ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the three historical stages of linguistic practices by Chinese diasporas in Malaysia, especially in Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur, where the stages are introduced with references to the social, political, and educational domains. The main section is the analysis of old photos from these three stages, which are Chinese monolingualism, Chinese-English bilingualism, and Malay-Chinese-English trilingualism. It aims to improve the proficiency level of students and elevate the status of Malay as the national language while at the same time raising the proficiency level of English across all school types. The chapter also reviews the Chinese monolingualism in traditional Chinese scripts and Chinese-English bilingualism during the colonial period, Malay-Chinese-English trilingualism during the nationalization period, and frequent usage of English during the globalization period. It can be predicted that the current multilingualism in the Chinese community will be retained as long as there are no drastic changes in national language policy.
