Teochew dialect phonetics and phonology

Consonants
Teochew (along with other southern Min languages) is one of the few Sinitic languages which have voiced obstruents (stops, fricatives and affricates); however, unlike the Wu and Xiang languages, the Teochew voiced stops and fricatives did not evolve from the Middle Chinese voiced obstruents, instead, they were from the Middle Chinese nasals. Therefore, the voiced stops and  are in fact prenasalised as  and  respectively. The voiced Affricates fricative, initial in such words as 字(dzi˩), 二(dzi˧˥), 然(dziaŋ˥), 若(dziak˦) loses its fricative property with some younger speakers abroad, and is relaxed to [z]. Southern Min languages are typified by a lack of labiodentals, as illustrated below:

Syllable
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 [ŋ], 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.

Nucleus
The nucleus is the only obligatory and therefore the most important element of a syllable. It can be occupied by a vowel, a nasalised vowel or a syllabic consonant in Teochew.

Coda
The coda position is usually fulfilled by a stop (plosive or nasal) but is optional.

Citation tones
Teochew, like other Chinese languages, is a tonal language. It has six tones (reduced to two in stopped syllables) and extensive tone sandhi.


 * {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! Tone number!!Tone name!!Pitch contour!!Description!!Sandhi As with sandhi in other Min Nan dialects, the checked tones interchange. The yang tones all become low. Sandhi is not accounted for in the description below.
 * +Teochew tones
 * 1 || yin level (陰平/阴平) || (3) || mid || 1
 * 2 || yin rising (陰上/阴上) || (52) || falling || 6
 * 3 || yin departing (陰去/阴去) || (213) || low rising || 2 or 5
 * 4 || yin entering (陰入/阴入) || (2) || low checked || 8
 * 5 || yang level (陽平/阳平) || (5) || high || 7
 * 6 || yang rising (陽上/阳上) || (35) || high rising || 7
 * 7 || yang departing (陽去/阳去) || (1) || low || 7
 * 8 || yang entering (陽入/阳入) || (4) || high checked || 4
 * }
 * 5 || yang level (陽平/阳平) || (5) || high || 7
 * 6 || yang rising (陽上/阳上) || (35) || high rising || 7
 * 7 || yang departing (陽去/阳去) || (1) || low || 7
 * 8 || yang entering (陽入/阳入) || (4) || high checked || 4
 * }
 * 8 || yang entering (陽入/阳入) || (4) || high checked || 4
 * }
 * }