Taiji Romanisation of Penang Hokkien

Taiji Romanisation is a system of romanisation that I developed for writing Penang Hokkien. I develop it to reflect the cultural, historical and educational characteristics of people who speak Penang Hokkien, differentiating Penang Hokkien from Hokkien spoken elsewhere. At the same time, I want a system that is easy to learn and devoid of unnecessary elements or excessive complexity.

Taiji borrows from various sources including Mandarin, English, the International Phonetic Alphabets and , but does not fully embrace any existing form of Hokkien romanisation.

The most popular form of romanised Hokkien is Pe̍h-ōe-jī, (POJ). It is also called Church Romanization, as it was developed by Christian missionaries in Southeast Asia, and later refined by those in southern China, particularly in Xiamen, Fujian Province, and Tainan, Taiwan. Although it is the most widespread form of Hokkien romanisation, I decided not to use it in teaching Penang Hokkien, and instead to develop Taiji as a form of romanisation that is unique to Penang Hokkien.

Taiji has in fact existed namelessly on its own long before I came around to establish a structure around it. It appears in how the Chinese people in Penang spell the things around them - their dishes, their street names and their own names.

Taiji reflects how the local Chinese transliterate sounds based on their knowledge of writing Malay and English. A person knowing Malay and English (and not Chinese) will intuitively pronounce Penang Hokkien words written in Taiji with a higher degree of accuracy than if they were written in other forms of romanised Hokkien. This is important, because one of my main intentions is to make Penang Hokkien easy for other Malaysians to learn. (By the way, I consider Penang Hokkien a language, not a dialect.)

I did consider using Pe̍h-ōe-jī for teaching Penang Hokkien, but decided not to, due to a number of drawbacks.

1. A person with a knowledge of Malay and English will not be able to pronounce Pe̍h-ōe-jī with a high degree of accuracy without formal learning. Most Malaysians who are literate will know some Malay and English; they expect to use their existing knowledge to pronounce words that are romanised.

2. POJ uses diacritic marks that are absent in most words written in Malay and English. This requires learners to perform a double hurdle, not only in having to learn Penang Hokkien, but also to memorize those marks.

3. POJ is difficult to type on a standard keyboard. A new form of romanisation, as fulfilled by Taiji, overcomes this issue by replacing diacritic marks with numbers that are sequenced to denote four distinct tones. The numbers may be written as subscripts or as regular numbers.

4. POJ distinguishes 8 different tones. These were later reduced to 7, when tones 2 and 6 were merged. Although the tones are numbered, the diacritic marks do not offer any clue to the numbering. In comparison, Taiji waters down the issue by distinguishing only four different tones that correspond to those in Modern Mandarin (but are not exactly related). I find that the number of tones can be watered down to four and still retain intelligibility.

5. The placement of diacritic marks on vowels to denote tones in POJ creates the issue and debate over the correct placement of tone marks in the case of diphthongs and triphthongs. For example, should the mark be placed over the a, or e, i, o, or u, when these appear in a cluster? Put it over the wrong vowel, and you won't find the word in the dictionary. Such a rule requires memorising, but is unnecessary, for it does not help make the system easy to learn. No such issue exists in Taiji. All tone numbers are placed at the end of each syllable, helping to split out strings of vowels.

6. Words written in POJ always appear in the citation tone (which corresponds with the "basic form" in Taiji), the form as cited in the POJ dictionary. The words are not adjusted to reflect tone changes. Readers have to sandhi (or make tone adjustments) as they read. If this were English, it is like writing "fly" but expecting the reader to read "flies", "flew", "flying", or "flown", based on the context of the sentence. POJ's one-form-for-all-occasions introduces ambiguity, where a word can be read in more than one form.

In comparison, Taiji requires the basic form (citation tone) and modified form (sandhi tone) to be shown on the text itself, doing away with any need for self adjustments. What is written is how it should be read.

7. As POJ was intended for romanising Hokkien in general, there is a risk that it threatens Penang Hokkien's unique outstanding values, as it irons out the differences. Taiji embraces not only words of Hokkien origin, but all loanwords are given the same treatment, for example, vi1deo4, com3pu1ter4, etc.

Treatment of Intonation

POJ presently distinguishes 7 different tones namely 1 (dark level), 2 (rising), 3 (dark departing), 4 (dark entering), 5 (light level), 7 (light departing) and 8 (light entering). Terminology used, such as "dark", "rising", "departing", are abstract terms that do not contribute to helping casual learners understand how to pronounce correctly, without some form of guidance.

