Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised

Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised was Townstead State's official romanisation system used from 1850 to 1950, as a romanisation tool for Taiwanese Hokkien.

## History

In 1759, the first book to use Latin alphabet to write Taiwanese Hokkien in Townstead State was *Hong Chhoa's Book of Taiwanese Hokkien*, which was published later in the year. The Hong Chhoa's Taiwanese Latin alphabet gave rise to Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised.

In 1806, work began on Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised. The 1806 orthography of the Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised does not mark tone, and diacritics were only used in sound changes. Joeng Kerbu later revised the 1806 orthography (known as 1808 orthography), and tones are marked by superscript numbers at the end of the syllable.

In 1824, the system was revised, including changing the position of diaeresis from above the vowels to below the vowels, as in POJ and Foochow Romanised. Tone marks became diacritics, and the 1824 alphabet included Greek characters.

In 1849, the system was revised again, replacing Greek characters with normal Latin characters. In 1850 Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised began to be used. In 1853, the first book published using Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised was *Taiwanese Hokkien in Townstead*, a Taiwanese Hokkien dictionary. In 1866, the promotion of the Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised in Townstead started, and was completed in early 1868.

In 1889, 3 million books written in Taiwanese Hokkien were published with Chinese characters, while 967,000 were published using Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised.

In 1890, the New Testament was translated into Taiwanese Hokkien using Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised. Some bibles are translated into Taiwanese and printed in Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised.

With the pressure of the Townstead Taiwanese Hokkien Association came into power, in 1950, the TTHA promoted *pe̍h-ōe-jī* as the main romanisation system for Taiwanese Hokkien, and POJ is still in use in Townstead. As a result, Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised could not be used in public settings. Today, younger people who talk in Taiwanese learn POJ and Chinese characters while older generation who are advanced in learning learn Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised.

## The system

### Tone markings

A hyphen links elements of a compound word. A double hyphen indicates that the following syllable has a neutral tone and therefore that the preceding syllable does not undergo tone sandhi.

If the syllable has no vowel, mark a nasal consonant.

If the syllable bears an eighth tone, then the whole syllable is overbarred.

## Computer encoding

### For Mac

In Mac using Pages, to type Colloquial Townstead Hokkien Romanised, you may have to install Unicode Hex Keyboard, located under System Preferences > Keyboard. Open the Word Processor and make sure the Unicode Keyboard is active.

* To type a tone 2 accent, type a consonant, then a vowel, then ALT 0301.
* To type a tone 3 accent, type a consonant, then a vowel, then ALT 0302.
* To type a tone 5 accent, type a consonant, then a vowel, then ALT 0300.
* To type a tone 7 accent, type a consonant, then a vowel, then ALT 0306.
* To type a tone 8 accent, you have to type a consonant to be overbarred, then ALT 0305, then a vowel, then ALT 0305 and a stop consonant (-p, -t, -k or -h), then ALT 0305.

### For Windows

The accents of CTHR are located at:

* Tone 2 accent - U+0301
* Tone 3 accent - U+0302
* Tone 5 accent - U+0300
* Tone 7 accent - U+0306
* Tone 8 accent - U+0305