Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien


Southern Malaysian Hokkien is a local variant of the Min Nan Chinese variety spoken in Central and Southern Peninsular Malaysia,
This dialect is based on Quanzhou-accented varieties of Min Nan, including the Eng Choon dialect. It is markedly distinct from Penang Hokkien and Medan Hokkien, which are based on the Zhangzhou dialect.
Similar to the situation in Singapore, the term Hokkien is generally the used by the Chinese in South-east Asia to refer Min Nan Chinese. Southern Malaysian Hokkien is based on Quanzhou dialect with some influence from Amoy dialect.

Phonology

This section is based on Eng Choon Hokkien spoken in Melaka.

Vowels

There are eight phonemic vowels:
FrontCentralBack
Close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Open

Tones

There are seven tones, five of which are long tones and two are checked tones. Like other varieties of Hokkien, these tones also undergo tone sandhi in non-final positions. The tone values of the long tones are shown below:
Tone numberFinal/base toneNon-final/sandhi tone
1
2
3
5
6

Influences from other languages

Southern Malaysian Hokkien is also subjected to influence from various languages or dialects spoken in Malaysia. This is influenced to a certain degree by Teochew dialect and is sometimes being regarded to be a combined Hokkien-Teochew speech.
There are some loanwords from Malay, but they are fewer in number than in Penang Hokkien and do not completely replace the original words in Hokkien. It also has loanwords from English.