Can You Understand Malaysian Mandarin?

As a Malaysian Chinese, I watched the entire video with a smile. You explained it so well! Here’s one phrase you’ll never hear anywhere else but Malaysia: “Macha (Indian), you wanna tapao (Cantonese) or makan (Malay) ah?” 😂 Translate: Friend, do you want to take-away or dine-in?

I am a Malay Malaysian who don’t know much about Mandarin let alone speak it. But I hold Mandarin dearly because all my kids learned the language and are able to a degree speak it. What I can say about the 4th tone is the intonation that we Malay often use. I also notice the quick cadence which is also part of our nature of shortening certain words so we don’t waste time getting the message across. As an example, most Indonesian would highlight that our Malay language is spoken in quick cadence, as opposed to Indonesia language. Both Malay and Indonesian languages are similar but spoken differently.

As a Malaysian Chinese, it was really fun guessing what the Malaysian Mandarin version of a sentence was going to be. For example the "我先去洗澡“ one, my mind instantly went "我去冲凉先“. Its really amazing how much changes when speaking in Malaysian Mandarin, and we don't really notice it until other people tell us that we speak Mandarin differently from other places because this is the Mandarin we grew up with. Great video, very well done! 💜

As someone who’s from a Malaysian Chinese family I always felt uncomfortable speaking Chinese to Mainland Chinese people because I felt like people never understood me 😢 and i felt like my Chinese was wrong or bad. Nice to know that these are actually things that other Malaysian Chinese say and do!

Grace made this for people who want to learn about the Malaysian Mandarin accent, but seems like it attracted mostly people who already speak in that accent!

Haha you totally nailed our Malaysian-flavored Mandarin.

As a Malaysian Mandarin speaker, learning Taiwanese Mandarin and trying to get rid of our many weird and incorrect grammar, I'm very surprised and impressed with your points and how accurate you managed to present them, even pronouncing them! I always knew what those things mean but never knew how to explain them, but man, you explained them perfectly! I'm so impressed! And yeah, Malaysians love using the fourth tones for a lot of non fourth tone words. 讀書 ㄉㄨˋㄕㄨ is actually much more common among older people, young people usually say the standard way ㄉㄨˊㄕㄨ. A lot of the Malaysian Mandarin grammar is influenced by Cantonese because we grow up watching Hong Kong TV shows and a lot of them here belong to the Cantonese dialectal group, even I as a Hokkien don't have that much influence on our Mandarin as they do. The use of 一下 as exceeding someone's expectation is also from Cantonese. Other things like 得空 instead of 有空 is also from Cantonese 得閒 they just took the 得. 沖涼 is also from Cantonese. 咩 is also Cantonese. Another one, which some young people use, is the hanging 到~ to express amazement, for example, Taiwanese would say 好可愛喔~, some Malaysians would say 這個可愛到~~~ or 氣死我啦！would be 氣到~~~！or sometimes 炸到~~~！🤣🤣🤣 There are some words which I didn't know the Mandarin equivalent prior to studying Taiwanese Mandarin, therefore it's almost impossible to speak fully in Mandarin like in Taiwan or China, I always find myself having to use English or Malay words in conversations because my friends already know I'm Malaysian, trying to speak fully Mandarin will turn me into a weirdo, so I end up practising Mandarin with my Taiwanese friends instead and speak English or Malay with my fellow Malaysians. Lol. I really love your contents, you really do your research and present them without any negative views, in fact, you're much more positive than my comments. Keep it up! 謝謝Grace老師，加油喔！

As a Malaysian chinese, i must say that Grace really did amazing job explaining it clearly in technical sense, I know we are doing it but don't really know how to teach it to others, but she can explain the "technical" part of it like so accurately. Little fun story, i found it special/funny is when I stayed with my China chinese housemate when studying in Aussie, we Malaysian chinese can often switch to china way of speaking in a snap (Ok not instantly if you are totally new, but you need to talk to them for sometimes until enough to learn their kind of "vocab and internet language" and then you can blend in with them without them noticing we are not from China, but the other way around was just impossible for them, kinda impossible for them to imitate the Malaysian way of speaking chinese🤣🤣🤣

As a Singaporean Mandarin speaker, we probably share many similarities with Malaysian Mandarin especially in the pronunciation. I am no language expert, but from Grace's explanation, it seems like the difference in accent and grammar is due to different dialect influence. Malaysian Mandarin has more influence from Cantonese while Singaporean Mandarin has more influence from Hokkien. It may seem minor, but this small difference is sufficient for us to easily recognise if someone is Singaporean or Malaysian.

As a Malaysian Chinese, I find our Chinese quite funny when someone else is speaking it and analysing it 😂 it's so distinct and often feels like we've butchered the language but it's OK it's part of our identity

As a Singaporean Chinese with plenty of Malaysian Chinese colleagues, this is extremely very well researched! I am floored, learnt a lot from all this! Thank you!

Hey everyone! Many of you told me you wanted to learn about the Malaysian Mandarin accent. It's finally here! Let me know in the comments which accents you'd love to hear about next! 💛

Saya cuma belajar mandrin sewaktu di tadika dan darjah satu. Setelah itu saya bertukar sekolah di sekolah kebangsaan. Jadi, saya tidak sempat belajar 4 nada mandrin. Untuk memastikan saya tidak terus lupa bahasa ini, saya akan bercakap broken mandrin bila membeli barang di kedai. Sekarang saya sedang cuba belajar semula melalui content creator di IG dan youtube, sambil cuba menghafal seberapa banyak huruf. Bayangkan betapa sukarnya.

As a HK chinese, all these grammar and words make perfect sense to me :)

I smiled as I listened to the familiar pronunciations (and your accurate demonstration) and teared as I miss being back home in Malaysia. Malaysian Mandarin to me, is a short and punchy way of speaking Mandarin, and is heavily influenced by dialects and our other spoken languages. Great video!

As a Malaysian, I approve this 99marks!! Just at the 他很红一下叻， rather than he's so famous right now, it's actually quite famous. Usually 一下 used to describe "quite". 他很红一下叻 He's quite famous

First time i have ever come across a technical analysis of our accent 😂😂😂 Great job!

southeast asians need to be proud of our vernacular chinese!! theres no one right or wrong language like australian vs american english. its our history and culture❤❤

我是在大马留学的中国人，这个视频很有帮助❤他们口音好可爱软软的

I am a Malaysian Chinese currently a freshman studying in Taiwan. It kinda feels nostalgic when hearing you pronounce Malaysian Chinese despite not being Malaysian. It amazing how accurately you were able to dissect our dialect and actually spot out what the differences between Malaysian Chinese and accurate Chinese pronunciations because it is hard for us to actually pin point the differences due to it being used in our daily lives.