Book excerpt: "The Peranakan Chinese of Kelantan explores the formation and the ethnic development of these assimilated Chinese besides addressing their ethnicity/identity and culture. A linguistic analysis of the mother tongue of these unique Chinese with their sociolinguistic history forms a substantial portion of the book. It has detail discussion of the varieties of the language and borrowings of the local Malay dialect, local Thai language and standard or mainstream Hokkien as spoken in the state of Kelantan. It illustrates clearly the communication patterns and discourse organisation of their interaction with the wider society." "This is a comprehensive study of the language and linguistic behaviour of the Kelantan Peranakan Chinese community in Malaysia, a group who has assimilated extensively to the Kelantanese rural Malays, and to some extent to the Kelantan Thai community, culturally as well as linguistically."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved