With all the heated arguments coming up in the local newspaper recently about politicians and ministers asking Malaysians to speak more Malay and be proud of our national language. I wanted to throw in some of my fond memories with the Malay language.
My Malay Proficiency
I'm going to be completely honest here, my Malay is no where near fluency level. I actually failed my trial exam for our high school SPM exam (equivalent to O' Levels). But because of prayer and miracle, I actually ended up with an A- for the actual SPM exam.
I remember, the moment I collected my grades, I headed straight to my Malay tuition teacher's house to rub it in his face and also to thank him. He was a really tough teacher but also one of the best teachers in the country - he won the Tokoh Guru Kebangsaan (something like best teacher in the country) award.
I will always remember this man because of his strictness and dedication to teaching us Malay. I will also remember him because he would always point towards the back of the class where my friends and I were sitting shaking his fingers at us "Those Methodist High School boys (my friends and I) at the back. Whether you can even pass your exam or not, BIG QUESTION MARK!" as he drew a question mark with his finger in the air then slamming the table with the dot at the bottom.
When he asked for all of us to turn in our trial exam papers for him to review, I started panicking because he doesn't expect anything less than an A, much less an F! It took a lot of effort just to get a slot at his tuition class so I didn't want to get kicked out! So what did I do? I told him I handed it to him already last week. He said he would go back home to look for it. The following week, he apologized to me for losing my paper - I told him it was alright. He asked me what my grade for the paper was and I told him I got a B+....Not the proudest thing I've done, but teenagers do stupid things!
After High School, Malay is hardly used anymore since tertiary education in Malaysia is in English and most companies use English in the work environment. Surprisingly however, I used Malay a lot more while I was studying in the U.S. than when I was in Malaysia. Here are some examples of when I used the Malay Language in the United States
In the U.S of A...
A surprisingly disappointing amount of people have no idea where or what Malaysia is (they only know us as "Oh the country whose plane went missing" at the time) much less the Malay language.
I've been asked many times
Which part of China is Malaysia in? - Average Midwest American
or my Malaysian Indian friend would get
Which part of India is Malaysia in? - Average Midwest American
So, me being me, I had to make the best of this opportunity! These were how we used our national language to our advantage
To hit on girls
The guy in the front is my friend Santhi and the guy in the back is me (learn more about me here at my introduceyourself!). We usually go to the bars together. Sometimes when we see a cute girl or bartender we would play this game where one of us pretends to not speak any English at all and can only speak Malay. If I'm the Malay-only speaker, he would be the translator. It'll be my job to try flirting with the girl in Malay while he liberally interprets what I say to her anyway he wants. Needless to say, the game usually ends up very embarrassing and disappointing for the Malay-only speaker.
There was another instance where we were at another university's bar where we saw 2 cute girls at the bar. For some reason, we decided to introduce ourselves as fraternal twins - I swear, this can only happen in America. Our "dad" is Indian and our "mom" is Chinese but we somehow came out this way. When they asked for proof, we said we invented our own secret language growing up. So they tested us by whispering something in one of our ears and having us say it to the other in our "secret language" (we used Malay if you haven't figured it out yet) and reveal what was whispered. Maybe they were drunk, or maybe they just didn't care and wanted to hangout with us, but it worked! And what happened next, well...that's a another story for another day.
To have private conversations
We used Malay a lot when we wanted to have private conversations in a crowded room which happens a lot. Sometimes, we wouldn't even have to use Malay, we just speak with a super strong Malaysian accent and lingo a.k.a Manglish "I tell you ar! These pundeks really dam kanasai you know. I tell them this la that la, apa pun don't understand also".
The university I went to had a lot of Chinese, Indians, so us being able to speak Mandarin or Tamil wasn't necessarily a safe bet. Malay however, we knew we could use anywhere. We didn't have to worry about another Malaysian listening in because us Malaysians can usually sniff each other out from a mile (1.609km) away!
To cheat in exams
Disclaimer: If any University officials or teachers see this, I may or may not be referring to myself. It may or may not be other Malaysians.
Some Malaysians (may or may not include me) would use Malay during our tests and exams. Exams are usually pretty strict and held in big open spaces like the theater or sports field with many examiners patrolling. When two Malaysians end up sitting within whisper distance of each other, we could just whisper any questions or answers in Malay. Whenever an examiner notices our whispering, we would just say that we were thinking out loud and they would just tell us to whisper softer.
FYI: It's not just the Malaysians that can do this, many of the examiners are graduate students who are working as teaching assistants and many of them are Chinese. It was pretty common to see Chinese students asking the Chinese teaching assistants in Mandarin for help during the exam. Being the polyglot that I am (konon), I benefited from it as well.
I hope you enjoyed that random throwback story of mine. I'm writing these throwback posts not just to share my stories but also to be my personal archive so I don't forget my past and can always refer back to them here.
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