Malaysian Cantonese

[AlexNg]

A lot of chinese in KL doesn't realize that they are speaking some english or malay words. So please correct your words.


malay words
"Lui" - chinese version of "Duit" for money
"Sama" - mispronounciation of "Semua" for all
"mata liu" - "mata mata" malay for police should be "king chak kuk" - police station

english words
"So" - should be "kam"

[Eng Wai]

Do the Malaysian Cantonese say Lui for money? I always thought that the say qin.

What is the meaning of malay liu in mata liu? Liu is a cantonese word (mandarin liao2, which means hut)

Are you from KL?

Eng Wai

[AlexNg]

1. Most malaysian cantonese speak "lui" for money, including malaysian hokkien. I am trying to influence people to speak "chin" instead as most of them do not know it is a malay word.

2. As for "sama", the proper word is "chuin pou", the same as mandarin "chuen pu".

3. The "liu" is actually cantonese but hong kong people usually use "king chak kuk" instead of "king chak liu".

Yes, I am from KL.

[AlexNg]

There are also some borrowed words from hokkien which malaysian cantonese mistaken for cantonese:

pai - number of times, it should be "chi".
diam - silent, it should be "on jing".


I originally thought the "diam-diam" word is malay but was shocked to hear it in a taiwanese hokkien show. Maybe the malay borrowed this word from the hokkien, just like other words such as "teh".

Can anyone confirm that "diam" originate from hokkien and not malay word.

[Eng Wai]

You could ask this question in the Hokkien forum. There are some crazy Hokkien experts there. Lui is widely accepted as a Hokkien/Chinese word with proper chinese character, gold radical + lei (thunder).

Mata is a Hokkien word also.

Eng Wai

[AlexNg]

Lui is not a hokkien/cantonese word, if you go to hong kong and china, they won't understand you.

That chinese character is just somebody inventing their own local version.

It is the crooked version of "duit' because chinese cannot pronounce the d so it becomes l.

[Eng Wai]

I read somewhere saying verifying lui originally a Hokkien word. I couldn't find the source now but I will help you post the question in the HOkkien forum. YOu can have a look on the responses.

There are a lot of d sounds in Hokkien or cantonese. D shouldn't be a problem for us. There are no r sound in hokkien, so sometimes you will hear people teasing Mlaysian chinese can't pronounce r properly.

Eng Wai

[AlexNg]

There are no d sound in cantonese/hokkien/mandarin. There are two "t" sound, one is "ting chu" - to support and "t'ing" - to stop. I am not using "Pin Yin" which is not accurate in describing the first t sound.

When our uneducated ancestors approximate sound they cannot reproduce, they will tend to make the closest sound. For example, the hokkien cannot produce the "f" sound, so they always go to become "h".

In case of foreign words, sometimes it is approximated to "l" and sometimes to "t".

In summary,

d, th, t and t' are all different sounds.

Malay does not have t' and th sound, so all their english pronounciation becomes t.

English does not have t sound, so they pronounce as t'.

Chinese does not have d and th sound, but those sounds are very similar but not the same as t. So you hear most malaysian chinese speaking "the" as "te".

[AlexNg]

Another malay word:

Pasak - chinese version of malay word "pasar" for market

The proper cantonese word for market is "Kai Si", night market is "Yeh Si".


The malay word "pasar" is also borrowed from bazaar, i think an arab word?

[qrasy]

See this word:
Ding "cold"
This is clearly an inovation of "Ling" in Indonesia, probably Indonesian borrowed this word.

Also, here is some "seemingly-Chinese" Indonesian words:
Keong "snail" siput&bekicot would be the native one
Kaki "foot"
Gigi "tooth"
That all could be "genetic loan", brought by mixing.