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Initials There are two series of stops and affricates in Hakka, both voiceless: tenuis // and aspirated //. • When the initials // , // , // , and // are followed by a
palatal medial // , they become []/[] , []/[] , [] , and []/[] , respectively.
Rimes Moiyan Hakka has seven vowels, , , , , , and , that are romanised as ii, i, ê, a, e, o and u, respectively.
Finals Moreover, Hakka finals exhibit the final consonants found in Middle Chinese, namely which are romanised as m, n, ng, b, d, and g respectively in the official Moiyan romanisation.
Tone Moiyan Hakka has six tones. The
Middle Chinese fully voiced initial syllables became aspirated voiceless initial syllable in Hakka. Before that happened, the
four Middle Chinese 'tones',
ping, shang, qu, ru, underwent a voicing split in the case of
ping and
ru, giving the dialect six tones in traditional accounts. These so-called yin-yang tonal splittings developed mainly as a consequence of the type of initial a Chinese syllable had during the
Middle Chinese stage in the development of Chinese, with voiceless initial syllables tending to become of the yin type, and the voiced initial syllables developing into the yang type. In modern Moiyan Hakka however, part of the Yin Ping tone characters have sonorant initials originally from the Middle Chinese Shang tone syllables and fully voiced Middle Chinese Qu tone characters, so the voiced/voiceless distinction should be taken only as a rule of thumb. Hakka tone contours differs more as one moves away from Moiyen. For example, the Yin Ping contour is (33) in
Changting and (24) in Sixian (),
Taiwan. ;Entering tone Hakka preserves all of the entering tones of Middle Chinese and it is split into two registers. Meixian has the following: • [ ˩ ] a low pitched checked tone • [ ˥ ] a high pitched checked tone Middle Chinese entering tone syllables ending in [k] whose vowel clusters have become front high vowels like [i] and [e] shifts to syllables with [t] finals in modern Hakka as seen in the following table.
Tone sandhi For Moiyan Hakka, the
yin ping and
qu tone characters exhibit
sandhi when the following character has a lower pitch. The pitch of the
yin ping tone changes from (44) to (35) when sandhi occurs. Similarly, the
qu tone changes from (53) to (55) under sandhi. These are shown in red in the following table. The neutral tone occurs in some postfixes. It has a mid pitch. == Internal variation ==