Teochew Romanization

Romanization of Teochew can be traced back to the 1840s. The earliest attempt to write the language in the Latin script was undertaken by Baptist missionary William Dean in his 1841 publication First Lessons in the Tie-chiw Dialect published in Bangkok, Thailand[1]; however, his tonal system was said to be incomplete.[2]

The first complete orthographic system was devised by John Campbell Gibson and William Duffus, two Presbyterianism missionaries, in 1875. The orthography was generally based on the Pe̍h-ōe-jī system, another work of presbyterian origin devised for the Amoy dialect. The first translation of the Gospel of Luke in Swatow romanization was published in 1876.[2][3] It has been said that the vernacular orthographic system is more easier for illiterate persons to learn in their own mother tongue.

Besides Gibson and Duffus's original romanization system, several variations of the system were later devised, such as those by William Ashmore (1884)[4] and Lim Hiong Seng (1886).[5]

Other systems developed by Baptist missionaries such as Adele Marion Fielde (1883) and Josiah Goddard (1888) were generally used as a means of phonetic notation instead of a full orthographic system.[2][3]

Through the church's use of the romanization system, the number of users of the system grew and came to its high point in the 1910s. However, starting in the 1920s, the Chinese government promoted education in Mandarin and more people learned to read and write in Chinese characters. Thus, the promotion of romanized vernacular writing become less necessary.[2][3] By the 1950s, there were an estimated one thousand users of the system remaining in the Chaoshan area.[6]