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(Chinese characters: 平話字), also known as 'Foochow Romanized', is a romanized orthography for the Fuzhou dialect adopted in the middle of 19th century by Western missionaries. Unlike its counterpart Pe̍h-ōe-jī for Min Nan, is little known outside of Church circles, and even in its prime days, it was by no means universally understood by Christians.

Contents

History of Foochow Romanized

Romanization scheme

Initials

Rimes

Rimes with coda [-]

Rimes with codas [-ŋ] and [-k]

Tones

Sample text

Books published

See also

External links

History of Foochow Romanized

After Fuzhou became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of First Opium War (from 1839 to 1842), many Western missionaries arrived in the city. In order to preach effectively these missionaries had to learn the Fuzhou dialect, and to facilitate this (and communication with their congregations) they invented a new romanization writing system for it.
Because there are three front rounded vowels in the Fuzhou dialect (IPA: and ), the letters of the default Latin alphabet were considered insufficient to render all the phonemes in the Fuzhou dialect. Therefore, they borrowed the German umlaut letters "Ä", "Ö" and "Ü", and invented a new letter "Ë". "Ä", "Ë", "Ö" and "Ü" stand for , and respectively.
Later, the two points were shifted to underneath the letters as , so that the tone symbols could be marked on top of the letters. This modification brought the Foochow Romanized scheme to its current form.

Romanization scheme

The sample characters are taken from the phonetics book '''Qī Lín Bāyīn''' (《戚林八音》, Foochow Romanized: ), a renowned phonology book about the Fuzhou dialect written in the Qing Dynasty. The pronunciations are recorded in standard IPA symbols.

Initials

'BUC'	'Sample character'	'Pronunciation'
	邊
	波
	蒙
	低
	他
	日
	柳
	求
	氣
	語
	喜
	爭
	出
	時
''None''	鶯	''Null Initial''

Rimes

Rimes without codas

'BUC'	'Sample character'	'Traditional pronunciation'	'Modern pronunciation'
	嘉
	奇
	花
	西
	雞
	歌
	橋
	過
	初
	郊
	溝
	燒
	秋
	催
	開
	歪
	杯
	輝
	之
	孤
	須

Rimes with coda [-]

'BUC'	'Traditional pronunciation'	'Modern pronunciation'
		or
		or
		or
		or
		or
		or
		or
		or
		or

Rimes with codas [-ŋ] and [-k]

'BUC'	'Sample character'	'Traditional pronunciation'	'Modern pronunciation'
	山
	聲
	歡
	天
	香
	光
	賓
	春
	銀
	燈
	釭
	東

Tones

'Name'	'Tonal value'	'BUC symbol'	'Example'
Yīnpíng (陰平, BUC: )	55		君
Shǎngshēng (上聲, BUC: )	33		滾
Yīnqù (陰去, BUC: )	213		貢
Yīnrù (陰入, BUC: )	24		谷
Yángpíng (陽平, BUC: )	53		群
Yángqù (陽去, BUC: )	242		郡
Yángrù (陽入, BUC: )	5		掘

Sample text

''See the .''

Books published

★ Dictionary of the Foochow Dialect

★ The Old and the New Testament

★ The New Testament

★ Matthew's Gospel

See also

★ Fuzhou dialect

★ Qī Lín Bāyīn

★ Min Dong

★ Pe̍h-oē-jī

External links

★ (in Chinese)

★ : The Old Testament, in Foochow Romanized.

★ : The New Testament, in Foochow Romanized.