Short-ish description of Dr. Lau's Pinfa.

["Dylan W.H. Sung" <mabr12@dial.pipex.com>]

Dear Forum readers,

Here is a quick and easy guide to Lau's Pinfa system of romanisation. Lau's
studies has encompassed over 50 Hakka subdialects, and this system fits
most of them. Dr. Lau hopes that this can be promoted as a suitable
standard romanisation amongst readers, so that there is a unity of
linguistic purpose for the preservation and furtherment of the Hakka
Language.

I shall be including this as an appendix to the revised Hakka Language FAQ,
which hopefully is coming out soon. 

I've taken the opportunity to include the nearest English equivalents, so
that you can get a rough idea if you have no or little experience of
Mandarin or Hakka. 

-------------------------START-------------------------

Initials:
=========
b, p, m, f, 
bone, pineapple, meal, food, 

v (does not appear in Mandarin, nearest being w)
vandle

n, l, t, d,    
never, lime, style, docker

g, k, h,       
grey, kite, happy

z, c, s        
adze, talking, soap

q, x  have the sounds ch (church) and sh (shout)

Medials:
========
i (=y)  as y in 'yellow'. Can be used as a glide as in ngiad6 for moon.

u (=w) as u in 'queen'. This is used as a glide where those speakers have
it. 
E.g. guong1 (bright) but others who don't have this glide will read it as
gong1.

Mandarin has no occlusive endings -b -d -g (or -p -t -k) so there is no
tone 5 and 6. Dependending on the tone contour of your own dialect, tone 5
should be (according to Meixian) a low pitch, whilst 6 is a high pitch,
contrast /hap6/ (together) /sat5/ (to murder), so /hap/ is higher in tonal
pitch than /sat/.

Mandarin -iang > -iong in Hakka

Hakka -ia- can be thought of as -e- as well, rhyming with the english
"bed", so ngiad4 can be nged4 (though there seems to be a slight glide
before the e, hence ngied4), and ngian2 (year) is ngen2 or ngien2, tian2
(paddy field) is ten2 or tien2 etc....

Short vowels length (with the middle of a written sound):
a = bat 
e = get 
i = bit 
o = got
u = put

Long Vowel length (vowel appears as an end letter):
a = rhymes with car
e = rhymes with air
i = rhymes with been
o = rhymes with core
u = rhymes with loo

Dipthongs:
1. 
Where there is a vowel at the end of the dipthongised sound, as in /la2
kia2/ (Spider), the second sound kia2 has a long -a ending, but a short
glide -i-.
2.
Where a vowel dipthong occurs within the sound, and is enclosed either by
another vowel, or by a consonant ending, then the sound is short. If the
enclosing letter is a vowel, hence creating a tripthong, then rule 1. is
observed

-iau is a tripthong as in kiau2 (bridge), -ia- are short vowels (rule 2),
but u is long (rule 1).

-iang and in giang4 (mirror) -ia- short (rule 2) because a consonant ending
encloses the sound.

You can probably get away with leaving the tones out, but in general, the
tones 1 to 4 in Mandarin agrees with Hakka in most cases. Where you know
that there is an occlusive ending, then apply the tone 5 or 6 depending on
the particular pitch contour of your brand of Hakka. Otherwise, use the
Meixian usage above. (you could draw a guess from Mandarin, if you know
that it is tone 2 for example, then the occlusive ending may be the low
pitch tone 5 in Hakka - though this may be overstretching it a little).

--------------------------END--------------------------

Please direct any questions about this to me, I will try to answer as soon
as I am able. 

Dylan.