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Writing Chaoshan speech down: four systems

Chaoshan speech has been written with several systems: the missionaries’ church romanisation, the 1960 romanisation, the International Phonetic Alphabet used in linguistics — and, earlier than any of them, rhyme books compiled by local men. Each has its use; write with two at once and the record goes wrong.

1. Church romanisation

When Shantou was opened as a treaty port in the middle of the nineteenth century, the missionaries who came in had first to learn the local speech, and so made a set of church romanisation, called Pe̍h-ūe-jī, “the plain speech characters”, to write Shantou speech.

Two dates mark its arrival: 1876, when a Gospel of Luke written in the Shantou vernacular was published — the first time the Bible was printed in romanised Shantou speech; and 1915, when a New Testament in the Chaozhou vernacular came out. In between, single volumes appeared one after another: Genesis, Jonah, James, Matthew, the Acts, Mark.

Church romanisation marks tone with signs, not numbers. The eight example words show it best: hun (to divide, unmarked), hún (powder, ´), hùn (to instruct, `), hut (to neglect, final -t, unmarked), hûn (cloud, ^), hũn (to mix, ~), hūn (share, ¯), hu̍t (Buddha, ´ with -t). The entering tone is known by its final -p, -t, -k or -h, not by a sign.

2. The Chaozhou romanisation of 1960

In 1960 the Guangdong education authorities issued the Chaozhou romanisation scheme, spelling with Latin letters. It is based on the Chaozhou speech of Shantou city, and marks tone with a digit on the syllable, one to eight for the eight classes (printed as a superscript). The same eight examples are written hung1, hung2, hung3, hug4, hung5, hung6, hung7, hug8 — the entering tone closes in -g, which is the most visible difference from church romanisation.

3. The rhyme books

In the late Qing and early Republic, Chaozhou men, following the rhyme books of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, compiled in succession the Chaosheng shiwu yin (The fifteen sounds of the tide), the Jimu zhiyin (Striking wood, knowing the sound — also known as the Huiji yasu shiwu yin quanben), and the Chaoyu shiwu yin (Fifteen sounds of Chaozhou speech). All three divide the syllable by fifteen initials; they are the local sorting-out of the sound system by local men, a different road from the missionaries recording it from outside. Earlier still is the section “On Chaoshan sounds in full” in Zheng Changshi’s Hanjiang wenjian lu, from the Jiaqing reign. Only the titles and the dates are noted here, with no comparison book by book.

4. Choosing between them

For old books, old dictionaries and church publications, church romanisation; for modern dictionaries and teaching material, the romanisation scheme; for field records and papers, the IPA. The three cannot be written together — half a page marking tone with digits and half with signs, and the reader is lost.

What this site does: Chinese characters in the text, notation only where it is needed, and always saying which system is being used. That is the same thing as the three hard rules for transcription on Dialect and performance: what is written down is the sound collected, not the sound inferred.

Sources

Wikipedia, “Teochew dialect” (consulted 26 October 2026): the origin of church romanisation and its publication years, who drew up the 1960 scheme and on what speech, the titles of the three rhyme books, and the church and romanised spellings of the eight examples all come from that entry; so does the note on Zheng Changshi’s Hanjiang wenjian lu.

The values of the eight tones and the six-place comparison are on The eight tones of Chaoshan speech; word forms are on Chaoshan speech against Mandarin.

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Last revised: 4 November 2026