Daī-ghî tōng-iōng pīng-im (abbr: DT;Chinese:臺語通用拼音;lit. 'Taiwanese phonetic transcription system') is anorthography in theLatin alphabet forTaiwanese Hokkien based uponTongyong Pinyin. It is able to use theLatin alphabet to indicate the proper variation ofpitch with ninediacritic symbols.^[1]

DT in its present form has 17 initials, 18 finals and 8 tones.

Taiwanese is atonal language. In Taiwanese, which has nine tones and two extra tones, neutral tone andnasal vowel.

Tones are expressed bydiacritics; checked syllables (i.e. those ending withglottal stops) are followed by the letter h. Where diacritics are not technically available, e.g. on some parts of the internet, tone alphabet may be used instead.

1. a (1st tone; yinping)
2. à (2nd tone; yingshang)
3. a̠ (3rd tone; yinqu)
4. ā (ptkh) (4th tone; yinru)
5. ă (5th tone; yangping)
6. ä (6th tone; yangshang)
7. ā (7th tone; yangqu)
8. a (ptkh) (8th tone; yangru)
9. á (9th tone; high rising)
10. å (neutral tone)
11. aⁿ (ann) (nasal vowel)

Examples for these tones: ciūⁿ (elephant), bâ (leopard), bhè (horse), di (pig), zŭa (snake), āh (duck), lok (deer). And, a neutral tone, sometimes indicated by å(aj) in DT, has no specificcontour; its pitch always depends on the tones of the preceding syllables. Taiwanese speakers refer to this tone as the "neutral tone" (Chinese:輕聲).

Tone sandhi orchain shift by circulation, as the tones are encoded by appending and modifying spellings with attention to the rules of the DT system. The basic tone has no modification and tone mark. Generally speaking, the basic tone means the 7th tone (mid even tone; yangqu).^[4][5]

A DT word, like an English word, can be formed by only one syllable or several syllables, with the two syllables being the general typicality. Each syllable in DT follows one of the six underlying patterns:^[5]

The DT alphabet adopts theLatin alphabet of 19 letters, 4digraphs, and 6diacritics to express the basic sounds ofTaiwanese:

bh, z, c, gh, h, r, g, k, l, m, n, ng, b, p, s, d, t

Note that unlike their typical interpretation in modernEnglish language,bh andgh arevoiced andunaspirated, whereasb,g, andd are plain unvoiced as inHanyu Pinyin.p,k, andt are unvoiced and aspirated, corresponding closer top,t, andk in English. It is inconsistent with the use of h's in theLegge romanization and the use of the diacritic in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet to signal consonantalaspiration.

• Vowels: a, i, u, e, or, o
• Diphthongs: ai, au, ia, iu, io, ui, ua, ue
• Triphthongs: iau, uai
• Nasals: m, n, ng

The nasalsm, n, andng can be appended to any of the vowels and some of the diphthongs.In addition,m andng can function as independent syllables by themselves.

The stopsh,g,b andd can appear as the last letter in a syllable, in which case they are pronounced withno audible release. (The finalh in DT stands for a glottal stop.)

All syllables in each word are normally separated by thedash (-) mark. Generally, syllables before the dash which must undergotone sandhi.

• Languages of Taiwan
• Romanization of Hokkien
• Pinyin

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