DT in its present form has 17 initials, 18 finals and 8 tones.
Tone number
is a tonal language, so the pitch of a spoken word affects its meaning, same as the written words. However, in non-tonal languages, a word's pitch constantly conveys emotion but often does not influence its meaning. In Taiwanese, which has nine tones and two extra tones, neutral tone and nasal vowel.
Tones are expressed by diacritics; checked syllables are followed by the letter h. Where diacritics are not technically available, e.g. on some parts of the internet, tone alphabet may be used instead.
a
à
a̠
ā
ă
ä
ā
a
á
å
aⁿ
Examples for these tones: ciūⁿ, bâ, bhè, di, zŭa, āh, lok. And, a neutral tone, sometimes indicated by å in DT, has no specific contour; its pitch always depends on the tones of the preceding syllables. Taiwanese speakers refer to this tone as the "neutral tone".
Tone sandhi
or chain shift by circulation, as the tones are encoded by appending and modifying spellings with attention to the rules of the DT system. The basic tone has no modification and tone mark. Generally speaking, the basic tone means the 7th tone.
Morphology
A DT word, like an English word, can be formed by only one syllable or several syllables, with the two syllables being the general typicality. Each syllable in DT follows one of the six underlying patterns:
Alphabet
The DT alphabet adopts the Latin alphabet of 19 letters, 4 digraphs, and 6 diacritics to express the basic sounds of Taiwanese:
bh, z, c, gh, h, r, g, k, l, m, n, ng, b, p, s, d, t Note that unlike their typical interpretation in modern English language, bh and gh are voiced and unaspirated, whereas b, g, and d are plain unvoiced as in Hanyu Pinyin. p, k, and t are unvoiced and aspirated, corresponding closer to p, t, and k in English. It is inconsistent with the use of h's in the Legge romanization and the use of the diacritic in the International Phonetic Alphabet to signal consonantal aspiration.
Finals
Vowels: a, i, u, e, or, o
Diphthongs: ai, au, ia, iu, io, ui, ua, ue
Triphthongs: iau, uai
Nasals: m, n, ng
The nasals m, n, and ng can be appended to any of the vowels and some of the diphthongs. In addition, m and ng can function as independent syllables by themselves. The stops h, g, b and d can appear as the last letter in a syllable, in which case they are pronounced with no audible release.
Delimiting symbols
All syllables in each word are normally separated by the dash mark. Generally, syllables before the dash which must undergo tone sandhi.
