“My Malay is not so good!”
I can still remember how Sujadi Siswo (did I get his name right?) convincingly said that quote from many of our kind, the younger generation rather, when asked why we, Malays, are not conversing in our Bahasa Melayu in our daily conversations, in ‘Detik’, a Suria Channel TV programme that discusses about current affairs and issues with regards to our community.
What I noticed and discussed before with several debate-mates made my thoughts ponder deeper about our people. Don’t ask me why I like to write about ourselves (meaning, Malays). I just have this agitated-self-destructive-mode when it comes to “Issues of the Malays!” heheh… I love to hate us and I love being us at the same time.
Coming back to my reflection on our more infamous rather than famous, let alone popular, small and unacknowledged race internationally, I have spotted a few interesting short-comings about ourselves. Mainly on Singaporean Malays obviously. So if this is a letter, it would start like this; “Dear Malays,”…
When we speak to other races, we tend to speak like them. For example, when communicating with Chinese market vendors and they start speaking to you in Malay, “Berapa lu mau beli ni balang?”
Automatically without planning, your verbal device transforms its style and repond,“Gua mau beli ni balang satu aja! Belapa ah?”. And to my surprise, Pertuturan Bahasa Baku that is emphasised strongly in media and mandatory in schools was executed brilliantly when in actual fact, we do not speak baku with our fellow Malay citizens.
Another example would be when encountered with tourists from Indonesia or when we are in Indonesia communicating with their people. Yes, we are in general bearing the same race name but there is this slight difference. They do not talk our lingo of Bahasa Melayu. We would be the suddenly “intelligent” linguists who would speak Bahasa Indonesia in order for them to understand us, we thought.
I even came across many times and most of those times, when speaking to a westerner, usually caucasian, be it an expat, PR or tourist, we would have that British or American accent, ready-to-use-in-case-of-emergency, within reach! All of a sudden we could sound like as if we are American/ English-born or at least try to sound like them. And of course, majority of us sounded like shit! Stop trying too hard…
You’ve heard Mahathir, ex-Malaysian Prime Minister, speak. You’ve also heard Abdullah Tarmugi or Sidek Saniff speak. What do you think of the way they speak English? They sounded intellectual, that’s what I thought. They didn’t try too hard to sound British or American and they can still speak GOOD ENGLISH.
But why some of us are mocking the way we speak english? Does our accent really sound funny? Is it too much of an effort and a false front when we try to sound, pardon my language, “Ang Moh!”? Or is it because of us sounding too mat & minah or Pakcik & Makcik when English sentences poured out of our mouths? Some of us even made fun of how Malaysian Malays speak english! Could it be the case of the kettle calling the pot, black?
But… Why didn’t we make fun of how the French speaks english? The Germans speak like as if their mouths contain a gallon full of saliva when they speak english. The Italians sounded Spanish when they spoke english. Hell… Sometimes I can’t even make out what the Hong Kong-ers are saying. And the Filipinos… I thought they were speaking Thai or javanese! But the main idea here is, we can accept other nationality’s english accent but WHY CAN”T WE ACCEPT OUR OWN?
We think highly of the French when they breathed poetic expressions to their Locally-Made Sarong Party Girlfriends (SPG), don’t we? Our hearts just melt when we hear a spanish or italian hunk saying sweet english nothings with their sing-a-long-with-me accent even if the sentence was “You smell like a goat dipped in shit!” or the sentence has no meaning at all, actually.
I understand the downright fact that our music has no actual roots and almost every beat we have is an adaptation from various traditional music genres, namely Indian, Spanish just to name a few.
Not many of us younger Malays would love to listen to the hardcore keroncong, zapin or ghazal. Even dangdut is a sore to the eardrums to many of us. But the irony of some who don’t like ghazal but love the Arabian beat, no dangdut for them but they are an ardent fan of the hindustani songs, Sopranos are the classy ones in comparison with the chinese opera… *Okay I am digressing to the chinese pulak, sorry!*
Why that kind of preference when the actual fact is that the music being compared above (minus the soprano and chinese opera, of course) have the obvious similarities? Is it because they (ghazal, zapin) are sung in our mother tongue and sometimes in native malay dialect? Our people, as claimed, can’t match others’ talents hence our language, ignored?
- “You are so pretty! Are you mixed?” asked a malay friend to another.
- “For a Malay, he is handsome,” claimed another on a different occasion.
- “Eeee… I don’t like him. Looks very wak-wak!” a lady friend expressing her taste when asked to comment about a Malay celebrity.
Are we Malays really that bad? Come on, those kind of remarks are often heard. I understand and realise that we as humans have our own preferences when it comes to beauty as beauty is indeed subjective.
Some of my guy friends go for Chinese girls not because Chinese girls are better but the common reason would be they do not like Malay girls as they are not as pretty, to them when compared to the afore-mentioned race. Hence, pardon my language again, the “Yellows” are preferred. They have the oriental look! Heck! Even Indians have a classification, which is, the exotic look! What do we have? The Mat and Minah look? Oh pleasee… You wouldn’t want to be called that, would you?
And don’t deny this, most of us have always preferred someone with a gently sharp little nose, fair and flawless skin, coloured eyes, yada yada yada… Well, I wouldn’t want to track back into history to how and from where our ethnic group’s looks originated but most people wouldn’t prefer flat noses, non-deep set eyes topped with not so sexy dark eyes and sadly, that is how we classify the looks of a Malay.
Ok, there are good looking Malays out there, you may add, but there will always be this question if encountered with one of those rare Malay species,”Sure got (insert other race here) blood, one!” In the first place, we don’t even say, there are good looking (insert other race here, again), for others.
Just my centless worth of nothing really. It does not make a difference other than time taken on your part to read the whole lot of this
I do say “Oh ya hor!“, “Finish liao“, “Wah Lau eh“, I do ‘talk down’ to others at times, if needed, I don’t deny that I spoke to Indons like how they choose to speak to me but I definitely do not have an American or British accent and I don’t even try to have it, really. I listen to almost anything except for irritating tunes. I really do! You can ask my close ones if you don’t believe what I claim myself to be. As for my personal preference on beauty, I do not have any list but I sure can identify beauty when I see one!
Talking about “My Malay is not so good!”, this entry is in English and it is because of the simple reason being,”I bitch blog as I please!” And thank you for reading this repost. My English also ‘koyak’, I know!
For instance, I would be writing in a form of complaint about how bad an apple was coming from a particular shop where I bought the apple from and I would go about blabbering and whining about the stupid stall vendor who might be ignorant of quality products and taking care of customers’ needs. From that example itself, there will always be several sides of a point of view coming from the dear readers.
A sudden rush of conversational flow between my good woman friend and I directed to a hot topic about men and women. A topic that is always heard and read everywhere around the world, a topic that made women sprung from being a soft damsel to a firm and hard feminist (perhaps) and their male counterpart, chauvinistic as ever (I know), surprisingly can just behave naturally and be their typical man self without much effort.
I received an e-mail from Jeffrey Stapleton which said,
