There’s always a debate for the usage of Manglish (Malaysian English) that is said to give bad impression to foreigners about our English level. I’m actually fine with Manglish, but more concern about the impurity in Bahasa Malaysia (M’sia national language) instead.
Was watching the 8tv’s reality show “One In A Million” last week, and totally annoyed by the language used by some judges.. they mixed Bahasa and English until you can’t really clarify whether they are using BM or English to communicate.
Examples..
You memang the best, saya suka singing kamu, memang best..
You punya singing sangat boring, langsung tak ada fire..
I bagi you satu chance lagi..
Hello.. what language is that? English? BM? Manglish? Englay? That’s rubbish!
If they want to make a English show, use proper English, or vice versa. I am ok with a bit of ‘lah’, ‘lor’ and Manglish here and there, but mixing the language used in the rubbish way is totally disturbing especially when it’s used in some popular TV show.
Young generations will learn to speak in the distorted way, ended up they can’t speak proper English, and even worse they can’t speak proper Bahasa Malaysia as well.
And we wonder why so many graduates are dubbed unemployable in Malaysia. Imagine they went into the interview room and the first thing they said is “Hi, nama saya XXX dan I graduated dari University blah blah..”
Language is a national pride, protect Bahasa Malaysia, don’t corrupt it.
July 18th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
I did not know that. We have the same problem then.
–> Taglish = Tagalog and English.
argh.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
i thought it’s illegal to do that on tv, and will be fined
July 18th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Laarni.. I hope it’s not as bad as our rubbish here.
WTJ.. illegal? Is it? I read last week from a Reuters article that Malaysia will set up a board of some sort to tackle the impurity of BM used in Parliment and media.. not sure that anything is being implemented at the moment.
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:53 pm
I totally agree with you Jee.
July 26th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
yes, these kind of language are used by malaysian malays. Maybe they do think that they are kind of ‘in’ if they speak like this….haha embarrassing huh
July 26th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Don’t get started Dissappointed, that kind of language is used by everyone, mostly young peoples. Don’t need to make up things.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
MyMalaysia.. yes indeed, it’s not just the problem of Malays, Chinese and Indians are speaking broken BM too, especially among the youngsters.
Disappointed has a point though, I believe it’s not that they don’t know how to speak BM properly, the peeps are trying to act cool or something.
The situation is not encouraging in our daily lifes, seeing the celebrities talking broken BM on TV certainly won’t help in improving everyone’s BM.
July 28th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
I think Manglish is the worst I have heard - I cringe at the lah, leh, lor , meh crap intelaced in sentences. Intonation ? leave that to the Manglish speaking to make it sound like it’s out of some Mainland China province - English in Chinese intonation MAHHHHH!!
July 29th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Well well Nat.. you really have some serious problem with Manglish.
Not that most Malaysians are proud of it, but fact is the English competency level in Malaysian are far from being good.
No one is saying Manglish because for intonation, it’s a mixture of Malay and Chinese dialects in English that caused the mess.. which is getting worse I should say.