Penangites have teamed up to help launch a learn Penang Hokkien app for beginners.
The uTalk app features audio from a Penang male speaker, a Penang female speaker and the Taiji script devised by Penang linguist Timothy Tye to represent the language which was traditionally spoken rather than written.
The trio say they are pleased to support the app because it is an important way of helping to preserve their mother tongue.
uTalk’s male Hokkien speaker Brian Loo says: “Penang Hokkien is at risk of becoming endangered in the future because fewer young people are learning the language.
“So it’s great news that, for the first time, people in Malaysia and worldwide will be able to learn the language from an easy-to-use app,” he adds.
Taiji script author Timothy Tye says: “Having Penang Hokkien on an international language learning app like uTalk is a huge boost for the language which needs to attract a younger generation of speakers in order to survive long-term.”
The app uses native speaker audio and memory boosting games to help beginners learn how to speak and recognise more than 2,500 everyday words and phrases in Penang Hokkien.
Importantly, the app can also be used by speakers of more than 100 different languages – including Malay, English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka and Tamil – and works by automatically defaulting to the language of a user’s device.
Other features of uTalk include:
- it works on most smartphones, tablets and computers both online and offline (if you download the content first)
- its words and phrases are divided up into 60+ themes or topics such as Social Phrases, Technology and Food and Drink
- users can record and compare their own pronunciation with male and female native speakers’
- five fun games test you on what you’ve learnt and give points for correct answers
- pictures linked to every word or phrase help boost your memory.
uTalk is a UK-based language learning company whose mission is to represent minority as well as mainstream languages on its bestselling uTalk app.
Brian Loo and uTalk’s female native speaker Poe Teoh visited uTalk’s London recording studio in 2024 to record the Penang Hokkien content for the app. Translations were done by Brian Loo and uTalk’s rendering of the Taiji script was approved by Timothy Tye.
uTalk CEO Richard Howeson says: “We’re really pleased we were able to work with Penangites to help support their native language.
“We now hope our app can be a useful learning resource for younger people in Penang who haven’t been taught the language as well as for expat Malaysians living abroad in countries such as the UK, Australia, Singapore and the US,” he adds.
As Penang Hokkien has not got a universally agreed standardised script, the uTalk app has represented its written words and phrases in both Tâi-lô (the official romanisation script for Taiwanese Hokkien) and Taiji (a Roman script devised by Timothy Tye).
Taiji, which is an official script for Penang Hokkien in the Penang State, is a useful written way of learning how to pronounce the language because its tones are represented by a numbering system.
To download free starter words in Penang Hokkien, click here. More information about the app can be found on the uTalk website.
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For media inquiries contact sarah@utalk.com.
Notes to editors:
Taiji Romanisation, which was devised in 2013, provides an easy means to write Penang Hokkien on computers and smartphones because it uses numbers instead of traditional pronunciation marks to indicate tones. It also leverages learners’ existing knowledge of English, Malay and Mandarin (the three languages that are taught in schools in Penang). This is because the spelling mirrors English and Malay spelling and the numbered tones correspond to tones used by Mandarin speakers.
Taiji tones: In brief, there are four classes of tones in Taiji. Every syllable is numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 33. Tones 1, 2, 3, and 4 correspond to the four tones in Mandarin, as understood by Mandarin speakers in Penang. Tone 33 sounds the same as tone 3 but behaves differently. Every syllable in Taiji has to end with a tone number. For more information on Taiji, please click here.
Penang Hokkien has a very small vocabulary when dealing with 20th century terms so the language has evolved to use Mandarin, English and Malay in their place. E.g. the English word ‘coffee’ (which is variously written as ko3pi1 and ko-pi in Taiji and Tâi-lô respectively), the Chinese word ‘茶’ (meaning tea in English/Malay, which is written as teh2 or têe) and the Malay word ‘kongsi’ (meaning to share in English and written as kong3si1 or kong-si).