"I Eat Already"

Many Malaysian English students get a headache when we come to English tenses. We make all the possible grammar tense mistakes that throw even our fellow Malaysians into a puzzled state.

Today, we shall focus on the usage of 'already' in Manglish and how we can untangle this tense problem.


The use of 'already'. (Source: Wikipedia)

d/dy/ady/edy/ridy/oledi	Derived from the word "already". Often used in online chatroom by the youth in Malaysia, although in speech, speakers will often pronounce as 'ridy'	I eat 'd' 'loh', I eat 'ridy', I eat 'oledi'

When Malaysians use 'already' in sentences, what they usually meant is to show past tense. The word 'already' can be derived from the direct translation of the Malay word usage of 'sudah' to show what happened in the past.

It is not easy for the Malays, Chinese, and Indians to learn the English tense as the Malay, Chinese, and Tamil language do not have any 'tenses' like how it works in English. It is much more simple in Malay, Chinese, and Tamil when one refers to an action according to its time. There isn't any verb conjugation at all in those languages.

So how can one replace the Manglish way of show past tense instead of using 'already'?

Homework: Revise on simple past tense. Give examples of regular verbs and irregular verbs for our next class discussion.

Code-Switching in Malaysia

What is Code-Switching?

Code-Switching refers to the use of two languages (or dialects) within a sentence or discourse. This is a natural process that often occurs between multilingual speakers that share two or more languages in common. Code-switching involves the substitution of a word (or phrase) from one language within a sentence in another language. The ability to produce and comprehend sentences with code-switching is seamless and its use in multilingual communities is widely accepted and often goes unnoticed.

Definition taken from http://sitemaker.umich.edu/psy457_ksmal/home

Question to ponder:
What are the reasons Malaysians do code switching? What affects their choice of code switching?

Assignment:
Listen to the following song. Provide a proper full English translation. Submit in class next week.

Accents in Malaysia

Observe this video. Comment on whether you agree or disagree with it.

Further discussion:
Do you speak with an accent? If yes, what kind of accent do you have?

A Journey of Malaysian English (Part 3)

Question to ponder:
Why is English considered important to climb the socioeconomic ladder?
(Post your answers under comments section of this post)

English in the colonial and post colonial era was a necessity for Malaysians to climb up the socioeconomic ladder. Thus, during that period, many middle to upper class Malays, Chinese, Indians and other minority races sent their children to English medium schools for their education. So in just one generation, English has become the first language of certain Chinese, Indians & Eurasians. (Though only a small percentage)

This division in the language capability has divided the people into English speaking vs non-English speaking, elites vs no-elites, haves vs have-nots. This divisive nature was in tandem with the policy of the British colonial government, divide & rule which resulted in irreconcilable pluralism.

Reference: Cultural Diversity Lecture Notes

Click here to read A Journey of Malaysian English (Part 2).
In Part 4, we'll discuss more on the types of Malaysian English dialects.

Further Reading:
TOM McARTHUR. "MALAYSIAN ENGLISH." Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. 1998. Encyclopedia.com.

A Journey of Malaysian English (Part 2)

In Part 1, We talked about how English was introduced to Malaysia during the British colonialism. Though the Malay Sultanates did not like the idea of rural Malay kids enrolling in English schools because the schools were run by Christian missionaries, it was a different case altogether for the Malay aristocrats.

The Penang Free School is the first English School in Malaysia that was started in 1816 (It's still around!). As the population grows, more schools were built ranging from the Straits Settlement of Penang, Perak, Selangor, Malacca and Singapore. This has benefitted the urban people as they received education from these English schools.

In the rural areas, the government built Malay schools for the local Malays because of different religions. Even though bright Malay children were given scholarships to enter English schools after four years in Malay schools, this privilege did not increase the number of Malay children studying in English schools.

In the 1920s, The Malay College was established in Kuala Kangsar for the sons of Malay aristocrats. Children of commoners were not common sight in this education institution. It was an elite school that further accentuated the division between the elites and non-elites. Only the upper class children receive English medium education.

This elitist trend in education via English language for the Malays was later extended to the Malay Girls College in KL, 1948. The objective of setting up an English school for the Malay girls is to prepare them to be potential partners to the boys as they can match their English language proficiency level. Though these colleges may sound like a place for stucked-up higher class children, the schools proved themselves to have academic excellence.

Thus, in that time, it is not hard to differentiate between the upper and lower class among the Malays, whether they are from the city or from kampungs (villages). We just have to check their English proficiency.

Reference: Cultural Diversity Lecture Notes

Question to ponder:
How things have changed now. Do we still use one’s English proficiency level to judge one's social class?

*Part 3: English affects socioeconomic status.