Meet the Malaysian on a mission to make Hokkien great again, amid Mandarin’s rising popularity in Southeast Asia

Linguist Sim Tze Wei has been accused of trying to divide the Chinese people, as there are those who see the use of other Chinese languages ‘as a sign of disunity and weakness’

But he points out that Chinese immigrants to Asia have for generations been speaking their own languages, which are being edged out as more turn to learning Mandarin

Reading Time:3 minutes

Beijing’s stronger presence in Southeast Asia in recent years has seen a rise in the popularity of Mandarin. Photo: Reuters

Published: 3:00pm, 24 Jan 2021Updated: 9:01pm, 24 Jan 2021

When Sim Tze Wei began working to raise awareness of the Hokkien language, he never expected he would be accused of trying to divide the Chinese people.

“Han Chinese nationalists everywhere are keen to equate Mandarin to [real] Chinese,” said Sim, adding that there are those who find ethnic Chinese people speaking in Chinese languages other than Mandarin “as a sign of disunity and weakness”.

The Malaysian-Chinese linguist, who is in his mid-30s, is president of the Hokkien Language Association of Penang. Through the association, Sim is campaigning for the wider use of Hokkien, and advocating that it be reinstated as a language of instruction in independent and Chinese primary schools in the northern Malaysian state, as he fears Hokkien will “continue to be eroded by Mandarin and English”.

Sim grew up in Penang and spoke Teochew with his family, before picking up Hokkien from residents of the state, where it is the lingua franca of the majority ethnically Chinese population – who originally emigrated from the southern Chinese province of Fujian.

“Hokkien, being one of the largest linguistic groups in Malaysia, is one of the few southern Chinese languages that stand a chance to survive,” he said. “I grew up with it and I have the knowledge to do something about it.”

He said Hokkien was “not a subset or dialect of Mandarin”, with the latter originating in the country’s north.

“By calling Hokkien a Chinese dialect, people would perceive Hokkien as a dialect of Mandarin, and through that, [Han Chinese nationalists] would achieve their aim of denigrating the status of Hokkien,” Sim said.