Do Singapore and Malaysia speak Chinese?

Some people in Singapore and Malaysia can speak Chinese, but if this Chinese only refers to Putonghua, the answer is that 65% of people in Singapore can speak Putonghua, while only a few people in Malaysia can speak Putonghua.

Let's look at the official languages of these two countries:

Singapore has four official languages, Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil. Chinese is one of the official languages. This Chinese is Mandarin, and the official characters are also simplified characters.

So Singapore has a Mandarin-speaking environment, because the normal continuation of a language must coexist with reading and writing.

Unlike Singapore, Malaysia is a country where Malay culture is paramount and Malay is the absolute mainstream. The second largest language is English, and the official documents are both Malay and English. Because there is no Chinese in formal occasions, Chinese is just a dialect in Malaysia.

Another difference with Singapore is that among these 23% Chinese, the largest Chinese language is Minnan, and 40% Chinese speak Minnan, followed by Hakka and Cantonese, because most of their ancestral homes are in Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan.

But there are Chinese schools in Malaysia, and most of them are Chinese, but they write very little, mainly because it is difficult to have teachers who know Mandarin, but it is these schools that make Chinese continue in Malaysia.

Most Chinese in Malaysia can speak many languages. In recent years, with the economic exchanges with the mainland, Mandarin has begun to rise, but it is mostly limited to spoken Chinese. Because there are no words in Mandarin, many words have changed. For example, Zhang's surname can be spelled in any of the following ways: Chong, Tiong, Chang, Tiong, Teo and Cheong. Obviously, this is an English spelling based on Cantonese pronunciation.

(Add an episode, I have a colleague in Malaysia. Her father is from Shandong and her mother is from Guangdong. She went to Chinese primary school and junior high school, and both high school and university were in English. I thought she must know a little Mandarin, but her first language is actually English (the one without any accent), and she can speak Cantonese, so Mandarin will say hello and congratulations on making a fortune, so we can only talk in English at work and occasionally play Chinese characters, but written communication can only be in English.

She can't speak, but she can understand a little Mandarin. She may listen to her father at home, but she doesn't like modern languages. She only likes ancient poems. She said that when people read ancient poems, they will present pictures in front of them, and they are very happy. ...

I'm really surprised that the charm of ancestral poems can cause such a loud noise in the hearts of those who can't understand words. . . )