By YENG AI CHUN

PETALING JAYA: Mandarin speakers will now be able to assess the level of their speaking skills and obtain a certification from the Education Ministry of China when a verbal proficiency test on the language is made available to Malaysians from May.

The test will enable Mandarin speakers to be tested locally.

The Malaysian Chinese Language Standardisation Council Chief of Publishing Unit Wong Chee Kheong said the test would help promote the proper usage of Putonghua (Mandarin).

“This test will help to further push for the usage of Mandarin and at the same time, curb the usage of ‘rojak’ Mandarin which is prevalent among the Mandarin speakers in the country,” he said after a MOU between the Council and the Education Ministry of China was signed at Universiti Malaya on Saturday.

The MOU was signed during the International Chinese Language Conference 2009 Malaysia, which was officiated by Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat. Also present at the event was Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong.

Wong said the verbal test would comprise of five sections and is open to Mandarin speakers in secondary schools and working adults.

“The candidate will need to follow a set of syllabus. There would also be a comparative section where the candidate is required to pronounce a word in Mandarin and a dialect in order to show that they can say the word correctly and know the difference,” he said, adding that this section would be localised to the suit the dialects here, such as Hokkien and Cantonese.

During the press conference, Ong commented that the usage of standardised Mandarin had been punctuated with ‘local flavours’ and though this was a common local phenomena, speakers should try to observe the standard language.

“I don’t think we should compromise on the issue of language contamination that has been prevalent in our country. When I talk about language contamination, it is where we use more than one language in a sentence.

“Many a time, we end up with a scenario where the language we speak can neither be understood by the native speaker or by others. This contradicts the very use of language as a tool of communication,” he said.

Ong suggested that instead of doing away with such ‘local flavour’, its usage could be confined to certain dialogue in short stories or novel writing.

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