Daighi tongiong pingim

Daī-ghî tōng-iōng pīng-im (Taiwanese phonetic transcription system, abbr: DT; Chinese: 臺語通用拼音) is an orthography in the Latin alphabet for Taiwanese Hokkien based upon Tongyong Pinyin. It is able to use the Latin alphabet to indicate the proper variation of pitch with nine diacritic symbols.

DT in its present form has 17 initials, 18 finals and 8 tones.

Taiwanese is a tonal language, so the pitch (tone) 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 (i.e. those ending with glottal stops) 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.

Examples for these tones: ciūⁿ (elephant), bâ (leopard), bhè (horse), di (pig), zŭa (snake), āh (duck), lok (deer). And, a neutral tone, sometimes indicated by å(aj) 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" (Chinese: 輕聲).

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 (mid even tone; yangqu).

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