Tâigí Phonics 1 - Initial Consonants

A note to learners with a Mandarin background:

Even if you are familiar with Chinese characters, I highly recommend avoiding them while learning Taiwanese, also known as Tâigí. Throughout this series, you will learn many useful vocabulary words, and you may be tempted to try to figure out the "correct" characters for each word. Some may seem obvious, some less so, but in general Taiwanese does not have any widely accepted standard for which Chinese characters to use for a given sound or word.

Mandarin has a "homophone problem", in that many characters have exactly the same reading. This can lead to confusion when we try to read something written entirely in pinyin. However, this problem does not exist in vernacular Taiwanese. Taiwanese has more vowels, syllable-final consonants, and tones which leads to a far greater number of distinct syllables. You DO NOT need Chinese characters to understand written Pe̍h-ōe-jī, and in fact most writing in Pe̍h-ōe-jī written by native Taiwanese speakers uses no Chinese characters whatsoever!

With that out of the way...

Welcome to Tâigí Phonics 101!

In this video, you will learn the 21 initial consonant sounds in Taiwanese.

Group A: p, ph, b, m
Group B: t, th, n, l
Group C: k, kh, g, ng, h
Group D: ch, chh, s, j
Group E: chi, chhi, si, ji

Each sound in a group is produced in the same place in your mouth. For interest parties, the technical terms for these groups are: bilabial, alveolar, velar, alveolar sibilant, and post-alveolar sibilant.

Here are the example words used for each sound:

chi̍t-pah (a hundred)
phah (to hit, to type)
bān (ten-thousand)
mā (also, too)

chi̍t-kóa (a few)
sió-khóa (a little bit)
góa (I, me)
iu-ngá (elegant)
hā (summer)

chúi (water)
chhùi (mouth)
súi (beautiful), súi-·lah! (great!)
joa̍h (hot)

chi-chhî (support)
sì (four)
jī (two; a letter or character)

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