ABSTRACT
Summary: There are at least three types of relationship between majority and minority languages in regard to the Chinese community in Malaysia to be considered: the position of the dominant Chinese dialect of a region as against the other Chinese dialects spoken there; the relative position of all the Chinese dialects and Mandarin, and the relationships between the other speech varieties used by the Chinese in Malaysia.
The first relationship has developed in an unplanned way: throughout Malaysia, the dialect of the majority Chinese sub-group has become dominant and serves as a lingua franca. The second has developed through Chinese-medium education. Mandarin is the native speech variety of virtually no Malaysian Chinese, but most accept it as a prestige variety, and it is also the official language of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China.
The third relationship includes: (a) the relationship between all Chinese speech varieties and Bazaar Malay, the unplanned inter-ethnic pidgin lingua franca; (b) the relationship between all Chinese speech varieties and English, the former official and prestige language; and (c) the relationship between all Chinese speech varieties and Bahasa Malaysia, the planned and official national language of Malaysia.
The chapter attempts to explain how the earlier relationships developed and how these have been and are being modified both by the developing Chinese sense of identity and by the national language policies of Malaysia. The main agencies for the spread of Mandarin, English and Bahasa Malaysia have been educational, both private and governmental.
