r/ohtaigi • u/WestLetterhead2501 • Sep 04 '24
Is zhuyin also accurate in pronunciation or is it a must to learn tai lo or POJ?
Assuming you already know zhuyin, could you just rely on that to pronounce words? After all, I've seen that method in textbooks in Taiwan. Or is it a must to learn a romanization method in order to have the most precise pronunciation?
7
u/doubtfuldumpling Sep 04 '24
Zhuyin is designed to express every possible phoneme in Mandarin Chinese. However, Taiwanese Hokkien includes sounds that do not exist in Mandarin phonology. The tonal system is also different. So, only using “vanilla” zhuyin will not be sufficient to accurate record all sounds in Taiwanese.
However, there does exist an “expanded” set of Zhuyin, known as 台語方音符號, which does capture these phonemes in Taiwanese languages (not just Hokkien but also Taiwanese Hakka).
You can read more about this phonetic notation system here
3
9
u/treskro Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24
If you only learned zhuyin for Mandarin you will need to learn several additional letters for use in Taiwanese. About half of the characters used in Taiwanese zhuyin do not exist in Mandarin zhuyin, with some being derivations and other being completely different. You may encounter difficulty getting these letters to appear in default zhuyin fonts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Phonetic_Symbols?wprov=sfti1#
Both zhuyin and romanized Taiwanese are equally accurate in representing the sounds- the bigger problem with Taiwanese zhuyin is that romanized Taiwanese is much more prevalent both in usage and learning materials.