Good Manglish

I WAS very interested to read Dr Alistair Kings article on Just dont call it Manglish! in the
Star on Nov 27 and the comments by readers the following Tuesday. As a fellow Briton, I liked
what he wrote.
However, Jason Cs letter using the word wanna makes me think hes been reading too many
subtitles where nonexistent words like wanna, gonna and the use of I got instead of Ive
got for present tense (theres no verb to got) are just so common and thereby teaching viewers
bad habits. Its one thing to use slang in some cases but not bad grammar, surely.
I love to hear the way Malaysians speak, with their different accents and use of words. I
remember when Malaysian TV showed cigarette ads like Plez Golld Liff. I prefer that rather
than those American or pseudo-American voices used on some stations and pay TV.
Im very disappointed when teachers of English here often make the same grammatical mistakes
as English-born speakers. The word whom has almost completely disappeared when its the
object of a sentence. Even a university stated on its cover for enrolments Who would you
choose?
There are cases where local teachers write or say for example A friend told my husband and
I.... Surely he didnt tell I - try omitting my husband and and youll see what I mean. I
would rather listen to Malaysians using (good) Manglish than hear bad English grammar.
Some Malaysians who learned English years ago from English-born teachers still speak perfectly
good English. In 1967, for example, when I was working in Butterworth, one of my senior staff
approached me with a parcel stating: Excuse me, sir, this parcel has just arrived from overseas
but I do not know for whom it is. That had me stumped temporarily until I realised that he was
perfectly correct. Im looking forward to more on this subject.
Peter Hannington
Sungai Petani, Kedah
Linguist: Its okay to speak Manglish

By ALISTAIR KING

National pride: One country is proud not

only of its runners, like Usain Bolt, but also its language which is called Standard
Jamaican English. Do we respect Malaysian English?

Do we feel that Malaysian English is sub-standard? It takes a Mat Salleh linguist to tell us
why its OK to speak (but not write) this way!
I was interested in a recent contribution to the Mind Our English (MOE) section by Peggy Tan
entitled Malaysian Oddities, in which she listed certain words and phrases under Local use or
Wrong (i.e. Malaysian English) and a corresponding list entitled Standard English or
Right, the implication being that Malaysian English is sub-standard, or, in some way, nonstandard. Thus, the term Standard Malaysian English would be considered an anomaly.

Yet, in countries as different as India and Jamaica, the respective terms Standard Indian English
and Standard Jamaican English are fully recognized. Malaysia is also home to indigenized
versions of English, but no doubt Peggy Tan and many other Malaysians would not consider it to
be up to standard.
What is Standard English anyway? Queens English? Hardly! Almost nobody, other than the
Queen herself, speaks like the Queen, if one is referring to accent, that is (and over the past 60
years, even the monarchs accent has become less cut glass and more common, as the MOE
article More Democratic English on Nov 20 pointed out).
Standard British English?
The vast number of varieties of English, even among native speakers, is legendary. I am from
Scotland, where, as everyone knows, the best English is spoken, notwithstanding Henry Higgins
defamatory quip in My Fair Lady: Oh, Why cant the English learn to set,
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.
In America, they havent used it for years!
Why cant the English teach their children how to speak?
I am sometimes seriously challenged when seeking to communicate with my fellow Britons in
other regions of the UK. Please dont think of British English as being of one variety; there are
many. Which is standard?
The main differences here are in pronunciation; accent rather than vocabulary, but, even at this
level, differences are great. The differences are greater when we consider the varieties of mothertongue English throughout the world.
I remember a bizarre experience when I lived in Vienna. I was in the company of a Texan, whom
I had immense difficulty to understand. He told me that my accent was too British for him.
We then abandoned the mother tongue and spent the rest of the evening communicating in
Austrian German, which, fortunately, we both knew well!
Back to Peggys lists of non-standard Malaysian English terms. Perhaps the list should be
entitled Not Fully Recognized Internationally.

