Taishanese is monosyllable, i.e. each character corresponds to exactly one syllable. You will find that some Taishanese words sometimes pronounced with tones different from their base ones. Quite a few single syllable words almost always pronounced with tone changes while retaining their base tones when they are part of multi-syllable words. In general, a tone-changing word is a adjective or noun located at the end of a sentence or phrase, and the tone-changing syllable is the last syllable if the word is multi-syllable.
Sometimes this is purely phonological and the meaning of the character does not change. The following is an example of this type of tone change.
| fish (鱼)
[ŋʊɪ31] |
fish meat
(鱼肉) [ŋʊɪ31 ŋǝk31] |
sashimi, raw fish (鱼生) [ŋʊɪ22 saŋ44] |
catfish (鳅鱼) [tiu44 ŋʊɪ226] |
♫ |
Other times tone change is associated with the creation of nouns from verbs:
| to brush (刷) [tsat44] |
a brush (刷) [tsat316] |
to brush with a brush (用刷刷) [yǝŋ52 tsat316 tsat44] |
♫ |
| to clip (夹) [gap52] |
a clip (夹) [gap316] |
to
clip with a clip
(用夹夹) [yǝŋ52 gap316 gap52] |
♫ |
Tone change that affects meaning, sometimes a form of specialization:
| 细个 | small [ɬai44 gɔi44] | small children [ɬai21 gɔi44] | ♫ |
| 黄皮 | of yellow skin [vɔŋ22 pi22] | a type of fruit (of yellow skin) [vɔŋ22 pi316] | ♫ |
| 门前 | in front of my door [mɔn22 tɛn22] | right in front of me [mɔn22 tɛn21] | ♫ |
Tone change for fine differentiation:
|
姨丈 mother's brother-in-law |
mother's older sister's
husband [yi22 dziaŋ527] |
mother's younger sister's husband [yi22 dziaŋ31] |
♫ |
An example of using tone change to convert the first person pronoun to its plural form:
| I, me (我) [ŋɔi44] | we, us, my (我) [ŋɔi31] | ♫ |
Examples of using repetition combined with tone change to indicate the level of intensity:
| red
(红) [hǝŋ22] |
reddish, somewhat red
(红红) [hǝŋ22 hǝŋ226] |
very very red
(红红) [hǝŋ226 hǝŋ22] |
♫ |
| sharp
(尖) [diam44] |
somewhat sharp
(尖尖) [diam44 diam447] |
very very sharp
(尖尖) [diam447 diam44] |
♫ |
Certain characters have respective literary and colloquial forms of pronunciations. Here are a few examples:
| Colloquial Form | Literary Form | Meaning | |
| 命 | [miaŋ52] | [mɛŋ52] | life, fate |
| 醒 | [ɬiaŋ66] | [ɬɛŋ66] | awake, wake up |
| 青 | [tiaŋ44] | tɛŋ44] | green, young |
| 星 | [ɬiaŋ31] | [ɬɛŋ44] | star |
| 仔 | [dɔi66] | [du66] | small |