Teochew Min

Teochew, also known as Swatow or Teo-Swa after its two best-known dialects, is a Southern Min language spoken by the Teochew people in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong and by their diaspora around the world. It is sometimes referred to as Chiuchow, its Cantonese rendering, due to English romanization by colonial officials and explorers. It is closely related to Hokkien, as it shares some cognates and phonology with Hokkien.
Teochew preserves many Old Chinese pronunciations and vocabulary that have been lost in some of the other modern varieties of Chinese. As such, Teochew is described as one of the most conservative Chinese languages.

History and geography

Historically, the Teochew prefecture included modern prefecture-level cities of Chaozhou, Jieyang and Shantou. In China, this region is now known as Teoswa. Parts of the Hakka-speaking Meizhou city, such as Dabu County and Fengshun, were also parts of the Teochew prefecture and contain pocket communities of Teochew speakers.
As the Teochew region was one of the major sources of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia during the 18th to 20th centuries, a considerable Overseas Chinese community in that region is Teochew-speaking. In particular, the Teochew people settled in significant numbers in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, where they form the largest Chinese sub-language group. Additionally, there are many Teochew-speakers among Chinese communities in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Waves of migration from Teochew region to Hong Kong, especially after the communist victory of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, has also resulted in the formation of a community there, although most descendants now primarily speak Cantonese and English as a result of colonialism and assimilation to the dominant Cantonese culture.
Teochew speakers are also found among overseas Chinese communities in Japan and the Western world, a result of both direct emigration from the Chaoshan region to these nations and also secondary emigration from Southeast Asia.
In Singapore, Teochew remains the ancestral language of many Chinese Singaporeans, with Chinese of Teochew descent making up the second largest Chinese group in Singapore, after the Hoklo. Despite this, many Teochew people, particularly the younger generations, are shifting towards English and Mandarin as their main spoken language. This is due to the Singapore government's stringent bilingual policy that promotes English as the official language of education, government and commerce and Mandarin Campaign|promotes Mandarin] at the expense of other Chinese languages. Some Teochew assimilated with the larger Hokkien community and speak Hokkien rather than Teochew due to Hokkien's prominent role as a lingua franca previously among the Singaporean Chinese community.

Classification

Teochew is a Southern Min language. As with other Sinitic languages, it is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, Cantonese or Shanghainese. It has only limited intelligibility with Hokkien. Even within the Teochew dialects, there is substantial variation in phonology between different regions and between different Teochew communities overseas.
The dialects of Teochew Min include:

Northern Teochew, or Chaozhou division, including:
* Teochew dialect, spoken in urban Chaozhou ; a similar dialect is spoken in Chenghai
* Jieyang dialect, spoken in urban Jieyang ; related dialects are spoken in adjacent areas in Jiedong, Jiexi, as well as in northern parts of Puning and Chaoyang
* Swatow dialect, spoken in urban Shantou
* Raoping dialect, spoken in Raoping County
Southern Teochew, or Chaoyang-Puning division, including:
* Chaoyang dialect, spoken in the historical Teoyeo county, which includes modern Chaoyang, Chaonan, and Haojiang
* Puning dialect, spoken in urban Puning
* Huilai dialect, spoken in Huilai County

Language Atlas of China consider the Hai Lok Hong dialect a part of Chaoshan Min, while others consider it a part of Hokkien or an independent Southern Min variety.
In the Nan'ao island, there are two dialects, both distinct from the mainland Teochew, with Western Nan'ao dialect inclining towards the Northern Teochew, and Eastern Nan'ao dialect showing Hokkien influence, as this part of the island was included in Zhangzhou prefecture in 16—19 centuries.
Chawan dialect, spoken in Fujian along the Guangdong border, is quite different from other southern dialects of Hokkien. It has some lexical influence from Teochew and relatively higher mutual intelligibility with it, yet in other aspects it clusters more with Hokkien than Teochew.
The main criterion in the classification of Teochew dialects is the presence or absence of the vowel. It is found in Northern Teochew in words like hṳ̂ 魚 ' "fish" and sṳ̄ 事 ' "thing; matter". Southern Teochew has instead. Hai Lok Hong and Eastern Namoa dialects have or instead, depending on the etymology of the word, similarly to the Chiangchew Hokkien. Southern Teochew may be further divided into Huilai—Puning dialects and Teoyeo dialects, based on their tone contours.
The prestige dialects of Teochew all belong to the Northern branch. The Northern Teochew dialects are mutually intelligible between each other, but less so with the Southern branch.
Various stereotypes and cultural traits are associated with different Teochew dialects. For instance, within the Shantou city, the urban Swatow dialect is perceived as "energetic", "gentle", but also "snobbish" or "pretentious" by speakers of other dialects; the Chenghai dialect is perceived as "soft", "cute", and "high-pitched"; the Teoyeo dialect is perceived as "harsh", "aggressive" and "countrified".

