The Chinese characters in this book, unless specifically marked, are in Mandarin. Romanization is done according to the Hanyu Pinyin system. The dialect spoken in the Matsu Islands is the Fuzhou dialect, which I have romanized according to the system explained below, but without any indication of tones; this is given only when there is no equivalent Mandarin translation, and is marked by an F.
The phonetic transcription used in this book, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) with minor adjustments, is consistent with Matsu fuzhou hua pinyin fang’an (the phonetic alphabet program of the Fuzhou dialect in Matsu); see the website of Matsu mindong (fuzhou) hua richang shenghuo changyong cihui (Common vocabulary of everyday life in the Mindong (Fuzhou) dialect in Matsu).Footnote 1
The consonant symbols are shown in the table below.
| Place Manner | Bilabial | Alveolar | Postal- veolar | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Unaspirated Voiceless | p | t | k | h (coda) | |
| Aspirated Voiceless | ph | th | kh | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ng | |||
| Fricative | (β) | s | (ʒ) | h (initial) | ||
| Affricates | Unaspirated Voiceless | ts | ||||
| Aspirated Voiceless | tsh | |||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
The vowel symbols are shown in the table below.
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | |||
| Close | i | y | u | |
| Mid | e | oe | o | |
| Open | a | |||
Below is a brief explanation.
1. The consonants b and j, which are respectively equivalent to /β/ and /ʒ/ in IPA, are produced only when “initial assimilation” occurs. Initial assimilation in the Fuzhou dialect is a process in which the initial of a syllable in a polysyllabic word changes under the influence of the coda or the final sound of the preceding syllable. This phenomenon appears only in syllables after the first one.Footnote 2
2. h is a glottal fricative when used to indicate an initial and a glottal stop when used to indicate a coda.
3. y is a close front rounded vowel.
4. oe is a mid-front rounded vowel, equivalent to /ø/ in IPA.
5. This book uses the symbols as shown in the tables above without any indication of tones.
2 In a word with two or more syllables, the initial of each syllable other than the first one can change based on the features of the preceding sound, i.e. the final phoneme of the preceding syllable. In Chinese, every syllable is composed of an initial and a coda, and the initial is also the beginning consonant. In the Fuzhou dialect, if a word is composed of more than two syllables, then the initial of each syllable other than the first one may change based on the preceding sound.
Open access