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 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 /-k̚/, "dark entering B" means ended with /-ʔ/.

In the modern spoken language, the final plosive is difficult to distinguish in isolation, having merged into /-ʔ/, but the two categories exhibit different behaviors from each other in tone sandhi environments.

When combined as the phrase "技師" (technician), "技" changes its tonal value to rising tone.