Compiled by C.ARUNO AND JUNAID IBRAHIM

       MALAYSIAN actor-singer Joey Chua’s new single I Don’t Care is believed to be a diss track against her ex-boyfriend, Taiwanese actor Darren Wang, Sin Chew Daily reported.

       On the same day Wang admitted to being in a new relationship, Chua announced on Jan 4 that she will be releasing a song called I Don’t Care.

       On the single’s promotional cover, Chua is seen dressed in a purple gown and sporting high-heeled sneakers.

       Her hair has been dyed blonde, and the smokey-eyed makeup she sports is reminiscent of Avril Lavigne’s image in the 2000s.

       Judging from the promotional art, many of her fans speculated that the song was about Wang’s alleged cheating and their subsequent breakup.

       It was earlier reported that Chua began dating Wang in 2021 after the two met on Journey for Love, a Chinese reality show for divorced female celebrities to find love again.

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       The two were very close, with Wang reported to have visited Chua’s family during Chinese New Year in 2023, and to have later brought Chua to meet his family in Taiwan.

       However, in May, Chua and Wang unfollowed each other on Instagram, with the former posting cryptic messages on Instagram, saying: “Many things have happened and I have gone through a lot since May 20.

       “Whatever that happened to me was special and inconceivable.”

       > The daily also reported that the Chinese Language Standardisation Council of Malaysia discouraged the use of a recently-published dictionary on unique words used by Malaysian Chinese as standard vocabulary.

       According to council representative Datuk Goh Hin San, the words collated in the dictionary were metaplasms, words taken from dialects, lexical blends (portmanteaus), and words from other languages in Malaysia.

       “While it (the dictionary) can be used as a reference material, it does not mean that these words should become standard vocabulary or receive official recognition,” he said.

       Instead, Goh urged the public to refer to the council’s booklet on standardised Chinese words, which is officially recognised by the Education Ministry, the Malaysian Examinations Council, the Malaysian Translation Association, and local Chinese societies and associations.

       He added that these standardised Malaysian Chinese words are the ones used in textbooks and newspapers.

       It was earlier reported that the Dictionary of Malaysian Chinese, which documents the Malaysian Chinese lexicon, was published in 2022.

       The dictionary contains 2,182 words unique to Malaysian Chinese and compares different forms of the same word against variants from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

       The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.