Taiwanese kana

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2009)

A dictionary with Taiwanese kana

Taiwanese kana (タイ ヲァヌ ギイ カア ビェン) is a katakana-based writing system once used to write Holo Taiwanese, when Taiwan was ruled by Japan. It functioned as a phonetic guide to hanzi, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhuyin fuhao in Chinese. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages.

The system was imposed by Japan at the time, and used in a few dictionaries, as well as textbooks. The Japanese-Taiwanese Dictionary (日臺大辭典), published in 1931-1932, is an example. It uses various signs and diacritics to denote sounds that do not exist in Japanese. The system is chiefly based on the Amoy (Xiamen) dialect of Min Nan.

Through the system, the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan aimed to help Taiwanese people learn the Japanese language, as well as help Japanese people learn the Taiwanese language. Linguistically speaking, however, the syllabary system was cumbersome for a language that has phonology far more complicated than Japanese. After Japanese administration ended, the system soon became obsolete. Now, only a few scholars, such as the ones who study aforementioned dictionary, learn Taiwanese kana.

Currently, Mojikyo is the only piece of software/encoding that fully supports the system. Unicode lacks small katakana wo and tone signs; although lacking precomposed overlined and underdotted kana^{[citation needed]}, combining character sequences containing the combining overline and combining dot below are sufficient for representing overlined and underdotted kana.

The system has undergone some modification over time. This article is mainly about the last edition, used from roughly 1931.

Contents 1 Basic rules 2 Tone signs 3 Comparison chart with POJ 4 Example 5 Comparison chart 6 External links

[edit] Basic rules

Mapped sounds are mostly similar to katakana in Japanese. Notable differences include:

• All the syllables (with a few exceptions) are written with 2 or 3 kana. When a vowel is not followed by another vowel or a consonant, kana for the vowel is repeated. (for example カア for POJ ka, キイ for ki.)
• When a syllable contains 3 vowels, or 2 vowels followed by a consonant, a vowel in middle is written with a small vowel kana. (for example キアウ for kiau, キエク for kiek.)
• The sound /ɔ/ (IPA) is spelt オ, while /o/ is ヲ. Therefore, POJ o· is always オ, while o may be spelt オ or ヲ, depending on the pronunciation. (for example o /o/ is ヲヲ, o· /ɔ/ is オオ. oak /uak/ is ヲアク, but iok /iɔk/ is イオク. kió /kio˥˧/ is キヲ, but kióⁿ /kiɔ̃˥˧/ is キオ.) Unlike in Japanese, ヲ is never /wo/.
• Cosonant is written with a vowel "o", when it precedes ヲ. (for example コヲ for ko.)
• Final nasals n/m/ng are ヌ/ム/ン respectively. ヌ/ム can also be used for nu/mu in initials. (for example カヌ for kan, ヌヌ for nun.)
• Syllabic ng (/ŋ̩/) is spelt as (u+)ン. (for example クン for kng.) The syllable "ng" (without a preceding vowel) is ン, not ウン or ンン.
• Syllabic m (/m̩/) is spelt as (u+)ム. (for example フム for hm.) The syllable "m" (without a preceding vowel) is ム, not ウム or ムム.
• Initial ng is spelt as g with a nasal tone sign. (for example ガア for gá, ガア for ngá.)
• Final consonants k/t/p are small ク/ツ/プ respectively, similar to the kana used in Ainu.
• Final consonant h (/ʔ/) is written as a small kana after the preceding vowel. (for example カア for kah, カウ for kauh.)
• Aspirated consonants are written as kana with a dot under it. (for example ト̣ for tho.)
• There are five (ten if one counts aspirates) overlined kana to deal with t and ch. チ sounds similar to ティ in modern Japanese katakana. ツ is similar to トゥ, サ to ツァ, セ to ツェ, and ソ to ツォ.