In Malaysia, when we go marketing (one of the terms which Peggy notes to be Wrong), it
means we go to the pasar malam to buy uncooked food, often to last the family several days.
Yet in the world of business, marketing means something different and Malaysians know the
difference. A native speaker would probably work it out too, so theres no big issue.

The success of the character Phua Chu Kang, played by

Gurmit Singh, represents a growing pride in locally spoken versions of English.
Gurmit is often sought after for corporate events.

Sociolinguistics has three terms: Acrolect (high language), Mesolect (middle language) and
Basilect (low language).
These terms are used greatly by linguists studying the linguistic kaleidoscope of the Caribbean,
with its standard and creole (rojak) versions of English (and also French, Spanish and Dutch).
While some linguists see the Standard-Creole spectrum as a continuum, others like Wardhaugh
and Devonish (both writing in 1986) see each level of language as having its particular function.
Lets look at Malaysian English. At one end, there is Acrolect and at the other Basilect, with
Mesolect somewhere in between. This might be seen as a continuum from slightly Malaysian
to very Malaysian.
I prefer to see each as distinct, with its respective role. That is, Acrolect, Mesolect and Basilect
forms of Malaysian English are functionally separate and distinct.
Fake American accents
How do we recognize Acrolect? This variety is internationally comprehensible, the main
distinguishing feature being (a more native form of) pronunciation.

How pathetic it is to hear Malaysians faking an accent (in the case of radio DJs, it is almost
invariably a phony caricature of an American accent, with listeners frequently being addressed as
you guys out there or even yall) because they erroneously believe that is more acceptable
than sounding local.
But theres nothing wrong at all when Acrolect speakers sound Malaysian; they can express
themselves articulately with proper grammar and can even confidently present a paper at an
international conference, despite not having an American accent.
In addition, they walk on the five-foot-way because that means something different from
pavement or sidewalk.
They code-switch to pay at the pondok, play football on the padang and tah pau from the stalls,
but they also know when they should say kiosk, playing field and take-away.
They probably also do the weekly marketing, since they do it at the market rather than a shop.
Many Acrolect speakers have English as their primary means of communication.
Mesolect speakers use a form of English which displays particular features. There is some
grammatical reduction, which is occasioned more by mother-tongue influence than by lack of
awareness.
Complexities of tense are dispensed with, thus He arrive(d) already. Redundancy of prepositions
is rife, thus I want to request for a replacement; Can you repeat again? Certain words are used
differently from native speaker usage, thus Can I follow you home?; Ill send you to the hotel;
Please pass up your homework.
Mesolect is freely used by people in their offices, at meetings, on the phone, but should not be
used in formal documents in business presentations or in international correspondence.
And then we come to Basilect, which is REAL Malaysian English! On my first visit to Malaysia,
I enquired at an office whether a course of action could be followed.
Several people in the office enthusiastically chorused Can-Can! Can-Can! For a moment, I had
visions of the Moulin Rouge and high-flying skirts! It took me a moment to realize that this was
an emphatic assertion of possibility!
During the Kuala Lumpur International Marathon a few years ago, a runner suddenly streaked
past me and then overtook his friend, who was running directly in front of me. The friend
exclaimed, Aiyaaa, you one-kind-one! What for you run so fast-fast one? Only want to cut me,
is it?

