Hokkien dialect
His interest in Chinese arose during this period. He acquired a knowledge of the Hokkien dialect of Chinese (Minnanhua), and took the government examinations in spoken Amoy Hokkien following private tuition in Singapore and Penang. This enabled him to introduce a system of recording Chinese names in the department, based on the Chinese characters, and eventually led to the publication of a book on Chinese names, and another on Chinese loan-words in Malay and Indonesian.