Chronicler of disappearing dialects

Chong in a recent TV programme produced and aired in China, where he talked about his efforts in preserving Malaysian Chinese dialects.

THE Chinese community in Malaysia has seven major subdivisions with their own dialects and customs. This means there are seven ways to pronounce the same Chinese words.

The seven Chinese dialects spoken here are Cantonese, Teochew, Hokkien, Hakka, Hainanese and Guangxi, dialects spoken in southern China, as the ancestors of Malaysian Chinese mostly originated from there, as well as Sanjiang which refers to the dialect adopted in Shanghai and surrounding areas.