When you go to Medan, you will see almost every Chinese speaks in Hokkien, even those who are not Chinese know how to speak in Hokkien. When you go to KL, almost everyone speaks in Cantonese. It’s not like both cities only have Cantonese or Hokkienese. There are Khek, Teo Chew, Heng Hwa, Foo Chow, and so on.

But Medanese still use Hokkien as the major dialect. Even some vacancy require you to understand and know how to speak Hokkien. Take an example, my bro and I come from TeoChew and Khek parents, but we don’t know both dialects at all. The first dialect and language that we learnt and spoke is Hokkien. After that only we learn Bahasa Indonesia. If I don’t even know TeoChew at all, how am I gonna forward it to my kids later on? They will be another non-Hokkien who speak Hokkien.

But then, there is still some people who use their own dialect at home. Although more and more people teach English and Mandarin as the first language to their kids, as a reason to be more globalised since those are international language.

I’m just wondering will these dialects stay alive in the middle of the major dialects like cantonese and hokkien, and also with the bombarding of globalisation. Everyone want their kids to use international language, English and Mandarin especially.