Bricks, rules, and sentences of your own.
Every word you learn is a reusable brick. Checked rules combine them: you build correct sentences you never learnt by heart, then you transform them, listen to them and meet them again in real situations.
Six families of bricks
Every word comes in traditional characters, with its Pe̍h-ūe-jī transcription (tone shown by an accent), its audio and a meaning in context.
伊 means both “he” and “she”. Two words for “we”: 阮 (we, not including the person you are talking to) and 俺 (we, including them).
Verbs never change: 我啉, 伊啉, 阮啉 – no -s, no past tense ending. 啉 is for drinks, 食 for food; in conversation people also say 食茶 for “drinking tea”.
No articles, no gender, no compulsory plural. The place comes straight after the verb: 去潮州 (go to Chaozhou).
唔 negates, right before the verb; 無 replaces 有 in the negative. 唔愛 contracts to 嫑 (“not want”). A yes/no question adds 無 at the end: 汝啉茶無？
The assembly rules. Nothing is glued together word for word.
Eight tones, shown in Pe̍h-ūe-jī by an accent on the vowel; tones 1 and 4 have none. The tone is part of the word, like a letter: without it, tê (茶, tea) would become another syllable.
The same bricks, everywhere
At a restaurant, on the move or meeting someone new, a few bricks are enough to make yourself understood.
Fifteen minutes a day
Adjustable from 5 to 30 minutes. Missing a day costs you nothing: your progress waits for you.
Lay your first brick.
Choose your goal and your pace, and the first lesson starts straight away.