• フ is not /ɸu/ as in Japanese, but /hu/.
• ヤ, ユ, ヨ, ワ, ヰ, and ヱ are not used.
• There are two optional vowel kana for Choâⁿ-chiu (Quánzhōu) dialect. ウ for /ɨ/, オ for /ə/. (for example クウ for /kɨ/, コオ for /kə/, クウヌ for /kɨn/.)

[edit] Tone signs

There are different tone signs for normal vowels and nasal vowels.

POJ	a	á	à	ah	â	ā	a̍h
Normal vowels	None
Nasal vowels

• When a text is written vertically, those signs are written on the right side of letters. Taiwanese kana is known to be written vertically only, so it is unknown how to put the signs if it were written horizontally.
• Initial consonants m/n/ng are always written with nasal vowel tone signs.

[edit] Comparison chart with POJ

• Some combinations don't exist in reality.
• You always have to put tone signs.
• ¹: g always takes normal vowel tone signs, ng always takes nasal vowel tone signs.
• ²: Some spellings are not clear. 仔(á) was sometimes written as ア rather than アア. 的(ê) was sometimes written as エ rather than エエ.
• ³: Nasal vowels (oⁿ, ioⁿ) are spelt with オ, such as オオ, ポオ, イオ, ピオ, and so on.

[edit] Example

（ Sound file (help·info)）

シ
エ
ヌ
シ
イ
コ
ン
、
ハ
ク
シ
エ
ン
チ
ア
ム
チ
ア
ム
チ̣
ア
。

Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Sian-siⁿ kóng, ha̍k-seng tiām-tiām thiaⁿ.

Traditional Chinese: 先生講、學生恬恬聽。

Translation: A teacher is speaking. Students are quietly listening.

[edit] Comparison chart

Tones

IPA	a˥	a˥˧	a˨˩	ap˩ at˩ ak˩ aʔ˩	a˧˥	a˥˧	a˧	ap˥ at˥ ak˥ aʔ˥	a˥˥	a˨
Pe̍h-ōe-jī	a	á	à	ap at ak ah	â	á	ā	a̍p a̍t a̍k a̍h		--a
Revised TLPA TLPA	a1	a2	a3	ap4 at4 ak4 ah4	a5	a2 (6=2)	a7	ap8 at8 ak8 ah8	a9	a0
Pumindian (普闽典)	ā	ǎ	à	āp āt āk āh	á	ǎ	â	áp át ák áh
MLT	af	ar	ax	ab ad ag aq	aa	aar	a	ap at ak ah		~a
DT	a	à	â	āp āt āk āh	ǎ	ä	ā	ap at ak ah	á	å/aj
Taiwanese kana (normal vowels)	アア	アア	アア	アプ アツ アク アア	アア	アア	アア	アプ アツ アク アア
Taiwanese kana (nasal vowels)	アア	アア	アア	アプ アツ アク アア	アア	アア	アア	アプ アツ アク アア
zhuyin	ㄚ	ㄚˋ	ㄚᒻ	ㄚㆴ ㄚㆵ ㄚㆶ ㄚㆷ	ㄚˊ	ㄚˋ	ㄚ⊦	ㄚㆴ̇ ㄚㆵ̇ ㄚㆶ̇ ㄚㆷ̇
example (traditional Chinese)	公司	報紙	興趣	血壓 警察 中國 牛肉	人員		草地	配合 法律 文學 歇熱	社子	進去
example (simplified Chinese)	公司	报纸	兴趣	血压 警察 中国 牛肉	人员		草地	配合 法律 文学 歇热	社子	進去

• Note: The bopomofo extended characters in the zhuyin row require a UTF-8 font capable of displaying Unicode values 31A0–31B7 (ex. Code2000 true type font).

[edit] External links

• National Taichung Library (Mandarin Chinese, English), including the scan of The Taiwanese-Japanese Dictionary. [1] [2]
• 台灣總督府ê日本國民讀本 (Japanese textbook by the Governor-General of Taiwan) (Holo Taiwanese)
• 《訂正臺灣十五音字母詳解》 音系研究 (Phonetic study on The revised guide of 15 Taiwanese letters)PDF (1.36 MB) (Mandarin Chinese)