Matsu dialect

The Matsu dialect (Eastern Min: / 馬祖話) is the local dialect of Matsu Islands, Taiwan. Native speakers also call it Bàng-huâ (平話), meaning the language spoken in everyday life. It is recognised as one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in Lienchiang County, Taiwan.

The dialect is a dialect of the Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min. The Matsu dialect is quite similar to the Changle dialect, another subdialect of the Fuzhou dialect.

History
Previously the Eastern Min varieties in the Matsu Islands were seen as a part of general Fujian varieties. The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 severed the Matsu Islands from the rest of Fujian province, and as communications were cut off between the Republic of China (now including Taiwan and without Mainland China) and the PRC, the identity of the Matsu Islands specifically became established. Additionally, the varieties of Eastern Min on the Matsu Islands became seen as a Matsu dialect.

Phonology
The Matsu dialect has 17 initials, 46 rimes and 7 tones.

Initials
// and // exist only in connected speech.

Rimes
There are 46 rimes in the Matsu dialect.

Many rimes come in pairs: in the table above, the one to the left represents a close rime (緊韻), while the second represents an open rime (鬆韻). The close/open rimes are closely related with the tones (see below).

The relationship between tone and rime
In the Matsu dialect, level tone (平聲), rising tone (上聲) and light entering (陽入) should be read in close rimes (緊韻); departing tone and dark entering should be read in open rimes (鬆韻).

For example, "" have two pronunciations, // in close rime and // in open rime; "" have two pronunciations, // in close rime and // in open rime. This is summarized in the table:

Close rime tone "" should be pronounced as instead of ; and open rime tone "" should be pronounced as  instead of.

Tone sandhi
The Matsu dialect has extremely extensive tone sandhi rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. The two-syllable tonal sandhi rules are shown in the table below (the rows give the first syllable's original citation tone, while the columns give the citation tone of the second syllable):

In the table above, "dark entering A" means dark entering coda ended with, "dark entering B" means ended with. In the modern spoken language, the final plosive is difficult to distinguish in isolation, having merged into }}, but the two categories exhibit different behaviors from each other in tone sandhi environments. This feature is shared with most modern Eastern Min varieties.

Like the Fuzhou dialect, the tonal sandhi rules of more than two syllables display further complexities.

Initial assimilation
The two-syllable initial assimilation rules are shown in the table below:

Rime tensing
In the Matsu dialect, if the rime type of the former syllable is changed while tone sandhi occurred, the rime of the former syllable should be changed to adapt the rule of close/open rimes.

For example, "技" is a syllable which has dark departing tone, it's an open rime; "師"  has a dark level tone. When combined as the phrase "技師" (technician), "技" changes its tonal value to rising tone. Rising tone is a close rime tone, therefore the pronunciation as a whole is.