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Taiwanese phonetics

Language Log 2024-12-23

New book in the Cambridge University Press Elements (in Phonetics) series:  The Phonetics of Taiwanese, by Janice Fon and Hui-lu Khoo  (12/11/24):

Summary
 
Taiwanese, formerly the lingua franca of Taiwan and currently the second largest language on the island, is genealogically related to Min from the Sino-Tibetan family. Throughout history, it has been influenced by many languages, but only Mandarin has exerted heavy influences on its phonological system. This Element provides an overview of the sound inventory in mainstream Taiwanese, and details its major dialectal differences. In addition, the Element introduces speech materials that could be used for studying the phonetics of Taiwanese, including datasets from both read and spontaneous speech. Based on the data, this Element provides an analysis of Taiwanese phonetics, covering phenomena in consonants, vowels, tones, syllables, and prosody. Some of the results are in line with previous studies, while others imply potential new directions in which the language might be analyzed and might evolve. The Element ends with suggestions for future research lines for the phonetics of the language.

Excellent maps, tables, sound spectrograms, charts, graphs, figures, illustrations, and references.

Available free online.

Here is an example of their treatment of Taiwanese sentences and passages.

有一个囡仔叫做阿如。伊足溫柔，毋過字寫甲足䆀, ，所以伊的同學攏共伊笑。頂禮拜二，天氣足熱，阿如想欲入去教室，毋過伊同學共伊欺負，無愛予阿如入去。阿如心內足艱苦，所以轉去共媽媽講。媽媽就共伊講:「阿如，你著愛忍耐！」

Ū tsi̍t ê gín-á kiò-tsò A-jû. I tsiok un-jiû, m̄-koh jī siá kah tsiok bái, sóo-í i ê tông-o̍h lóng kā i tshiò. Tíng lé-pài-jī, thinn-khì tsiok jua̍h, A-jû siūnn-beh ji̍p-khì kàu-sik, m̄-koh i tông-o̍h kā i khi-hū, bô ài hōo A-jû–ji̍p-khì. A-jû sim-lāi tsiok kan-khóo, sóo-í tńg-khì kā ma-ma kóng. Ma-ma tō kā i kóng, “A-jû, lí tio̍h ài jím-nāi!”

There was a child named Aju. She was very sweet, but had poor handwriting, so her classmates all laughed at her. Last Tuesday, it was very hot, and Aju wanted to enter the classroom, but her classmates bullied her by not letting her in. Aju was in anguish, so she went home and told her mom. Mom then told her, “Aju, you just have to put up with it!”

About one-third of the book consists of an abstract, which the authors describe thus:

What follows are the transcripts of the Taiwanese recording excerpts from the Mandarin-Taiwanese Spontaneous Speech Corpus (Fon, Reference Fon2004) in both the standard character system and the romanization system of M3, M4, F3, and F4. English translation is also provided to facilitate understanding. Both of the female speakers co-switched to Mandarin several times in their excerpts. As Mandarin is the dominant and official language in Taiwan, this is a fairly common phenomenon. Mandarin utterances are indicated through underline, and its romanization follows the Hanyu pinyin system. To protect the speakers’ privacy, their names were edited out.

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to Wolfgang Behr]