Romanized Hokkien for People Who Read Pinyin
Some of the lyrics I romanize are in Hokkien or a mix of Hokkien and Mandarin. This can be confusing for people who’ve only used Pinyin: Hokkien has many sounds not in Mandarin and uses a different romanization system.
This guide is meant to supplement my lyric romanizations for people who aren’t very familiar with Hokkien but would like to learn.
Intro to Hokkien Sounds
Hokkien has “p”, which is “b” in Pinyin (like the “p” in English “spar”); and “ph”, which is “p” in Pinyin (like the “p” in English “par”). Additionally, Hokkien has “b”, which Mandarin does not have, and is the same as English “b” (as in “bar”). This extends to other consonant groups — see the table below.
Much like other non-Mandarin languages descended from Classical Chinese, nasal consonants in Hokkien can be their own syllable. If you see “m” without a vowel attached, that’s pronounced “mmm”; if you see “ng” without a vowel attached, try pronouncing “ung” and dropping the “u” sound.
“ng” can also start a syllable, for example “ngá”. It is still pronounced the same way.
Initial “g” is often lightly pronounced and near-silent.
Hokkien Romanization
I romanize Hokkien using Tâi-lô, which is the current system used by the Taiwanese government and popular online dictionaries like iTaigi. Prior to Tâi-lô’s creation, Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) was the predominant system and is still used by some textbooks.
Here is a table of differences between Tâi-lô and Pinyin:
| Tâi-lô | Pinyin | IPA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| p | b | p | |
| ph | p | pʰ | |
| b | none | b | Same as English “b” |
| t | d | t | |
| th | t | tʰ | |
| d | none | d | Same as English “d” |
| k | g | k | |
| kh | k | kʰ | |
| g | none | g | Same as English “g” |
| ts | z j | ts tʑ | * (in POJ: ch) |
| tsh | c q | tsʰ tʑʰ | * (in POJ: chh) |
| j | none | dz dʑ | Same as English “j” * Similar to English “j” |
| s | s x | s ʑ | * |
| oo | none | ɔ | |
| nn | none | ˜ | Preceding vowel is nasal (in POJ: ⁿ) |
| -h | none | ʔ | Like the first “h” in “uh-oh” (this only applies to “h” at the end of a syllable) |
* These are pronounced with [ʑ] only in front of an “i”.
Tone accents are also different between Tâi-lô and Pinyin. However since tones in Hokkien change based on sentence position, I would just copy what you hear.
Other Things You Should Know
No one uses consistent Chinese characters for Hokkien words, except for dictionaries. A lot of official lyrics are partial translations into Mandarin; others use colloquial characters or Mandarin homonyms. I romanize based off what I hear.
« Back to Lyrics Directory