Writing system

Written Southern Min is known since at least the 16th century. The earliest known work is a 1566 edition of the Tale of the Lychee Mirror, a folk drama written in a mixture of Teochew and Chinchew Hokkien.
Teochew writing is neither standardized nor is widely used. In Imperial China, most writing was conducted in Classical Chinese, while vernacular writing was only used in novels, songbooks and opera scripts. After the Xinhai revolution, only written Mandarin was supported by the government, while speakers of other Sinitic languages, including Teochew, remaining largely illiterate in their own tongues.
Teochew rime dictionaries appeared relatively late, the earliest of them being "Fifteen consonants of Teochew sound" by Zhang Shizhen, "Ji Mu Zhi Yin" by Jiangxia Maotingshi and "Fifteen consonants of Teochew language" by Jiang Rulin.

Chinese characters

Most of the Teochew vocabulary can be traced back to Old Chinese, and thus can be written using Chinese characters. There are different ways to write words that do not have a clearly associated etymological character, including:

using a character with the same meaning regardless of its reading
borrowing a phonetically close character regardless of its meaning
inventing a new character
attempting to find an original character

Teochew shares characters with Hokkien for cognate words, but it is also influenced by the Cantonese written tradition.

Romanization

There are two principal romanization systems for Teochew:Pe̍h-ūe-jī, originally invented for Hokkien in the 19th century and adapted for Teochew Peng'im, invented in the 1960s and based on the Hanyu Pinyin romanization for Mandarin
While Peng'im has some presence in academic works published in PRC, many publications on Teochew use their custom IPA-based romanizations.

IPA	Pe̍h-ūe-jī	Peng'im
	p	b
	ph	p
	b	bh
	m	m
	t	d
	th	t
	l	l
	n	n
	h	h
	k	g
	kh	k
	g	gh
	ng	ng
	ts	z
	tsh	c
	z	r
	s	s

IPA	Pe̍h-ūe-jī	Peng'im
	a	a
	ia	ia
	ua	ua
	ai	ai
	au	ao
	uai	uai
	iau	iao
	o	o
	io	io
	oi	oi
	ou	ou
	iou	iou
or	e	ê
or	ie	iê
or	ue	uê
or	ṳ	e
	i	i
	u	u
	ui	ui
	iu	iu

IPA	Pe̍h-ūe-jī	Peng'im
	-ng	-ng
	-k	-g
	-h	-h
	-ⁿ	-n
	-m	-m
	-p	-b
	-n	—
	-t	—

Phonetics and phonology

Consonants

Teochew, like other Southern Min varieties, is one of the few modern Sinitic languages which have voiced obstruents ; however, unlike Wu and Xiang Chinese, the Teochew voiced stops and fricatives did not evolve from Middle Chinese voiced obstruents, but from nasals.
The voiced stops and and also are voicelessly prenasalized,,, respectively.
The voiced affricate, initial in such words as jī ', jĭ ', jiâng ', jia̍k ' loses its affricate property with some younger speakers abroad, and is relaxed to .
Unlike in Hokkien, nasal initials in Teochew are not generally considered allophones of the voiced plosives, as nasals are relatively more common in Teochew and have less usage restrictions. For example, Teochew allows for syllables like nge̍k 逆 ', which are impossible in Hokkien.
In Southern dialects of Teochew, labial initials have labiodental allophones before /-u-/.
Character Pe̍h-ūe-jī Peng'im Swatow dialect Teoyeo dialect
pù '
puaⁿ '
phuâ '
phuè '
bú '
bué '
muē '
muá

