The aim of this study was to understand learners’perceptions of acquiring Communicative Malay Language (CML) proficiency as well as to explore the current use and potential of mobile-assisted language learning (MALL). This descriptive, qualitative, preliminary study involved a total of 10 randomly selected participants who had learnt CML beforehand. Questions for the semi-structured interviews used for data collection in the study were divided into four sections: demographic profile information, perceptions of language literacy, learning challenges, and attitudes towards learning technology. The interview data were reported using the thick description technique. Based on the findings, it was found that most of these learners preferred to learn only the communicative language over the formal language. In addition, all of the participants were able to read and write basic CML, but most of the participants were not able to communicate effectively. The findings also show that most of the participants utilized mobile applications in learning CML. However, only a few useful mobile apps were available for this language, and most of the mobile apps focussed only on vocabulary acquisition and sentence structure and did not deliberately cater to their oral communication needs.