Teochew Romanization Tiê-chiu Pe̍h-ūe-jī 潮州白話字
Bible in Teochew Romanised (1 Samuel), published by theBritish and Foreign Bible Society, 1915
Script type	Latin alphabet (modified)
Creator	John Campbell Gibson William Duffus
Period	c. 1875 — ?
Languages	Swatow dialect andTeochew dialect
Related scripts
Parent systems	Latin script Church Romanization Teochew Romanization
This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Teochew Romanization, also known asSwatow Church Romanization, or locally asPe̍h-ūe-jī (Chinese:白話字;lit. 'Vernacular orthography'), is anorthography similar toPe̍h-ōe-jī used to write theTeochew language (includingSwatow dialect). It was introduced byJohn Campbell Gibson andWilliam Duffus, two British missionaries, toSwatow in 1875.

Romanization of Teochew can be traced back to the 1840s. The earliest attempt to write the language in the Latin script was undertaken by Baptist missionaryWilliam Dean in his 1841 publicationFirst Lessons in the Tie-chiw Dialect published in Bangkok, Thailand^[1]; however, his tonal system was said to be incomplete.^[2]

The first complete orthographic system was devised byJohn Campbell Gibson andWilliam Duffus, two Presbyterianism missionaries, in 1875. The orthography was generally based on thePe̍h-ōe-jī system, another work of presbyterian origin devised for theAmoy dialect. The first translation of theGospel of Luke in Swatow romanization was published in 1876.^[2][3] It has been said^{[by whom?]} that the vernacular orthographic system is more easier for illiterate persons to learn in their own mother tongue.

Besides Gibson and Duffus's original romanization system, several variations of the system were later devised, such as those byWilliam Ashmore (1884)^[4] andLim Hiong Seng (1886).^[5]

Other systems developed by Baptist missionaries such asAdele Marion Fielde (1883) andJosiah Goddard (1888) were generally used as a means of phonetic notation instead of a full orthographic system.^[2][3]

Through the church's use of the romanization system, the number of users of the system grew and came to its high point in the 1910s. However, starting in the 1920s, the Chinese government promoted education inMandarin and more people learned to read and write inChinese characters. Thus, the promotion of romanized vernacular writing become less necessary.^[2][3] By the 1950s, there were an estimated one thousand users of the system remaining in the Chaoshan area.^[6]

The orthography uses 18 letters of thebasic Latin alphabet.

The initial consonants in Teochew are listed below:^[7]

The letters in the table represent the initial with its pronunciation inIPA, followed by the example of Chinese word and its translation in Teochew romanization.

Theaffricate consonantsts/ch,tsh/chh, andz/j are threeallophone pairs where thosevoiced andvoiceless alveolar affricate will shift tovoiced andvoiceless alveolo-palatal affricate when they meet withclose orclose-midfront vowels (i, e).

Therhymes used in the orthography are listed below:^[7][8]

The Latin alphabet sets in the table represent the spelling ofsyllable final in the system with its pronunciation inIPA, followed by the example of Chinese word and its translation in Teochew romanization.

Nowadays, in most cities in Chaoshan,alveolar codas (-n/-t) have largely shifted tovelar codas (-ng/-k); therefore, they are not found in thePeng'im system which was developed later in the 1960s. However, these codas are still present among native speakers particularly in few border townships likeFenghuang (鳳凰),Sanrao (三饒), andNan'ao.

There are eight tones in Teochew and are indicated as below,

Both the first and the fourth tones are unmarked but can be differenced by their coda-endings; those with the first tone end with an open vowel which could be either simple or nasalised, or end in anasal consonant such as-m, -n, -ng, while those with the fourth tone end with astop consonant such as-p,-t,-k, and-h.

Teochew featurestone sandhi where for any compound that contains more than one word (asyllable), sandhi rules apply to all words except the last one in each phrase. For example, in the Swatow dialect,Tiê-chiu Pe̍h-ūe-jī would be pronounced asTiē-chiu Peh-ùe-jī, where all words in the compound (linked by a hyphen) undergo tone sandhi except for the final word in each compound:chiu andjī. The tones markings of each word do not actually change to indicatetone sandhi and are written with their original tone markings.

• Chinese Character to Teochew (Swatou Church Romanization) Transliterator
• The use of Teochew puj(Teochew church romanisation) on 21th century social media.
• A handbook of the Swatow vernacular by Lin Hsiung-cheng.

• Romanization of Chinese
• Teochew dialect
• Latin-script orthographies

• CS1 maint: location missing publisher
• CS1 Traditional Chinese-language sources (zh-hant)
• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles containing Chinese-language text
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles containing traditional Chinese-language text
• Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2024