Syllables
Syllables in Teochew contain an onset consonant, a medial glide, a nucleus, usually in the form of a vowel, but can also be occupied by a syllabic consonant like, and a final consonant. All the elements of the syllable except for the nucleus are optional, which means a vowel or a syllabic consonant alone can stand as a fully-fledged syllable.
Onsets
All the consonants except for the glottal stop ʔ shown in the consonants chart above can act as the onset of a syllable; however, the onset position is not obligatorily occupied.
Finals
Teochew finals consist maximally of a medial, nucleus and coda. The medial can be /i-/ or /u-/, the nucleus can be a monophthong or diphthong, and the coda can be a nasal or a stop. A syllable must consist minimally of a vowel nucleus or syllabic nasal.
Apart from the aforementioned rhymes, there are a few limitedly used finals with both glottal stop and nasalization, usually found in ideophones and interjections, e.g. he̍hⁿ /hẽʔ˥˦/ "agitated; confused", hauhⁿ /hãũʔ˧˨/ "to eat in large bites", khuàhⁿ-ua̍hⁿ /kʰũãʔ˨˩˨꜒꜔.ũãʔ˥˦/ "comfortable".
In most dialects of Teochew, historical codas and are merged with and. They were still present in mainstream Teochew in the 19th century, but now they are found only in certain peripheral dialects of Teochew, as well as in Hai Lok Hong Min.
The rime /ɯ/ is only found in Northern Teochew. In Southern Teochew, this rime is merged with /u/. Chaozhou and Swatow rimes /ɯŋ/ and /ɯk/, derived from historical /ɯn/ and /ɯt/, are merged with /iŋ/ and /ik/ in Southern Teochew.
The rime /ŋ̩/, used in vernacular readings, is preserved in all dialects, yet in Northern Teochew it is usually analyzed as identical to /ɯŋ/. In Teochew proper and Swatow dialects, this vernacular rime /ɯŋ~ŋ̩/ is merged with /uŋ/ after labial initials.
Chaozhou /ieng/ and /iek/ are used in syllables that historically had /ien/ and /iet/, e.g. is different from in Chaozhou and Hokkien, but not Swatow.
Similarly, Chaozhou /ueŋ/ and /uek/, historically derived from /uan/ and /uat/, are merged with /uaŋ/ and /uak/ in other dialects. There are few cases with the rimes /ueŋ/ and /uek/ in Kekyeo and Teoyeo, not derived from /uan/ and /uat/ and corresponding to Teochew proper and Swatow /uaŋ/ and /uak/, e.g. and are pronounced /kʰuaŋ˧/ and /uak˥˦/ in Chaozhou and Shantou, but /kʰueŋ˧/ and /uek˥˦/ in Kekyeo and Southern Teochew.
Tones
Teochew, like other Chinese varieties, is a tonal language. Like other Southern Min varieties, Teochew has split the Middle Chinese four tone into two registers. The tones are numbered from 1 through 8, either in the "dark—light" order or in the "level—rising—departing—entering" order. This section follows the second order, as used in Peng'im.
Depending on the position of a word in a phrase, the tones can change and adopt extensive tone sandhi.
Northern Teochew
Northern Teochew dialects are not too different from each other in their tones. There are small differences in pronunciation of the tone ⑦, which can vary between low falling and low level among different dialects and individual speakers.
There are minor differences in tone sandhi among the Northern Teochew dialects:
The most important difference is that the dark departing tone becomes high falling in Chaozhou and Jieyang and high level in Shantou and Raoping.
In Chaozhou, the two level tones become slightly rising in sandhi, rather than level as in other dialects.
In Jieyang, Chenghai and Chaozhou, the sandhi of tones ②, ③, and ④ have two pronunciations, one being slightly higher, used before syllables with high-onset tones, and another one slightly lower, used before all other tones. In Shantou and Raoping, these tones have the same post-sandhi value regardless of the next syllable's tone.
In Jieyang, Chenghai and Chaozhou, the pronunciation of tone ② will become low level after post-sandhi syllables of tone ②, ③, and ④, which is caused by the assimilation of falling tones.
