

glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

s) are followed by the letter h. Where diacritics are not technically available, e.g. on some parts of the internet, tone alphabet may be used instead. # a (1st tone; yinping) # à (2nd tone; yingshang) # a̠ (3rd tone; yinqu) # ā (ptkh) (4th tone; yinru) # ă (5th tone; yangping) # ä (6th tone; yangshang) # ā (7th tone; yangqu) # a (ptkh) (8th tone; yangru) # á (9th tone; high rising) # å (neutral tone) # aⁿ (ann) (

) Examples for these tones: ciūⁿ (elephant), bâ (leopard), bhè (horse), di (pig), zŭa (snake), āh (duck), lok (deer). And, a neutral tone, sometimes indicated by å(aj) in DT, has no specific contour; its pitch always depends on the tones of the preceding syllables. Taiwanese speakers refer to this tone as the "neutral tone" ().

Tone sandhi

Tone sandhi or chain shift by circulation, as the tones are encoded by appending and modifying spellings with attention to the rules of the DT system. The basic tone has no modification and tone mark. Generally speaking, the basic tone means the 7th tone (mid even tone; yangqu).Li, Hen-zng(李獻璋),"Introduction to Ho-gen hue(福建語法序說)",Minami-kaze Bookstore(南風書局),

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, Dec. 1950.

Morphology

A DT word, like an English word, can be formed by only one syllable or several syllables, with the two syllables being the general typicality. Each syllable in DT follows one of the six underlying patterns:Dan, Hue-liong(陳輝龍),"Taiwanese(臺灣語法(全));Appendum: the Taiwanese auxiliary(附臺灣語助數詞)",Anonymous association publ.(無名會出版部),

Taipei , nickname = The City of Azaleas , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

,July 1934.

Alphabet

The DT alphabet adopts the

of 19 letters, 4 digraphs, and 6

s to express the basic sounds of Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese:

Initials

bh, z, c, gh, h, r, g, k, l, m, n, ng, b, p, s, d, t Note that unlike their typical interpretation in modern

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

, ''bh'' and ''gh'' are voiced and unaspirated, whereas ''b'', ''g'', and ''d'' are plain unvoiced as in Hanyu Pinyin. ''p'', ''k'', and ''t'' are unvoiced and aspirated, corresponding closer to ''p'', ''t'', and ''k'' in English. It is inconsistent with the use of h's in the Legge romanization and the use of the diacritic in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

to signal consonantal aspiration.

Finals

Vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s: a, i, u, e, or, o *

Diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

s: ai, au, ia, iu, io, ui, ua, ue * Triphthongs: iau, uai * Nasals: m, n, ng The nasals ''m, n,'' and ''ng'' can be appended to any of the vowels and some of the diphthongs. In addition, ''m'' and ''ng'' can function as independent syllables by themselves. The stops ''h'', ''g'', ''b'' and ''d'' can appear as the last letter in a syllable, in which case they are pronounced with no audible release. (The final ''h'' in DT stands for a glottal stop.)

Delimiting symbols

All syllables in each word are normally separated by the

dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...