Malaysian Mandarin - Early Ming and Qing Immigrants

Early Ming and Qing Immigrants

The majority of ethnic Chinese people living in Malaysia came from China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, between the 15th and early 20th centuries. Earlier immigrants married Malays and assimilated to a larger extent than later waves of migrants - they form a distinct sub-ethnic group, known as the Peranakans and their descendants speak Malay.

The majority of immigrants were speakers of Hokkien (Min Nan), Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, and Hainanese. In the 19th century, Qing immigrants to Malaya had no single common dialect and were mostly uneducated peasants, and they tended to cluster themselves according to the ethno-linguistic group, usually corresponding to their place of origin, and worked with relatives and other speakers of the same dialect. In 1879, according to Isabella Bird, a visitor to the tin mining boomtown of Taiping, Perak, "five dialects of Chinese are spoken, and Chinamen constantly communicate with each other in Malay, because they can't understand each other's Chinese".

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.