Wiktionary:About Chinese/Eastern Min

Eastern Min or Min Dong is a major branch of Min Chinese, spoken around the area of Fuzhou. Wiktionary uses the Bàng-uâ-cê system  as the romanisation of Eastern Min Chinese.

Bàng-uâ-cê was devised in the 19th century and recorded the phonology of the Fuzhou dialect at the time reasonably accurately. Some (mostly regular) sound changes have occurred since the inception of this romanisation scheme, but Bàng-uâ-cê remains a handy, albeit intricate system for representing the sounds of the modern Fuzhou dialect.

This article aims to explain the usage of this romanisation system. It assumes a basic understanding of the phonology of the.

Unless otherwise indicated, the pronunciations below are in the (IPA).

Initials (15)
Initials undergo changes when the syllable is a non-initial syllable of a (fossilised) compound:
 * Lenited pronunciations are used when the previous syllable has a null coda or a ‹-h› coda, and
 * Nasal pronunciations are used when the previous syllable has a ‹-ng› coda.

Spelling-tone chart
The following table illustrates the finals of 19th-century Fuzhou dialect. Certain finals have different spellings depending on the tone of the syllable, owing the tone-dependent pronunciations of these finals. Per Chinese linguistics conventions, checked-tone syllables are listed alongside their non-checked-tone equivalents.

When there is tone-dependent spelling change in a final, the orange-background cells indicate closed rimes, and blue-background cells indicate open rimes. The closed rimes are the underlying rimes of a final, and open rimes surface when the tone of the syllable (after tone sandhi) is dark departing, light departing, or dark checked.

Spelling-IPA chart
The table below shows the IPA pronunciations of these finals at the time, as well as reflexes in the modern Fuzhou dialect. Some of the rime combinations in the table above are not found in actual speech; these will be marked by — here.

Additional finals
In addition to the finals listed so far, there are two finals which are only found in a limited number of words:


 * ~ ~ : allophones of the negative particle  ‹n̂g›.
 * : only found in (‹ngiău›, “meow of a cat; peeking”) and  (‹miàu›, “meow of a cat”).

Tones (7)
Additionally, there are two tones which only occur in tone sandhi:

Tone sandhi
Tone sandhi rules in the Fuzhou dialect are complex. Generally, only non-final syllables in a word undergo tone sandhi.

The table below shows the two-syllable tonal sandhi rules; the cells indicate the tone of the first syllable after tone sandhi.

And the three-syllable tone sandhi rules are:

For four-syllable words, there are two types of tone sandhi:
 * In articulated speech, it is treated as two sequential two-syllable units, and undergo two-syllable tone sandhis accordingly;
 * In fast speech, the first two syllables are reduced to a half dark departing tone, and the remaining two syllables undergo two-syllable tone sandhi.

Ways to handle special cases
can be used to handle irregular pronunciations. The format is:. For example:

preceding an initial can be used to block lenition or nasal assimilation. For example:

Resources

 * The how-to-read help page on Eastern Min Wikipedia
 * Online Dictionary of Fuzhou Dialect

If there are any questions, please leave a message on the talk page.