Could you define what you mean by their standard of Chinese is
very high? I was not particularly impressed by their spoken Chinese
when i worked with them, somewhat better i'd think but it's not
exactly a great gulf. I don't see my Chinese colleagues being able
to understand them any better.
Talk to a Chinese Malaysian who studied in a Chinese school
and tell me they don't feel seperated from the Malays in
their country, look at the people they mix with are any
significiant portions of them Malay? And you're saying there's no
correlation between the language medium of the school and
social seperation?
It doesn't matter if it's politically infiltrated because
they're already the ethnic minority in Malaysia they would never
gain any significiant political power.
ok, point by point
1. Indeed, on the superficial level, we find their 4 tones
of spoken Mandarin to be quite corrupted. The historical
basis of the current Malaysian Mandarin is based on the Hakka
dialect model. Neither does our Singaporean spoken Mandarin is
perfect compared to the Standard Putonghua no doubt our tonal
structure (the Suprasegmental Tonal Structure) happens to be much
nearer to it thanks to our Hokkien base instead of the Hakka base
of the Malaysian Mandarin.
See this post in detail for my exposition on Singapore Mandarin
to show it's flaws and my not-yet-crafted post on Malaysian
Mandarin (if you do request, I am more than willing to do a writeup
for you here) :
http://sgforums.com/forums/3948/topics/432594?page=2#post_10280630
2. On the deeper level, their Chinese schools used
Mandarin Chinese as the main medium to teach all subjects, i.e.
Maths, Sciences, Humanities. Their spoken Mandarin Chinese may not
be pleasing to our Singaporean ears and (maybe Chinese colleagues
as you mentioned) but definitely as expounded in my previous post,
our Singaporean Mandarin is not at all fantastic too.
When it comes to the written form and the way they can use
Chinese to think, it comes much much superior to ours. Can we
Singaporeans even know the simple Chinese terms for "water vapour",
"protractor", "metaphor" and "oesophagus", not to venture into
"hydroxyl", "trigonometry" and "blood brain barrier" lah! Go
ask the Malaysians from Chinese schools (eg. Foon Yew, Chung Hwa
etc. ) hor, dun ask those from Sekolah Kebangsaan please.
High(er) than us or not?
3. The 2nd paragraph, that you mentioned, we gotta sort it
out straight. The Chinese schools does not overtly imbue them
with Chinese political ideology and agenda (DO YOU REALLY KNOW OR
NOT???) and I agree with you they feel separated from the Malays,
because the root
of the problem is the Malay Education system that imbues the
BUMIPUTRA ideology and the KUOTA system that prejudice the Chinese
when they can get 11A's in their SPM and they are not allowed to
enter Malaysian U's just because they are Chinese-ed. Even if
you are a non-Malay (eg. Chinese and Indians) and you study in
Sekolah Kebangsaan, if you do not meet the required target of
mother tongue you are subjected to PERALIHAN system and many people
extended 1 to 2 EXTRA years in their school life.
So is Malaysian Malay system prejudice Chinese
(and wanting to distance the Chinese), NOT Chinese distance
themselves from Malays please.
As normal beings who strive hard, they naturally
feel bitter after putting in so much effort.
Social separation is purposely done by the Mainstream Malays to
the minorities, the minority Chinese and Indians always seek to
preserve their culture and by virtue of hardwork seeks to earn a
place of living in their host country. Well, they are too late to
blame their ancestors for coming to Malaysia in the first
place.
Thank you for reading and welcome further
discussions.
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