BEING multilingual in Malaysia is our strength. But one local mak cik in her 90s has put us all to shame with her impressive fluency in not just Hokkien, but nine other languages as well.
TikTok user, Azril Baharudin uploaded the video of mak cik Mah casually speaking in Hokkien with a Chinese woman. The video which has now gone viral, has accumulated 1.9 million views.
But the nonagenarian isn’t just fluent in Hokkien. In a separate TikTok video, Azril asked mak cik Mah whether she speaks any other languages.
“I can speak Hokkien, Mandarin, orang putih boleh la sikit-sikit (a bit of English), Hainanese, Macau (we assume it to be Cantonese, the language used in Macau), Tamil, Ket (a Siberian language),” replied mak cik Mah.
That is seven languages in total but we’re not done counting just about yet.
She also speaks Bahasa Melayu to Azril and can also speak Teochew and Thai in day to day conversations. Impressive! She also revealed that she had forgotten many Tamil words as she doesn’t converse much in that language.
Netizens gushed over how talented mak cik Mah was and that she reminded them of their own grandmother. TikTok user James Malik commented, “She sounds just like my very own late Hokkien grandmother”.
While other netizens commented that even they struggle with Hokkien but mak cik Mah speaks it so fluently. TikTok user Low Wen Na said, “I hear my grandmother speak Hokkien everyday and still, I can’t speak Hokkien this well”.
How we wish we could speak as many languages as mak cik Mah!
