Modern Literal Taiwanese
Modern Literal Taiwanese
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Modern Literal Taiwanese

Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT), also known as Modern Taiwanese Language (MTL), is an orthography in the Latin alphabet for Taiwanese based on the Taiwanese Modern Spelling System (TMSS). MLT is able to use the ASCII character set plus ⟨ø⟩ to indicate the proper variation of pitch without any subsidiary scripts or diacritic symbols. The Phofsit Daibuun orthography is based on MLT, but substitutes ⟨oi⟩ for ⟨ø⟩.

The MLT alphabet adopts the Latin alphabet of 26 letters and the Scandinavian letter ø to express the basic sounds of Taiwanese:

A MLT word, like each English word, can be formed by only one syllable or several syllables, with the two syllables being the most typical. Each syllable in MLT follows either one of the two underlying patterns (phonemes inside the bracket [] are optional):

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/q, k/g, p/b and t/d can appear as the last letter in a syllable, in which case they are pronounced with no audible release. (The finals h and q stand for a glottal stop of high and low tone, respectively.)

TMSS originally prescribed two special characters: the Greek letter ν and an o crossed by a backslash. These were replaced with the Latin letter v and number 0, respectively. Because mixing numbers into words is problematic for spell checkers, 0 was subsequently replaced by ø.

Not only consonants and vowel sounds, but also tones are represented by letters in the MLT system. Certain letters have no sound of their own and are merely used as tone indicators. Others letters represent vowels or vowel combinations which have certain tones. For example, "f", "r", and "x" are tone indicators only, and have no sound of their own in MLT. "Af" represents the "a" sound with a "high" tone, "ar" represents the same vowel sound but with a "shouting" tone, "ax" is the "a" sound with the low falling tone. A "y" or "w" indicates a high tone "i" and "u", respectively, while certain diphthongs, such as "ie" and "uo", are treated as "shouting" tones. The basic tone is represented by a normal, simple vowel (or voiced consonant—e.g. the nasals, "m" or "ng") without any special spelling modification.

A high tone is derived by raising the pitch of the voice to a level somewhat above the basic tone and is normally represented by adding the tone indicator "f" after a vowel, with the exception of the "i" and "u" sounds in a syllable. A high tone "i" and a high tone "u" are denoted by "y" and "w", respectively.

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