How does Fuzhounese work?
How do I start learning?

Word order

Subject, verb, object—the same order as English and Mandarin. Words do not change form: nouns have no plural ending and no case, verbs do not conjugate, and there is no grammatical gender. Position and a handful of small particles do the work that endings do in European languages. The owner comes first in a possessive. Tense is not marked on the verb: an adverb sets the time, and a particle marks that something is done.

Questions

The verb stays where it is. A particle at the end turns a statement into a yes-or-no question—汝會講福州話賣？ Nṳ̄ â̤ gōng Hók-ciŭ-uâ mâ̤, do you speak Fuzhounese?—or a negative does the same job. 未 mà̤ at the end asks whether something has happened yet: 食飯未 siăh buáng mà̤, have you eaten?, which is also how people say hello.

Measure words

You cannot put a number straight onto a noun. A measure word goes between them, and which one depends on the kind of thing being counted: 本 buōng for books, 張 ciŏng for flat things, 條 diu for long ones, 把 bā for things with a handle, 間 gèng for rooms and buildings, 架 gá for machines, 隻 ciáh for animals. So 蜀本書 suŏh buōng cṳ̄, a book.

Tones

There are seven tones on a word said by itself. Pitch is written on a five-point scale, 5 high and 1 low: 陰平 44, 陽平 53, 上聲 31, 陰去 213, 陽去 242, 陰入 23, 陽入 5. The last two are short, on syllables that end in a glottal stop—the catch in the middle of “uh-oh”. Two more tones appear only inside longer words; the last box is one of them, heard on the first syllable of 八音.

The word at the foot of each box carries that tone, with its meaning in English. The two short lines are the entering tones, cut off by the glottal stop.

Tone sandhi

The tone in the table is the tone a syllable has on its own. Inside a word it is different. The rule has two halves. The last syllable of a word keeps its own tone. The syllable before it changes, and what it changes to depends on both syllables. This is called “sandhi” and it is a unique yet difficult feature of Fuzhounese.

Take the name of the city, 福州 Hók-ciŭ. 福 by itself is a short rising tone, 23. 州 by itself is high and level, 44. Said together, 州 stays at 44 because it is last, but 福 drops to a low 21, a pitch it never has when alone. So the word is huk21 ciu44, not hok23 ciu44.

This is why a word read off the page syllable by syllable does not sound like the language, and why the tone marks on a Bàng-uâ-cê headword cannot simply be read aloud: they give each syllable's tone in isolation. Entries written with tone numbers, like seik21 zo213, are different: they record the tones as actually spoken, with the change already made. Longer words work in pairs, so a four-syllable word behaves roughly like two two-syllable words in a row. The practical advice is to learn each word whole, from a recording, rather than assembling it from its parts.

Consonants shift too

Tones are not the only thing that moves. Inside a word, the consonant that opens a syllable changes to suit how the syllable before it ends. There are three cases.

One word shows all three. 八 báik, eight, opens with a b. In 二八天 ni21 weik21 tieng44 it follows a vowel, so the b goes soft. In 七讲八昕 cik21 goung21 meik5 tiang213 it follows an -ng, so the same b becomes an m. Same character, three different consonants, depending only on its neighbour. This is why one character can be spelt differently from one entry to the next, and why a word you know may be hard to pick out inside a longer one.

The vowel can move as well. Every vowel has a tighter and a looser form, and the tone decides which one you get; when the tone changes inside a word, the vowel follows it. 福 alone is [hɔuʔ], with the loose vowel; in 福州, on its changed tone, it tightens to [huʔ]. Almost no other Chinese variety does this.

Sounds

There are fourteen consonants and seven vowels in total. Visit the Orthography tab for the full chart of how each is said. Three things stand out if you have a background in English or Mandarin:

Fuzhounese doesn’t have an f or a v sound. Where Mandarin has an f, Fuzhounese usually has an h: 福 is hók, 花 is huă, 風 is hŭng.

Only three ways to end a syllable. Words either end in a vowel, with -ng, or with a glottal stop (i.e. the catch in the middle of “uh-oh”, written -h or -k). Where older Chinese ended syllables in -m, -n or -ng, Fuzhounese has only -ng: 心 sĭng, 山 săng, 新 sĭng. Where other Chinese words end in -p, -t or -k, Fuzhounese ends them all with the glottal stop, written -h or -k: 十 sĕk, 白 băh, 八 báik.

Two vowels English does not have. ṳ is ee said with the lips rounded, as in French tu: 雨 ṳ̄, 魚 ngṳ̀. e̤ is eh with the lips rounded, as in French peu: 讀 tĕ̤k. The mark underneath is the signal.