Matsu dialect

The Matsu dialect is the local dialect of Matsu Islands, Taiwan. Native speakers also call it , meaning the language spoken in everyday life. It is recognised as one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in Lienchiang County, Taiwan.
The dialect is a subdialect of the Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min. The Matsu dialect is quite similar to the Changle dialect, another subdialect of the Fuzhou dialect.

History

Previously, the Eastern Min varieties in the Matsu Islands were seen as a part of a general Fuzhounese group. It is under the name 'Northern Fujian Dialect' that the 2000 Act of Broadcasting Language Equality Protection in Public Transport mandated the use of the Matsu dialect on public transportation in the Matsu Islands.
The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 severed the Matsu Islands from the rest of Fujian province, and as during the Cold War communications and transit were cut off between the Republic of China and the PRC, the identity of the Matsu Islands became established as separate to that of Fuzhou. The varieties of Eastern Min on the Matsu Islands have subsequently come to be seen as the Matsu dialect, which the ROC recognized as a 'native language' in 2017.

Phonology

The Matsu dialect has 17 initials, 46 rimes and 7 tones, as reported by Tu based on elderly informants from Beigan:

Initials

// and // exist only in connected speech.

Rimes

There are 46 rimes in the Matsu dialect.

monophthong	compound vowel	nasal coda -	checked coda -

Many rimes come in pairs: in the table above, the one to the left represents a close rime, while the second represents an open rime. The close/open rimes are closely related with the tones.

Tone

These tones in isolation are as reported by Tu, and use the historic names from Middle Chinese:

No.	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Tone name	dark level 陰平	light level 陽平	rising 上聲	dark departing 陰去	light departing 陽去	dark entering 陰入	light entering 陽入
rime type	close rime	close rime	close rime	open rime	open rime	open rime	close rime
Tone contour	55	51	33	312	131	13	5
Example Hanzi	君 //	臺 //	祖 //	去 //	話 //	福 //	掘 //

The relationship between tone and rime

In the Matsu dialect, both the level tones, rising tone and the light entering tone should be read using 'close rimes' ; both departing tones and the dark entering tone should be read with 'open rimes'. The closeness or openness of the rime refers to the height of the vowel.
For example, the vowel phoneme transcribed in Bàng-uâ-cê as "" has two pronunciations, // as a close rime and // as an open rime; the entering tone equivalent "" has two pronunciations, close rime // and open rime //. This is summarized in the following table:

Tone name	dark level	light level	rising	dark departing	light departing	dark entering	light entering
Tone contour	55	51	33	312	131	13	5
Rime type	close rime	close rime	close rime	open rime	open rime	open rime	close rime
Bàng-uâ-cê
Pronunciation

Thus, in a close rime tone such as dark level "" should be pronounced as instead of ; and in the open rime tone of light departing "" should be pronounced as instead of.

Sandhi and assimilation

Tone sandhi

The Matsu dialect has extremely extensive tone sandhi rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. The two-syllable tonal sandhi rules are shown in the table below :
In the table above, "dark entering A" means a dark entering coda that ends with, "dark entering B" refers to ending with. In the modern spoken language, the final plosive is difficult to distinguish in isolation, having merged into, but the two categories exhibit different behaviors from each other in tone sandhi environments. This feature is shared with many modern Eastern Min varieties, such as in Fuzhou.
Like the Fuzhou dialect, the tonal sandhi rules of more than two syllables display further complexities.

Initial assimilation

The two-syllable initial assimilation rules are shown in the table below:

Coda of the Former Syllable	Initial Assimilation of the Latter Syllable
Null coda	and change to ; , and, and change to ; and change to ; , and change to null initial; and remain unchanged.
Nasal coda	and change to ; ,,, and change to ; and change to ; ,, and null initial change to ; and remain unchanged.
entering coda	remain unchanged.

Rime tensing

In the Matsu dialect, if the rime type of the former syllable is changed while tone sandhi occurred, the rime of the former syllable should be changed to adapt the rule of close/open rimes.
For example, "技" is a syllable which has dark departing tone, it's an open rime; "師" has a dark level tone. When combined as the phrase "技師", "技" changes its tonal value to rising tone. Rising tone is a close rime tone, therefore the pronunciation as a whole is.