The light departing tone after sandhi is usually merged with the post-sandhi tone ⑤ or ⑥, depending on the dialect. For convenience, since the difference between them is still not large, all three light tones after sandhi may be described as identical and equal to pre-sandhi tone ⑦. The sandhi rules for Northern Teochew may be simplified as follows:
Southern Teochew
Southern Teochew tones are noticeably diverse. Based on their tones, the Southern Teochew dialects can be divided into two broad areas: Teoyeo and Hui-Pou.
Currently, a tone shift is ongoing in the Teoyeo dialect. There is a continuum between the "old accent" and "new accent". This shift is more advanced in urban dialects in Eastern Chaoyang, among female speakers, and in the younger generations. The principal features of this shift are as follows:
Dark level tone shifts from 21 ˨˩ to 31 ˧˩.
Light level tone shifts from high level 44 ˦ to mid-level 33 ˧ or mid-rising 23 ˨˧.
Dark rising tone shifts from high falling 551 ˥˥˩ to high level 55 ˥, and in urban Eastern Teoyeo dialects it can even become high rising 45 ˦˥ or 35 ˧˥.
Dark departing tone and light departing tone are falling in a "parallel" pattern in the old accent, while in the new accent they are still falling, but the light departing tone is more "flat".
"Old" Teoyeo accent is notable for the fact that out of its five non-checked tones, four tones have falling contour.
Hui-Pou dialects are more homogeneous in their tones than Teoyeo dialects. Puning and Eastern Huilai dialects have 8 tones, while Central and Western Huilai have 7 tones. Some of the Huilai dialects undergo tone shift similar to that in Teoyeo dialects, but to a lesser extent.
Neutral tone
Like Hokkien, Teochew has the neutral tone. In pronunciation, the neutral tone is considered to be identical to the light departing tone in the respective dialect, but when the original tone of the syllable was dark rising, the neutral tone is identical to the dark departing tone, and when the original tone was an entering tone, the neutral tone is identical to the dark entering tone.
Some works refer to the neutral tone as "left-dominant tone sandhi". However, unlike the general Teochew tone sandhi, which is a regular phonetic change, the neutral tone is lexical and its occurrence cannot be predicted. Compare the following examples with the morpheme nî "year", where some words have the neutral tone, while others preserve the original tone.
but:
Grammar
The grammar of Teochew is similar to other Min languages, as well as some southern varieties of Chinese, especially with Hakka, Yue and Wu. The sequence 'subject–verb–object' is typical, like Standard Mandarin, although the 'subject–object–verb' form is also possible using particles.
Morphology
Pronouns
Personal pronouns
The personal pronouns in Teochew, like in other Chinese languages, do not show case marking, therefore uá 我 ' means both I and me and i-nâng 伊人 ' means they and them. The Southern Min languages, like some Mandarin dialects, have a distinction between an inclusive and exclusive we, meaning that when the addressee is being included, the inclusive pronoun náng 咱 ' would be used, otherwise uáng 阮 ' is employed. Outside Southern Min varieties like Teochew, no other southern Chinese variety has this distinction.
Possessive pronouns
Teochew does not distinguish the possessive pronouns from the possessive adjectives. As a general rule, the possessive pronouns or adjectives are formed by adding the genitive or possessive marker kâi 個 ' to their respective personal pronouns, as summarized below:
As kâi ' is the generic measure word, it may be replaced by other more appropriate classifiers:
Demonstrative pronouns
Teochew has the typical two-way distinction between the demonstratives, namely the proximals and the distals. The basic determiners are tsí 只 ' "this" and hṳ́ 許 ' "that", and they require at least a classifier, which can be optionally preceded by a numeral.
Interrogative pronouns

