Perhaps my using the word ‘pure’ was a bit of an exaggeration, so please do not take it literally. What I meant was, in the case where the Hokkien term is commonly-known, I would use it. A ragbag of examples:
1. As a rule of thumb, almost all everyday items excluding those which surfaced during the technology era of the past two to three decades are in (手電 chiu-tien is one rare exception).
2. Just about anything IT-related is out. How would you expect to use the technical term 服務器 hOk-bu-khi for ‘server’, if even the common term 服務 hOk-bu for ‘service’ is not in common use? (In this respect, the Shanghainese do better - 上網 is zong-mong for them, but nobody says chiOⁿ-bang anywhere among Hokkien speakers in Malaysia or Singapore, not as far as I am aware.)
3. 電視機 tian-si-ki, 洗衫機 se-saⁿ-ki and 霜櫥 sng-tu are definitely in. One term that I use much more frequently in Sydney than Malaysia is 車房 chia-pang, as lock-up garages are uncommon for Malaysian homes. 泅水池 siu-cui-ti is in.
4. CD's and DVD's are out (partly because 光碟 does not make the technical distinction between the two). Unfortunately, so are microwave ovens (if it is a standard heating-element oven, then 爐 lO is in). 電筒 tian-thong is in.
5. 礦泉水 kuiⁿ-cuan-cui is in, but many people are not familiar with it.
6. Legal and commercial terms - 銀行 gin-hang, 利息 li-sik, 合同 hap-tang, 條件 tiau-kiaⁿ are all in.
I realise the bulk of the above are no-brainers for any Hokkien speaker worth his/her salt. But for those of you who live in Hokkien-speaking communities in Malaysia, you can appreciate how often the Hokkien speakers conveniently code-switch to their English or Mandarin equivalent terms out of habit.
Now, even what constitutes ‘commonly-known’ is subjective. To cite some examples:
1. The term 註册 cu-chEk for ‘registration’ is, to me, a commonly-known term, and one which I use all the time. But believe it or not, I have had Penangites blink and say “【不會】曉” when I use that term. In some extreme cases, even watering it down to the more colloquial 報名 po-miaⁿ didn't help (and sometimes, it's not even a valid substitution, because there is a subtle difference between 註册 and 報名).
2. It has so far been a 50-50 toss-up when I walk into a bank in Penang and say 戶口 hO-khau, that I am either understood without so much as a pause, or I get a “huh?” from the Hokkien-speaking teller.
There is, however, one class of words that, for reasons I cannot explain, never seem to feature in spoken Hokkien - the auxiliary terms. When was the last time you heard the following morphemes pronounced in Hokkien during conversations:
於, 乎， 而， 且， 既， 如，何， 或，肯
With the exception of 如 and 何, I don't know how to pronounce the rest (and I don't mean 讀册音). This is a source of frustration for me, because:
1. I don't know how to say “關於...”
2. I don't know how to say “而且...”
3. I end up using 抑是 a-si for both 或者 and 還是 (and there should be a distinction, as one is a statement while the other is a question).
4. I end up using 甘 kam for 肯.
The inability (well, mine, anyway!
) to pronounce auxiliary terms - the basic grammatical building blocks of any language, underscores the huge void in proper Hokkien education. In contrast, all of the above auxiliary terms are commonly uttered in Cantonese conversations. To me, I can (begrudgingly) live with Hokkien not absorbing modern technical jargon, but an absence of the majority of auxiliary terms in common speech is a serious lexical handicap that, to date, I have not been able to adequately fix for myself.