Malaysian Cantonese

Geographic spread

Phonological Differences

• Many Malaysians have difficulty with the sound and will substitute it with other sounds where it occurs. Often these changes brings the pronunciation of most words in line with their Hakka pronunciation, and for many words their Hokkien pronunciations as well.
• *Words that end with & such as 香 hēung, 兩 léuhng, 想 séung and 著 jeuk, 腳 geuk, 約 yeuk may be pronounced as & , which by local spelling conventions may be written as & respectively, e.g. 香 hīong, 兩 líohng, 想 síong and 著 jiok, 腳 giok, 約 yok. This change brings the pronunciation of most words in line with their Hakka pronunciation, and for many words their Hokkien pronunciations as well.
• *Words with final & such as 春 chēun and 出 chēut may be pronounced as & respectively.
• *Words with final such as 水 séui and 去 heui may be pronounced as , or even depending on the word.
• Many Malaysians also have difficulty with the sound which occurs in words such as 豬 jyū, 算 syun, 血 hyut. This sound may be substituted with which in the case of some words may involve palatalisation of the preceding initial .
• Some speakers, particularly non-native speakers may not differentiate the long and short vowels, such as and .
• Due to the influence of Hong Kong media, Malaysian Cantonese is also affected by so-called "Lazy Sounds" though to a much lesser degree than Hong Kong Cantonese.
• *Many younger and middle-aged speakers pronounce some initial words with an initial. For many, this process is not complete, with the initial distinction maintained for other words. e.g. 你 néih → léih.
• *Generally, the ⟨ng-⟩ initial has been maintained, unlike in Hong Kong where it is being increasingly dropped and replaced with the null initial. Instead, among some speakers, Malaysian Cantonese exhibits the addition of the initial for some words that originally have a null initial. This also occurs in Hong Kong Cantonese as a form of hypercorrection of "Lazy Sounds", e.g. 亞 a → nga.
• *Some speakers have lost labialisation of the & initials, instead pronouncing them as &, e.g. 國 kwok → kok.

  Vocabulary Differences

• Use of 愛/唔愛 oi/mh oi instead of 要/唔要 yiu/mh yiu to refer to "want/don't want", also meaning "love/like". Also used in Guangzhou and is similar to the character's usage in Hakka.
• More common use of 曉 híu to mean "to be able to/to know how to", whereas 會 wúi/識 sīk would be more commonly used in Hong Kong. Also used in Guangzhou and is similar to the character's usage to Hakka.
• Use of 冇 móuh at the end of sentences to create questions, e.g. 你愛食飯冇? néih oi sihk faahn móuh?, "Do you want to eat?"
• Some expressions have under gone a change in meaning such as 仆街 pūk gāai, literally "fall on the street" which is commonly used in Malaysia to mean "broke/bankrupt" and is not considered a profanity unlike in Hong Kong where it is used to mean "drop dead/go to hell".
• Some English educated speakers may use 十千 sahp chīn instead of 萬 maahn to express 10,000, e.g. 14,000 might be expressed as 十四千 sahp sei chīn instead of 一萬四 yāt maahn sei.
• Use of expressions which would sound outdated to speakers in Hong Kong, e.g. 冇相干 móuh sēung gōn to mean "never mind/it doesn't matter", whereas 冇所謂 móuh só waih/唔緊要 mh gān yiu would be more commonly used in Hong Kong. Some of these expressions are still in current use in Guangzhou.
• Word order, particularly the placement of certain grammatical particles may differ, e.g. 食飯咗 sihk faahn jó instead of 食咗飯 sihk jó faahn for "have eaten."
• Unique expression's such as 我幫你講 ngóh bōng néih góng to mean "I'm telling you" where 我同你講 ngóh tùhng néih góng/我俾你知 ngóh béi néih jī would be used in Hong Kong.
• Malaysian Cantonese is also characterised by the extensive use of sentence ending particles, to an even greater extent than occurs in Hong Kong Cantonese.