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Penang Hokkien Spelling & Pronunciation

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Before you begin your journey into learning Penang Hokkien, you should first acquaint yourself to the spelling and pronunciation of Penang Hokkien. Although Penang Hokkien has existed for some three hundred years as a largely oral language, through this online course, a romanisation system has been created to progress Penang Hokkien into a written language. This writing system is being encouraged to everyone who is learning Penang Hokkien. The follow lessons provides you the details of the spelling and pronunciation.

  1. International Phonetic Alphabet (Pronunciation Guide)
    List of IPA symbols used that the expected spelling that they represent in Penang Hokkien.

  2. Guide to Taiji Romanisation Spelling System
    Similar to the page on IPA, this page shows example of words spelled in Penang Hokkien based on the IPA symbols used.

  3. Grammatical Terminology
    The terms used to explain the grammar of Penang Hokkien.

  4. Reading Penang Hokkien
    Information on the writing system used for teaching Penang Hokkien.

  5. Intonation of Penang Hokkien
    Introduction to the four tones of Penang Hokkien.

  6. Getting used to Penang Hokkien tones
    For the benefit of people who already speak Penang Hokkien but have difficulty mastering the tones, I create this page to provide additional examples.

  7. Penang Hokkien Phonetic Table
    This is a table showing how each syllable is pronounced in the four tones.

  8. Penang Hokkien Tone Sandhi
    Get to know the tone sandhi of Penang Hokkien.

  9. Tone Sandhi in English
    An observation of how words in English also change tones, just like in Penang Hokkien.

  10. Tone 33 Syllables
    Syllables in Penang Hokkien with a unique characteristic.

  11. Tone Sandhi affecting Subjects
    Learn when the subject is sandhied and when it is not.

  12. Spelling the Nasal Sound
    Learn how nasalized words are spelled in Penang Hokkien.

  13. Vowels and Digraphs in Penang Hokkien
    Insight into the spelling system and the used of vowels and digraphs for writing words in the language.

  14. "oh" and "or" in Penang Hokkien

  15. "c" and "ch" in Penang Hokkien

  16. The pseudo-fricative "h" in Penang Hokkien

  17. Canonical Spelling of Penang Hokkien
    Insight into the expected spelling for words in the language.

  18. Attaining Proficiency in written Penang Hokkien

  19. Pronouncing People's Names in Penang Hokkien

Comparison with other Hokkien romanization systems

The Penang Hokkien lessons on this website uses the Taiji Romanisation, created specially to help people learn the language while at the same time preserving the spelling of common words.

  1. Comparing consonants

  2. Comparing tones

Learn Penang Hokkien with Memrise

Now you can use the most user-friendly tool on the web to learn Penang Hokkien. It helps you to listen, understand and memorise. Go to Memrise, and learn Penang Hokkien at your own pace.

Return to Penang Hokkien Resources

About this website



Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.

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