The sounds of Teochew
Reading Teochew, eight tones to recognise.
Eight tones marked by accents, syllables cut short in -h, -p or -k, nasal vowels marked ⁿ, and the vowel ṳ, one of the most typical sounds of the language. Pe̍h-ūe-jī (“writing of the spoken language”), developed in Shantou in the 19th century, transcribes each syllable in Latin letters; you will also come across Peng’im, the official system of 1960, which marks the tone with a number (ua2 for uá). Chaozhou pronunciation.
汝
lṳ́汝好
Tones and sounds
The sounds to know
Choose a group, then a sound. Listen to it in common words, at normal speed or slowly.
Sound
Reading rules
One character, one syllable, one tone.
茶 · 麵
The mark makes the word
In Pe̍h-ūe-jī, the accent on the vowel shows the tone: 茶 tê (tea), 麵 mī (noodles), 有 ǔ (have). Leave out the mark and you write another word.
北 · 食
Two clipped tones
Tones 4 and 8 only exist on syllables ending in -h, -p or -k, stopped short: 北 pak (low, no mark), 食 tsia̍h (high, vertical line).
潮州
The tone changes in the sentence
Before another syllable of the same group, almost every syllable changes pitch: in 潮州 Tiê-tsiu, tiê is said low. Pe̍h-ūe-jī always writes the base tone, the one of the word on its own.
飯 · 館
No -t, no -n
No Teochew syllable ends in -t or -n: they have merged into -k and -ng. 飯 is pūng, 館 kuáng.
愛 · 欲
A loosely fixed script
Spoken Teochew has characters of its own (汝, 伊, 啉, 唔, 嫑), but no official standard: “want” is written 愛 or 欲, “not want” 嫑 or 勿. Newspapers and documents use standard Chinese, read the Teochew way.
Reading