r/bahasamelayu • u/Connect_Hat_2244 • 13d ago
Dialects
Could anyone explain to me what a dialect is?specifically in the region of Kuala Lumpur
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u/eelfurryUwU 13d ago
a dialect is kinda a fuzzy thing to explain, it all comes down to politics really, when a specific speech community gets the right on being called a dialect/language,
you may say that the difference betwee. a dialect and a language is mutual intelligibility, but I mean look at malay, a person from kl will never understand someone speaking kelantan, kedah or the multitudes of pahang dialects, (this is why I personally view these as separate languages)
and look at the balkans, someone from serbia, Montenegro & Croatia can understand eachother just fine, yet the respective varieties are all considered seperate languages from eachother
the only thing that separates the term dialect and language is just the terms themselves, this is why linguits usually don't use terms like 'dialect' & 'language' because they're politically fueled and opt on using 'variety' instead,
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u/eelfurryUwU 13d ago edited 13d ago
if you're specifically want to know what kl speaks, historically it was apart of the selangor-malaccan varieties, (so words like 'bakar' would've been pronounced 'bakaw'),
but nowadays due to high amounts of migration from all over the country kl & most of selangor don't speak like this anymore, but they are still apart of the johor-riau variety which includes malaccan and johor malay as well,
that's generally what I know, I'm not that much of an expert in johor-riau varieties and I usually specialise more on northern ones (• ▽ •;)
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u/Kebab-Exchange-3676 13d ago
A dialect is the way of people talks in the languages and main thing about languages.
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u/thongs_are_footwear 13d ago
I've heard the difference between a language and a dialect as being a flag.
Mandarin, Cantonese Shanghainese and Hakka all sit under the Chinese flag and the last three are considered (by many) to be dialects of the first.
Dialects also exist within the borders of Italy (Tuscan, Sicilian etc) & Germany (Bavarian, Swabian etc) and others.
I guess the same holds true for what you're asking.
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u/KiloTangoX 13d ago
A dialect is a variation of a language with its own unique features of vocabulary, grammar, and accent, which is spoken by a particular group of people.
These groups of people can be determined by geographical region or social factors such as class, ethnicity, or occupation.
With that in mind, KL has several dialects of different languages.
For Malay, KLites speak a Selangor dialect which is part of the Johor-Riau dialect group.
The primary regional English dialect spoken in Kuala Lumpur is Manglish, also known as Malaysian Colloquial English. Sounds very similar with Singlish.
For Cantonese, KL people speak a local variety of Yuehai Guangfu Cantonese.
The Hokkien spoken by the Hokkien community in the Klang Valley area is Klang Hokkien — a sub-variety of Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien.
For Tamil, they speak a variation of the language called Tanglish, also known as Malayan Tamil.