Conversations with Grey

Language-Identity-Blurry (Merdeka Spesial)

So for the Merdeka Special (says the patriotic me), I’m gonna post two conversations I participated in, that has something to do with the Malaysian identity. At least, to an outsider (non-malaysian) and kinda enlightened me.

When I was in Brisbane two weeks ago, my friends and I went to Chinatown to grab dinner. And while we were there, we were served by this chinese student that was working there and his english wasn’t exactly solid. When my friend asked about a bowl of something the next table ordered, this was what happened…

“What’s that thing over there?”
“Uh, um… I uh… don’t uh…. Wait first… let me ask.”
*then I spoke in mandarin*
“We we just wondering what that is?”
“Oh, why didn’t you guys speak mandarin earlier. I didn’t know you could speak mandarin. Are you guys Taiwanese?”
“No. We’re Malaysians.”
“Oh, Malaysians.”
“Where are you from?”
“I’m from Singtao.”
“Oh okay. Cool cool.”
“That’s good you guys. You are Malay people* and you can speak good english and good mandarin.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, we’re not Malay people.”
“Okay, um… you’re not Malay?”
“We are Malaysian Chinese.”
“Oh, Malaysian Chinese. Different from Malay people?”
“Yea yea. Malaysian Malay and Malaysian Chinese are different”

*Malay people in mandarin sort of sounds like Malaysian, and vice versa.

Then, when I was in Bangkok two years ago, my colleague and I were having lunch in this place where we bumped into an European lady. She was friendly and began immediately to chat. According to her, she’s been around Southeast Asia for a while, staying in Indonesia for a couple of years and been to other countries around.

“Why do you speak good english? What about Bahasa? Like Indonesia? Selamat Pagi?”
“Because we are Malaysian Chinese.”
“Oh, how is that different? Do you all speak Chinese too?”
Yea, many different dialects too.
“Oh, okay. Do you speak Malay? National language is Malay, am I correct?”
“Yea we do. Yes yes… But we speak English more often.”

Now so, I’m posing this question here, 51 years post-Merdeka. Why do our neighbouring countries mostly would have a strong and identifieable ‘national language’ but when it comes to us, we go aahhh… um…. In a larger sense, we all have almost the same history. Colonisation, mass migration, multi-ethnic, independence, polarisation, revolution, reformation, modernisation, et cetera. We are SO proud to show our multiracial background, we can speak three languages et cetera. But why can’t we be proud to say we all speak one language good. Like real good. Not just mamak or pasar standards. But perbahasan and sastera standards. I can’t stand how Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka is corrupting the bahasa melayu by introducing adapted-from-english words like ‘debat’, ‘kasyer’ & ‘fi’. Like, hello? Perbahasan, juruwang & yuran?

Language, the first invention of the developed brain of the homo sapien. From simple body gestures to vibration of the vocal chords, language is in my humble opinion, the BEST thing that evolution has got to offer us, in unifiying first our thoughts and then our community. It got ideas through from one being to another. And with language we crossed boundaries left right centre.

So when language are one of the main identity aspect anyone can possess and identify, from dialects and accents, why are we so fuzzy when it comes to our own language identity?