Foochow Romanized

Foochow Romanized, a.k.a. Bàng-u?-cê or Hók-ci?-u? Lò?-mā-cê , is a orthography for the Fuzhou dialect adopted in the middle of 19th century by Western missionaries. It had varied at different times, and became standardized several decades later. Foochow Romanized was mainly used inside of Church circles, and was taught in some Mission Schools in Fuzhou. But unlike its counterpart Pe?h-ōe-jī for Southern Min Language, Foochow Romanized, even in its prime days, was by no means universally understood by Christians.

History of Foochow Romanized

After Fuzhou became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of First Opium War , many Western missionaries arrived in the city. Faced with widespread illiteracy, they developed romanization schemes for Fuzhou dialect.

The first attempt in romanizing Fuzhou dialect was made by the M. C. White, who borrowed a system of orthography known as the System of Sir William Jones. In this system, 14 were designed exactly according to their and . P, T, K and CH stand for , , and ; while the Greek spiritus lenis "?" were affixed to the above initials to represent their aspirated counterparts. Besides the default five vowels of Latin alphabet, four ?, ?, ? and ? were also introduced, representing , , and , respectively. This system is described at length in White's linguistic work .

Subsequent missionaries, including Robert S. Maclay from American Methodist Episcopal Mission, R. W. Stewart from the Church of England and Charles Hartwell from the American Board Mission, further modified White's System in several ways. The most significant change was made in the scheme of plosive consonants, by which the spiritus lenis "?" of the aspirated initials was totally removed and the letters B, D and G were introduced to represent and . In the aspect of vowels, ?, ?, ? and ? were replaced by A?, E?, O? and U?; and since the diacritical marks were all shifted to underneath the vowels, tonal marks were thus invented.

Scheme

The sample characters are taken from the phonetics book Qī Lín Bāyīn , a renowned phonology book about the Fuzhou dialect written in the Qing Dynasty. The pronunciations are recorded in standard symbols.

Initials

Rimes

Rimes without

Rimes with coda

Rimes with codas and

Tones

Note that Foochow Romanized uses the breve, not the caron , to indicate Yīnpíng and Yángrù tones of Fuzhou dialect.

Sample text