One of Malaysia’s true local gems is it’s unique spin on English, where local vocabulary in Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and few other European languages are swirled in to form Manglish (“Malaysian English”).
Many foreigners often find many phrases in Manglish a stumbling block, but its really hard not to love it after a while!
An video of a Canadian woman took the internet by storm as she demonstrates her flawless Manglish. Although it was posted back in 2013, the video recently resurfaced, sending out an empowering message about our very own Malaysian english.
She recalls a conversation with her young daughter, and her shock at just how quickly she picked up Manglish!
“One day I went to pick her up, and she came running up to me, and she said, ‘Mummy, what’s this?’ I told her ‘I don’t know, ask your teacher’. She turned to her teacher and said ‘Teacher! This what ah?'”
“I said ‘What did you say???’ She said, ‘Mummy, that’s Malaysian English!'”
And her accent was flaaaawless.
She calls Manglish the “most colourful English in the world!” and especially loves our “crazy two word phrases:
where got; also can; see first; see how – it’s so unique!”
She recalls hilarious anecdotes about Manglish’s hilarious use of grammar and had the whole room in roaring laughter. She describes her experience saying, “you get down here” in reference to taxi drivers, “put in front after you switch it on” when recalling instructions given to a waitress that resulted in a chaotic mess!
Her video sends out a very strong message where even though Manglish is not proper English, but people should not be ashamed of it, and instead of replacing it, everyone should EMBRACE it instead. It is after all, one of the reasons that makes us, Malaysia, unique.
