KUALA LUMPUR: A French grandmother's unique pronunciation of cities in Malaysia has gone viral.
The TikTok video, shared by content creator and multimedia artist @malay_frenchie_explorer, shows the elderly woman attempting to pronounce several places in the country.
Among the places she pronounced were Kuala Lumpur, "Shadiran" (Shah Alam), which elicited laughter from the person recording, only for her to later correct it to Shah Alam.
She then attempted to pronounce Alor Star (at first "Aloq Star" and later "Aduh Setar," which loosely translates as "late" in French), to which the she commented, "You are late."
The woman then attempted to say Muar, which sounded like 'mooouuar', at which point even she burst into laughter.
Her next attempt was Kuantan (which was pronouned correctly) and then Ipoh, 'Kooching' (Kuching), which she argued was really good and pronounced correctly.
The 56-second video has received 1.2 million views, 104k likes, and over a thousand comments.
Viewers were entertained by her pronunciations.
User Sa1ra commended the woman's correct pronunciation of Alor Star. She commented, "she pronounced Alor Setar correctly (ask any Kedahan, they'll agree)." Another User, Wida Jual Proton, said she was proud to hear the elderly woman pronounce Alor Star correctly.
WR commented that the lady tried too hard to pronounce Muar. "So Cute" was commented by the user.
Another user, noran1957, said, "I feel sorry for the grandma as she has to pronounce all the places. I am not going to laugh, as others may laugh at us when we mispronounce a word in a foreign language."
Nana on the other hand commented, "why do French people pronounce it so well."
The viral video is part of several similar videos posted on her account.