[1] However, unlike its counterpart Pe̍h-ōe-jī for Hokkien, even in its prime days Bàng-uâ-cê was by no means universally understood by Christians.

Besides the default five vowels of Latin alphabet, four diacritic-marked letters ⟨è⟩, ⟨ë⟩, ⟨ò⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ were also introduced, representing [ɛ], [ø], [ɔ], and [y], respectively.

The most significant change was made for the plosive consonants, where the spiritus lenis ⟨᾿⟩ of the aspirated initials was removed and the letters ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩ and ⟨g⟩ substituted for [p] [t] and [k].

The sample characters are taken from the Qi Lin Bayin, a renowned phonology book about the Fuzhou dialect written in the Qing Dynasty.

Note that Bàng-uâ-cê uses the breve, not the caron (ˇ), to indicate Yīnpíng and Yángrù tones of Fuzhou dialect.