Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols (; TPS: ãÂÂãÂÂàã£丨àãÂÂã² 丨㬠ãÂÂã¨àãÂÂãÂÂë) constitute a system of phonetic notation for the transcription of Taiwanese languages, especially Taiwanese Hokkien. The system was designed by Professor Chu Chao-hsiang, a member of the National Languages Committee in Taiwan, in 1946. The system is derived from Mandarin Phonetic Symbols by creating additional symbols for the sounds that do not appear in Mandarin phonology. It is one of the phonetic notation systems officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education.
There are 49 symbols used in standard Taiwanese Hokkien. Of these 49 symbols, 26 are from the original Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, while 23 are additional, created for Taiwanese languages.
Images below are a collection of Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols:
Note: is Taiwanese Hokkien (). Synonyms would be or . , in this context, means "teacher".
The Mandarin Phonetic Symbols were added to the Unicode Standard in October 1991 with the release of version 1.0. The Unicode block for Mandarin Phonetic Symbols is U+3100 ... U+312F.
The extended phonetic symbols were added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0. The Unicode block for the extended symbols is U+31A0 ... U+31BF. Four symbols for Cantonese and one for Minnan and Hakka coda were released in 2020 with the publication of version 13.0. One can learn more information from the proposals.
The Academia Sinica of Taiwan has released three sets of fonts for Taiwanese Hokkien: "", "", and "". When the above fonts are used (to Chinese characters), the Bopomofo Phonetic Symbols will automatically appear. For words with more than one pronunciation, user can choose "" fonts to find the desired pronunciation. The user manual can be downloaded here.