Numerals
Some numerals in Teochew have a literary and vernacular variant.
Generally, vernacular variants are used, and literary readings are limited to certain set compounds and idioms, e.g.: Sam-kok, ngóu-kim, kiú-siau, ngóu-tsháiⁿ-phiang-hung, sam-sṳ-jṳ̂-kiâⁿ, kiú-liû-sam-kàu, etc.
However, literary forms of 一 and 二 are more commonly used, particularly in the following cases:
for the last digit in compound numbers:
for counting tens in compound numbers
in ordinal numbers, names for days, and dates
Passive construction
In Teochew passive construction, the agent phrase by somebody always has to be present, and is introduced by the preposition khṳh 乞 ' or pung 分 ', both literally meaning "to give". If the agent is not explicitly named, its position is taken by nâng 儂 '.
While in Mandarin one can have the agent introducer p=bèi or p=gěi alone without the agent itself, in Teochew it is not grammatical to omit this dummy agent nâng 儂 '.
The agent phrase pung nâng 分儂 always comes immediately after the subject, not at the end of the sentence or between the auxiliary and the past participle like in some European languages.
Comparison
Comparative construction with two or more nouns
Teochew, like Cantonese but unlike Hokkien, uses the construction "X ADJ kuè 過 Y", to express the comparison:
However, due to modern influences from Mandarin, the Mandarin structure "X 比 Y ADJ" has also gained popularity over the years. Therefore, the same sentence can be re-structured and becomes:
Comparative construction with only one noun
The 過- or 比-construction must involve two or more nouns to be compared; an ill-formed sentence will be yielded when only one is being mentioned:
Teochew is different from English, where the second noun being compared can be left out ". In cases like this, the 夭-construction must be used instead:
The same holds true for Mandarin and Cantonese in that another structure needs to be used when only one of the nouns being compared is mentioned. Teochew and Mandarin both use a pre-modifier while Cantonese uses a post-modifier.
Mandarin
Cantonese
There are two words which are intrinsically comparative in meaning, i.e. iâⁿ 贏 ' "to win" and su 輸 ' "to lose". They can be used alone or in conjunction with the 過-structure:
Note the use of the adverbial hoh tsōi'' 好濟 at the end of the sentence to express a higher degree.
Equal construction
In Teochew, the idea of equality is expressed with the word pêⁿ 平 ' or pêⁿ-iōⁿ 平樣 ':
Superlative construction
To express the superlative, Teochew uses the adverb siăng 上 ' or siăng-téng 上頂 '. The latter variant is usually used with a complimentary connotation.
Vocabulary
Teochew vocabulary consists of several layers, including:
Pan-Sinitic words, found in most other languages of the Sinosphere, often derived from Literary Chinese or orthographically borrowed from Japanese or Mandarin
Basic words derived from Old Chinese, usually via Proto-Min; generally, they are not found in other languages of the Sinosphere, except as morphemes in compound words
Min-specific words, usually shared with other Min languages
Teochew-specific words
Most of the Teochew vocabulary consists of the pan-Sinitic words. However, their proportion is much lower among the most basic words used in daily speech, as they tend to belong to the last three categories. This pattern is also seen in other languages of the Sinosphere, e.g. in Japanese, where the Sino-Japanese words constitute around 60-70% of total vocabulary, but only around 20% of words used in common speech.
Literary and vernacular readings
In Teochew, like in other Min languages, it is common for a character to have at least two readings, called "literary" and "vernacular". The number of such doublets in Teochew is somewhat smaller than in Hokkien, due to Teochew being prone to use only vernacular readings and lose their literary counterparts.
Relationship with Hokkien
Teochew and Hokkien are both Southern Min languages. Hokkien, which is spoken in southern Fujian, shares many phonetic similarities with Teochew, but they have low lexical similarity. Although Teochew and Hokkien share some cognates, there are pronounced differences in most vowels with some consonant and tone shifts.
Teochew has only 51% intelligibility with the Tong'an Xiamen dialect of Hokkien, approximately the same as the percentage of intelligibility as between Russian and Ukrainian languages, while it has even lower mutual intelligibility language with other dialects of the Hokkien language.
Most Teochew people do not speak Hokkien and the majority of Hokkien and Teochew people both see themselves as a distinct ethnic groups / nation. There are a minority of Teochew people who speak Hokkien as their mother tongue, most of whom have close contact or relatives in the neighbouring three originally-Teochew counties of what is now South Fujian, which were ceded to Fujian during the early Tang dynasty and subsequently assimilated into the Hokkien population. These Hokkien-speaking Teochews are more likely to treat Teochew simply as accented dialect of Hokkien. These people usually have a strong sense of Hokkien identity.
Pronunciation
In Hokkien, denasalization of initial consonants is extensive, and sounds,, are usually viewed as allophones of /b/, /l~d/, /g/ used with nasalized rhymes. In Teochew and Hai Lok Hong, denasalization is less common.
Character Teochew Hokkien
'to go against' nge̍k ge̍k
'jade' ge̍k ge̍k
'suitable' ngî gî
'doubt' gî gî
'handle; knob' niú liú
'willow' liú liú
'man' nâng lâng
'cage' lâng lâng
'slow' măng bān
'ten thousand' buāng bān
'eye' ma̍k ba̍k
'ink' ba̍k ba̍k