My all-time prize-winner Basilect example is one that I always share with my participants when
I conduct our Speak Like a Professional training. It goes like this:
I was once seeking to purchase shoes in a shop in Petaling Jaya. I am a vegetarian out of
compassion, so prefer not to wear leather, but since plastic shoes dont last long, I do buy leather
shoes, always asking first what kind of leather it is. I had selected two potential purchases and
asked of what they were made.
The sales lady indicated the cheap pair: This one cow and the expensive pair: This one deer.
Sometimes compassion is selective; emotionally I can handle wearing a piece of bovine skin
better than deer. So I told the sales lady that I couldnt wear the deer but could wear the cow.
Evidently, she did not discern much integrity in my reasoning and asked: Deer cannot-ah? How
come cow can?
Now that is REAL Malaysian English! Dont tell me that it is bad English! That lady
communicated in a way that left me speechless with admiration! HOW COME COW CAN?
the alliteration and the economy of the utterance ... so Malaysian and so communicative!
Intimate English
Basilect is wonderful in its colour and precision. But it should be used only in the most informal
of oral situations and never with an uninitiated foreigner!
To see Malaysian English in terms of good or bad, right or wrong is to miss the realities of
expediency and the extensive process of assimilation and adaptation.
In a society where there is little that might be termed indigenous, Malaysian English, though not
home-sown, is certainly home-cultivated, indigenized, though not indigenous.
Thus, any evaluative statement about Malaysian English must be guarded from being oversimplistic. The good-bad, right-wrong, standard-deviant paradigm should give way to the
appropriate-inappropriate spectrum.
Sometimes a term is used for Malaysian English, as if it were a definable and recognized term
Manglish, a ghastly word that makes me, as a Linguist, cringe.
If you seek this word in Wikipedia, you will read that Manglish is a creole. It is not. The term
pidgin or pidginized version may be applied to Basilect Malaysian English, but not creole.
A pidgin and a creole share certain characteristics, since the former is generally the forerunner of
the latter; but a creole is a stable variety which may be claimed as the/a mother tongue of a
community, as is the case in Haiti (creole of French), Guyana and Jamaica (creole of English),

parts of the Austronesian archipelago (creole of Malay), Malacca and Goa (creole of
Portuguese).
Basilect is the only form of Malaysian English which may be termed pidgin due to the
idiosyncratic usage of English words and the simplification and reduction of grammar, so that the
syntax of Basilect has more in common with Cantonese, Hokkien or Malay than with nativespeaker English.
Frequently thrown in are lexical items from the contributing local languages, as in:
You know ah, she very kay poh one. Always look-look in other people house. No wonder she
got fall inside longkang!
No lah! Dont talk bad lah! Where got kay poh? She always wish so nicely. (as overheard near
Kajang, Selangor).
Sometimes, as a mark of intimacy or common identity, Acrolect speakers choose to lapse into
Basilect as it is more colourful and meaningful to say that someone is sombong rather than
proud, kay poh rather than nosey, pandai rather than smart! And, of course, even Acrolect
speakers fall into the longkang rather than the drain!
None of this, however, establishes Basilect as a creole. While Basilect has come into being
through a process of indigenization or localization it has not reached the point of nativization,
which would render it a creole. That is, Malaysian children are reared principally with a mother
tongue or with Acrolect/Mesolect English. Basilect exposure is secondary.
I am frequently approached by parents anxious that their children should learn correct English,
doubtful that the present school system can deliver. They want their children to be competitive as
globalisation becomes less of an option and more of a reality.
To effect this, the methodological emphasis should not be on somehow stamping out
(bad/wrong) Malaysian English, but recognizing the place and the usefulness of Basilect and
Mesolect, while extending the repertoire to include Acrolect, a standard variety which is
internationally accepted and still Malaysian.
Malaysian English should not be seen as one single entity, intrinsically sub-standard, as opposed
to some vaguely defined and barely attainable Standard English.
Dr Alistair King is an Applied Linguist and Corporate Training Consultant with clients
throughout the region, the Middle East and Southern Africa. He would value feedback to:
alistair@aksb.com.my or http://www.aksb.com.my

Miscellaneous
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"There is"/"there are" and "has"/"have" are both expressed using got, so that sentences can be
translated in either way back into British / American English. This is equivalent to the Chinese
yu (to have):

Got question? Is there a question? / Do you have a question?

Yesterday ar, East Coast Park got so many people! There were so many
people at East Coast Park yesterday. / East Coast Park had so many people
[there] yesterday.

This bus got air-con or not? Is there air-conditioning on this bus? / Does this
bus have air-conditioning?

Where got!? lit. Where is there [this]?, also more loosely, What are you
talking about? or Where did you get that idea?; generic response to any
accusation.

Can is used extensively as both a question particle and an answer particle. The negative is
cannot:

Gimme lah, ok or not? (Give it to me, OK?)

Can! (Sure!)

Can! (Yes, that is possible)

Cannot. (No way.)