Taiji, on the other hand, distinguishes only 4 different tones, numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4. This is largely because Taiji does not differentiate checked and unchecked syllables as different tone classes. As a result, tones 1 and 8 in POJ are represented by tone 1 in Taiji, and tones 3 and 4 in POJ represented as tone 3 in Taiji. Tone 7 in POJ is represented as tone 33 in Taiji, yet tones 3 and 33 are said to sound the same in Taiji, which further simplifies learning.

Treatment of Tone Sandhi

Hokkien has a complex tone sandhi with 7 distinct tones. (It's originally 8 but watered down to 7 with the merger of tones 2 and 6) But with the reduction of tones down to only 4, the rules for tone sandhi in Penang Hokkien is greatly simplified. I establish two types of words, the Regular Words that do not change tone, and the Irregular Words that do. Rule governing tone sandhi is applied only on the Irregular Words. The difference between the two systems is shown below:



In fact, the "Regular Words" do change their tone, i.e. tone 7 to tone 3 in POJ, but the similarity is so close in Penang Hokkien that I treat them as unchanged.

Treatment for nasalization, aspiration and glottal stop

Taiji follows the established convention in Penang Hokkien for the treatment of these sounds. In general, nasalization is expressed with the insertion of "n" and aspiration with the insertion of a "h" after p, k and t.

The consonant c present a unique challenge. Compare the word chang (dumpling) and char (stir fry). Chang is not aspirated while char is. Yet both are spelled with ch and are commonly used words. On one hand, I want to maintain consistency, while on the other, I want to reflect and retain the spelling of many common words. I laboured over how to address this issue, as I do not want to re-spell popular words. My solution is to continue using ch for words that have been commonly spelled as such, but for less commonly spelled words, I will spell them if c if not aspirated, and chh if aspirated. By so doing, I avoid any ambiguity.

With glottal stops, Taiji usually places a final -k rather than a final -h (as in POJ), once again distinguishing Penang Hokkien from Hokkien.

Spelling Consistencies and Inconsistencies

I laboured over the issue of consistency, but decided that familiarity is more important than consistency. People who know English would be familiar with how the spelling of many words are indicative rather than phonetically precise, while those familiar with Chinese accept each Chinese character without clue to its pronunciation. So, when devising the romanisation of Penang Hokkien, I prefer each words to assist the person to pronounce intuitively rather than rigidly encapsulating the sound, particularly if it results in the use of letters and symbols that are unfamiliar to local eyes. Taiji is a form of indicative romanisation, it is not a phonetic alphabet.

The spelling of words that have been commonly accepted are retained. All people's surnames, all dishes will continue to be spelled as they are. Where there are severals ways to spell a word, I will either select the one I deem to be the most popular, or I will just accept all.

Commonly spelled words will be preserved even in the face of pronunciation inconsistencies. For example, the word chang3 (dumpling) and the word char4 (stir fry) are both spelled with a "ch". Yet chang is a non-aspirated syllable while char is aspirated. To push for consistency regardless would require the re-spelling of chang to cang, or char to chhar. Both outcomes are not satisfactory, for they produce words that the locals are not accustomed to seeing.

I put in place a system of spelling Penang Hokkien. The spelling is indicative, with commonly spelled words overriding the stated rule. Nonetheless, by putting in place this rule of romanising Hokkien, I can help Penang to retain its own style of spelling Penang Hokkien, differentiating it from Singapore Hokkien. In so doing, Penang Hokkien words such as kuih and koay teow will preserve their spelling, even when the same words are spelled kueh and kway teow in Singapore. The tone numbers appearing in the lessons are optional in daily writing, but are encouraged as an aid to pronunciation. Although visitors to the Learn Penang Hokkien Facebook Group tend to romanise the language any way they please, I continue to compile a dictionary to achieve a degree of consistency.

Naturally the Taiji system requires further improvement and refinement. This will be carried out over time (Pe̍h-ōe-jī is not immune to such refinements either). My purpose with it is simply to make learning Penang Hokkien much easier, and to preserve the spelling of Penang Hokkien words that have been commonly accepted. I believe that, as more people get to know this form of romanisation, its acceptance level will gradually increase.

Read also: Taiji Romanisation for Hokkien Speakers

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