Foochow Romanized

Foochow Romanized Hók-ciŭ-uâ Lò̤-mā-cê, Bàng-uâ-cê
Bible in Foochow Romanized (Exodus), published by British and Foreign Bible Society in 1908
Script type	Latin alphabet (modified)
Creator	Moses Clark White, Robert Samuel Maclay, Caleb Cook Baldwin, Robert Stewart
Time period	late 19th century - ?
Languages	Fuzhou dialect of the Eastern Min language
Related scripts
Child systems	Hinghwa Romanized, Kienning Colloquial Romanized
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Foochow Romanized, also known as Bàng-uâ-cê (BUC for short; 平話字) or Hók-ciŭ-uâ Lò̤-mā-cê (Chinese: 福州話羅馬字), is a Latin alphabet for the Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min adopted in the middle of the 19th century by Western missionaries. It had varied at different times, and became standardized in the 1890s. Foochow Romanized was mainly used inside of Church circles, and was taught in some Mission Schools in Fuzhou.^[1] But unlike its counterpart Pe̍h-ōe-jī for Hokkien, even in its prime days Foochow Romanized was by no means universally understood by Christians.^[2]

History[]

An English-Chinese Dictionary of the Foochow Dialect, 2nd Edition, published in 1905

Dictionary of the Foochow dialect, 3rd Edition, published in 1929

Hand-written note in Foochow Romanized, ca. 1910. It reads: "...You are our dwelling place. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. And we are thankful, because Jesus died for us, resurrected, and enabled us to live in the life full of abundance. He helps us conform to the image of the Lord, and be patient and serve Him with all our heart. He teaches us to willingly forgive people..."

After Fuzhou became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of First Opium War (from 1839 to 1842), many Western missionaries arrived in the city. Faced with widespread illiteracy, they developed Latin alphabets for Fuzhou dialect.

The first attempt in romanizing Fuzhou dialect was made by the American Methodist M. C. White, who borrowed a system of orthography known as the System of Sir William Jones. In this system, 14 initials were designed exactly according to their voicing and aspiration. ⟨p⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨k⟩ and ⟨ch⟩ stand for [p], [t], [k] and [ts]; 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 diacritic-marked letters ⟨è⟩, ⟨ë⟩, ⟨ò⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ were also introduced, representing [ɛ], [ø], [ɔ], and [y], respectively. This system is described at length in White's linguistic work The Chinese Language Spoken at Fuh Chau.

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 for the plosive consonants, where the spiritus lenis ⟨᾿⟩ of the aspirated initials was removed and the letters ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩ and ⟨g⟩ substituted for [p] [t] and [k]. In the aspect of vowels, ⟨è⟩, ⟨ë⟩, ⟨ò⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ were replaced by ⟨a̤⟩, ⟨e̤⟩, ⟨o̤⟩ and ⟨ṳ⟩. Since the diacritical marks were all shifted to underneath the vowels, this left room above the vowels which was occupied by the newly introduced tonal marks. Thus Foochow Romanized avoids the potentially awkward diacritic stacking seen for instance in the Vietnamese script, where tone and vowel quality marks both sit above the vowel.

Alphabet[]

The sample characters are taken from the Qi Lin Bayin, a renowned phonology book about the Fuzhou dialect written in the Qing Dynasty. The pronunciations are recorded in standard IPA symbols.

Initials[]

Finals[]

Finals without codas[]

Finals with coda [ʔ][]

Finals with codas [-ŋ] and [-k][]

Tones[]

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

Sample text[]

This section includes inline links to audio files. If you have trouble playing the files, see Wikipedia Media help.

Foochow Romanized	Chinese characters (traditional)	English Translation	Audio File
Báe̤k-hŭng gâe̤ng Nĭk-tàu	《北風共日頭》	The North Wind and the Sun	listen
Ô sŏ̤h huòi, Báe̤k-hŭng gâe̤ng Nĭk-tàu duŏh hī dó̤i căng, káng diê-nè̤ng buōng-sê̤ṳ duâi.	有蜀回，北風共日頭著許塊爭，看底儂本事大。	Once upon a time, the North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was stronger.	listen
Căng lì căng kó̤ mò̤ suŏ iàng.	爭來爭去無輸贏。	They disputed on and on without reaching a conclusion.	listen
Ciā sèng-hâiu, duô lā̤ ô sŏ̤h ciéh nè̤ng giàng lā̤, sĭng lā̤ sê̤ṳng duŏh sŏ̤h iông gâu-gâu gì duâi-ĭ.	者辰候，墿