馬來西亞是多元種族文化、語言複雜的國家，清朝末年大批潮州移民遷移至柔佛新山地區，使之成為一個典型的潮州方言島。同樣位於新山地區的新山市、馬西鎮和直落爪哇村因為地理位置和語言環境的不同，使得潮州方言發展程度不一。語言環境、商業經濟和教育政策等外在影響，導致方言弱化走向死亡。為了探討潮州方言在三個地區中的變化，筆者通過傳統方言學實際田野調查蒐集語料，逐步分析語音及詞彙在老、中、青三代和三個地區使用差異，以社會語言學的角度審視導致音變的原因。調查發現，因為語言環境的複雜，當地潮州方言借入不少外來詞，並且為了符合發音人的習慣，在語音上做了適度的調整。其次發現優勢語－－華語對低階語方言的同化在三代之間已接近完成，而方言被同化的同時，語音特色、語法及詞彙，以殘餘干擾的形式進入到當地的華語口語系統當中。 Malaysia is a language pluralism and multicultural society . During the end of Qing Dynasty, large number of Chinese emigrated from Teochew district into Johor Bharu, which located at the south of Malaysia, emerge an unique Teochew dialect’s speech island. Teochew dialect in Johor Bharu City, Masai and Telok Jawa underwent difference varies degree of language evolution due to differences of locales and geographical limitation. Social context, economy activities and education policies have greatly harm the effectiveness of the dialect usage or even may eliminating its existence in future. This thesis is to analyses the language’s differentiate of the mentioned areas between the three generation of emigrants by linguistic materials of field work and also to review the causes of tonal suppletion from sociolinguistic’s perspective. Because of the multicultural society context, the Teochew society borrowed a lot of loanword and make a modest adjustment in order to conform the custom pronunciation. In this thesis, we also finding that was also an assimilation between Mandarin and dialect occurred within three generations of Teochew society and vice verse. The mentioned assimilation effect both spoken language in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.
