Pronunciation Guide

The pronunciation guide presented here is for Hong Kong Hakka, and is a rationalised construction loosely based on another romanisation for Meixian Hakka. We have merged the series jqx with zcs in the inventory of sounds in Hakka, therefore, we have fewer intials. So, instead of /ian/ we have /ien/; all syllables which distinguishes /ieu/ and /iu/ are merged into /iu/; syllables which separated /ao/ and /au/ are all now /au/, and similarly /iao/ and /iau/ are now both /iau/. The initials z c and s are like those found in Mandarin Putonghua PinYin. The tones I have given here are for the dialect found in Hong Kong.

Initials

ROM	IPA	Characters		ROM	IPA	Characters		ROM	IPA	Characters		ROM	IPA	Characters
												*		丫嘔喂恩安
												y		也衣育圓約
												v		話暈屋挖煨
b		八筆不冰背		p		扒平卜朋吠		m		馬明木墨梅		f		花拂虎或灰
d		打知肚德多		t		他特土田斷		n		奶耦嫩能囊		l		老力路粒亂
g		家機古計官		k		快期苦肯看		ng		牙二誤年餓		h		下去兄杏香
z		炸紙竹曾棹		c		車七出前才		s		沙新書細船

NOTES :

IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet, which contains symbols for consonants and vowels, and other symbols for the transcription of speech sounds. Please refer to these links for description of place and manner of articulation.

* represents a sound which begins with a vowel.

Vowels

ROM	a	e	i	o	u
IPA

Hakka from Hong Kong does not include the -u- /u/ glide and likewise, such syllable endings as do not appear here, so instead of the 70+ endings found in Meixian, we have only 50+ here in the next section on finals.

Finals

NOTES:

Rather than separate out the medials as separate vowel headings, I've placed them under the appropriate romanised rhyme.

All syllables ending in -p, -t or -k belong to tones 5 and 6 only. The rest of the syllables are in tones 1 to 4 inclusive.

Tones

NOTES:

Sound files and information about tones. See the section "Readings of the same tone". To return use your browser's 'back' button.