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母音 vs 元音

vowel · Preferred written form

台灣 · Taiwan
母音 ㄇㄨˇ ㄧㄣ · mǔ yīn
vs
大陆 · Mainland
元音 yuán yīn · ㄩㄢˊ ㄧㄣ

What differs, and by how much

Preferred written form The two preferred forms differ by a single character. In Taiwan the standard term is 母音; on the Mainland it is 元音 - both point at “vowel”.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Education dictionaries record 母音、元音 for this concept. The Mainland standard is among them - the difference is which form each side makes the default.

Neither term carries an HSK or TOCFL level in this table - this pair is dictionary-recorded, not syllabus-derived.

Pair source: the OpenCC cross-strait conversion table, which maps each Mainland term to the form used in Taiwan.

Side by side

Taiwan · 台灣Mainland · 大陆
Written form 母音 元音
Reading ㄇㄨˇ ㄧㄣ mǔ yīn yuán yīn ㄩㄢˊ ㄧㄣ
Senses vowel vowel
Syllabus — —
MOE records 母音 · 元音
Dictionary not in the LinZi dictionary entry →
Audio —

In context

“元音” in a sentence
法语的元音比日语的多得多。
French has many more vowels than Japanese.

Keep exploring

Taiwan vs Mainland explorer (search all 953 pairs, random pair, MOE reading table) · every pair, A–Z · MOE standard characters · learning Mandarin for Taiwan · dictionary

Learn the Taiwan track - or the Mainland one

LinZi drills both syllabi: TOCFL with Traditional characters, zhuyin and zh-TW audio on one track; HSK with Simplified and zh-CN on the other. Every card shows both scripts.

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