Hokkien and Hai Lok Hong have three pairs of codas: -ng/-k, -m/-p and -n/-t. Most dialects of Teochew have merged -n/-t with -ng/-k. On the other hand, many Teochew dialects, except urban Swatow and Chenghai, do not dissimilate the Middle Chinese rhyme -jom, e.g. they have huàm, huăm, huap, while Hokkien has huàn, huǎn, huat.
Teochew and Hai Lok Hong have 8 citation tones, while most dialects of Hokkien have 7 tones.
In individual rhymes, the differences between Hokkien and Teochew are comparable to differences between the dialects of each language. For example, both Northern Hokkien and Northern Teochew have the /ɯ/ sound, which is not found in Southern Teochew and Southern Hokkien. Northern Hokkien and Teochew both have -ng or -ung rhyme in words like pn̄g/pūng, mn̂g/mûng, while Southern Hokkien and Hai Lok Hong have -uiⁿ instead.
Grammar
Teochew grammar shows some Cantonese or Hakka influence. For example,
Teochew uses comparative structure with -kuè "to exceed, to surpass", as in Cantonese, while Hokkien uses native Min comparative construction with an adverb khah "more".
Teochew, like Cantonese, uses bare classifiers to mean "this", but this usage is not typical for Hokkien.
Teochew uses relevant classifiers to indicate possession; e.g., the phrase "my book" may be expressed with both uá púng tsṳ 我本書 and uá kâi tsṳ 我個書 in Teochew, but in Hokkien, only góa ê tsṳ 我兮書 is used.
Teochew differs from Hokkien in function words:
Teochew Hai Lok Hong Hokkien explanation
kâi kâi ê possessive particle
tŏ
lŏ ' ló leh
tǐ-leh progressive aspect marker
-tŏ-kò -nín --leh durative aspect marker
pung
khṳh pun
kho hō͘ passive or causative agent preposition
àiⁿ àiⁿ beh "to want" '
hoh hoh chin "very"

