Malaysian Mandarin

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Malaysian Mandarin (Chinese: 马来西亚華語) is Mandarin (Putonghua) of China but very much different in tone. The difference can be as similar as British English and Malaysian English. Malaysian Mandarin and Singaporean Mandarin are very close, the language was widely used in films created by Singaporean movie director Jack Neo.

Malaysian Mandarin speakers seldom translate local terms or names to Mandarin when they speak. For instance, they preferred to speak "Jalan Bukit Kepong" to better communicate with local Malaysian, whereas a citizen of China would most probably pronounce it as "Re-lan Woo-ji Chia-tong" to communicate with Chinese citizens.

Difference between Malaysian Mandarin and Putonghua (Mandarin in China):

Jalan Bukit Kepong - Re-lan Woo-ji Chia-tong
Raja Abdullah - La-re Yak-too-la
Kuih Talam - Da-lan-kow
Roti Canai - Yin-too-ren de mian-pow

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1 Early Ming Qing immigrants
2 References
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Early Ming Qing immigrants

Majority ethnic Chinese (Malaysian Chinese) living in Malaysia came from the pre-Putonghua Ming and Qing dynasty from l400s to early 1900s, they were speakers of Hokkien (Min Nan), Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, Hainanese, etc. In the 19th century, Qing immigrants to Malaya had no single common dialect and were mostly uneducated peasants, they tended to cluster themselves according to the ethno-linguistic group, which usually corresponed with their place of origin, and worked with relatives or members of the same dialect. According to a visitor (Isabella Bird) to the tin mining boomtown of Taiping, Perak in 1879, remarked that 'five dialects of Chinese are spoken, and Chinamen constantly communicate with each other in Malay, because they can't understand each other's Chinese'. ^[1]

The Chinese dialects spoken in Malaysia have over the years become localized, as is apparent from the use of Malay and English loan words. Words from other Chinese dialects are also injected, depending on the educational and cultural background of the speaker (see Education in Malaysia and Rojak Language). Mandarin in Malaysia, too, has been localized, as a result of the influence of other Chinese variants spoken in Malaysia, rather than of Malay. Though it was discouraged in teaching at the local Chinese school and was regarded as mispronunciation.

Examples of Mandarin in Malaysia:

Angela, 你们不是应该要拿那个 'form' 先, 然后才去四楼那个 'counter' 的 meh?
刚刚从 Taman Chempaka 回来, 它的 traffic '死巴' 够力, 它 '敢敢' 跟你塞两个多小时 '那种', 现在 '讲真的' 我很 'Sian' 了.
那个黑色 body 的跟它 '马是' 同样的, 我看你们重 '砍' 了, 又.