Special Characteristics
Spoken Amoy preserves many of the sounds and words from Old Chinese. However, the vocabulary of Amoy was also influenced in its early stages by the languages of the Minyue peoples. Spoken Amoy is known for its extensive use of nasalization.
Unlike Mandarin, Amoy distinguishes between voiced and voiceless unaspirated initial consonants (Mandarin has no voicing of initial consonants). Unlike English, it differentiates between unaspirated and aspirated voiceless initial consonants (as Mandarin does too). In less technical terms, native Amoy speakers have little difficulty in hearing the difference between the following syllables:
| unaspirated | aspirated | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| bilabial stop | bo 母 | po 保 | pʰo 抱 |
| velar stop | go 俄 | ko 果 | kʰo 科 |
| voiced | voiceless | ||
Read more about this topic: Amoy Dialect
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