Vocabulary
Teochew has many differences with Hokkien in its basic vocabulary. Some of the differences are due to influence from Cantonese, while others are alternative yet still native Min words.
gloss Teochew Cantonese Hokkien
"to see" thóiⁿ tái khòaⁿ
"to read" tha̍k-tsṳ duhksyū tha̍k-chheh
"to sleep" n̍gh, ĭⁿ fan khùn
"beautiful" ngiá leng súi
"to speak" tàⁿ góng kóng
seh
"what" mih-kâi mātyéh siáⁿ-mi̍h
"child" nou-kiáⁿ sailouh gín-á
"black" ou hāk o͘

Teochew tends to use more vernacular readings where Hokkien prefers the literary readings. For instance, Hokkien uses to-siā for "Thank you", with literary reading for the first character, while Teochew reads it with the vernacular reading as tsōi-siā. The character has both literary reading and vernacular reading, the latter more commonly used in Teochew, while being rare in Hokkien.
For some characters, literary readings only exist in Hokkien, while many vernacular readings are used only in Teochew.
Character Type of reading Teochew Hokkien Middle Chinese
or Proto-Southern-Min
Old Chinese
'meat' literary jio̍k MC nyuwk *k.nuk
'meat' vernacular ne̍k he̍k PSM *nhɯk3 *k.nuk
'white' literary pe̍k MC baek *bˤrak
'white' vernacular pe̍h pe̍h PSM *peʔ8 *bˤrak
'before' literary chiân MC dzen *dzˤen
'before' vernacular tsôiⁿ chêng /
châiⁿ /
chûiⁿ PSM *tsõi2 *dzˤen
'ant' literary gí MC ngjeX *m-qʰrajʔ
'ant' vernacular hiă hiă PSM *hia4 *m-qʰrajʔ
'branch' literary chi MC tsye *ke
'branch' vernacular ki ki PSM *ki1 *ke
'abundant' literary hù MC pjuwH *pək-s
'abundant' vernacular pù pù PSM *pu5 *pək-s
'beautiful' literary múi bí MC mijX *mrəjʔ
'beautiful' vernacular bué — *mrəjʔ

Character	Pe̍h-ūe-jī	Peng'im	Swatow dialect	Teoyeo dialect
	pù	'
	puaⁿ	'
	phuâ	'
	phuè	'
	bú	'
	bué	'
	muē	'
	muá

Character	Teochew	Hokkien
'to go against'	nge̍k	ge̍k
'jade'	ge̍k	ge̍k
'suitable'	ngî	gî
'doubt'	gî	gî
'handle; knob'	niú	liú
'willow'	liú	liú
'man'	nâng	lâng
'cage'	lâng	lâng
'slow'	măng	bān
'ten thousand'	buāng	bān
'eye'	ma̍k	ba̍k
'ink'	ba̍k	ba̍k

Teochew	Hai Lok Hong	Hokkien	explanation
kâi	kâi	ê	possessive particle
tŏ lŏ '	ló	leh tǐ-leh	progressive aspect marker
-tŏ-kò	-nín	--leh	durative aspect marker
pung khṳh	pun kho	hō͘	passive or causative agent preposition
àiⁿ	àiⁿ	beh	"to want" '
hoh	hoh	chin	"very"

gloss	Teochew	Cantonese	Hokkien
"to see"	thóiⁿ	tái	khòaⁿ
"to read"	tha̍k-tsṳ	duhksyū	tha̍k-chheh
"to sleep"	n̍gh, ĭⁿ	fan	khùn
"beautiful"	ngiá	leng	súi
"to speak"	tàⁿ	góng	kóng seh
"what"	mih-kâi	mātyéh	siáⁿ-mi̍h
"child"	nou-kiáⁿ	sailouh	gín-á
"black"	ou	hāk	o͘

Character	Type of reading	Teochew	Hokkien	Middle Chinese or Proto-Southern-Min	Old Chinese
'meat'	literary		jio̍k	MC nyuwk	*k.nuk
'meat'	vernacular	ne̍k	he̍k	PSM *nhɯk3	*k.nuk
'white'	literary		pe̍k	MC baek	*bˤrak
'white'	vernacular	pe̍h	pe̍h	PSM *peʔ8	*bˤrak
'before'	literary		chiân	MC dzen	*dzˤen
'before'	vernacular	tsôiⁿ	chêng / châiⁿ / chûiⁿ	PSM *tsõi2	*dzˤen
'ant'	literary		gí	MC ngjeX	*m-qʰrajʔ
'ant'	vernacular	hiă	hiă	PSM *hia4	*m-qʰrajʔ
'branch'	literary		chi	MC tsye	*ke
'branch'	vernacular	ki	ki	PSM *ki1	*ke
'abundant'	literary		hù	MC pjuwH	*pək-s
'abundant'	vernacular	pù	pù	PSM *pu5	*pək-s
'beautiful'	literary	múi	bí	MC mijX	*mrəjʔ
'beautiful'	vernacular	bué		—	*mrəjʔ