Cintailah Bahasa Kita
Published by iJun Saturday, 7 April 2007 in Lost Thoughts and Ramblings | Popularity: 48% Tags: No Tags.|
One thing that I realised whilst having a nostalgic conversation with The Elitist* and The Sheepwoman** earlier today was how much higher their level of English is compared to mine. I mean, I know their written work is superb, but I had no idea they would talk very similar to how they write, apart from the random inserts in Malay. I guess you ought to when you have a doctorate. And I guess it doesn’t help much when my regular reading comes from FHM and PC Pro, and the fact that I’m far too lazy to read. I know it’s something I shouldn’t be proud of, and I’m working on it.
Norwegian Wood has been sitting on my shelf for over a year now, untouched. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll pick it up this year. I remember when I first came to this country when I was barely 18. My spoken English was still very poor. I wasn’t expecting to study abroad so had no reason to take the English 1119 paper back in high school. So on top of my A-Levels, I had to do IELTS, which is a requirement for university enrollment. I had a very experienced English teacher by the name of Miss Kline. In one of her earlier classes, she made me aware of my habit of translating word-for-word when I speak i.e. I would come up with a sentence in Bahasa and translate that to English and vice-versa. That wouldn’t be good enough for an engineering degree and the only way to properly converse in English on-the-fly was to actually ‘think’ in English. That certainly took a while to adjust. The funny thing is, it’s now quite difficult to come up with formal sentences in Bahasa. |
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Oh, and this came late in the post today…
“Ekonomi je?”
* Copyright Kudo’s Stomach of Chaos
** Ditto
dah dapat passport, mau balik ka?
for a vacation, yes
you just have to read, look up what you don’t understand and just converse. tak yah accent, just converse. nothing is worse than great accent but shit grammar.
coincidentally (eceh), when i worked as Helpdesk which involved dealing with screaming people over the phone, i had to put on a bit of a twang in order for them to understand me. after doing that for a couple of years, i find that the twang automatically comes on each time i speak to a non-malaysian. does that happen to you?
say hi to KL for me. hope you have a safe and pleasant journey home.
thanks bro. hope that thing you have coming up goes well too
i’ll be keeping an eye on your blog hehe
You say hi to KL for me as well. Shit I miss that bitch.
Bila sampai and till when? Any “urgings” in the gastronomic sense that i can fulfill.
My family would be happy to meet you after all this while.
Haha will drop you an email. Thanks bro!
planning to have a local “let’s hurt the butt cheeks” session?
*sungguh vulgar bunyiknyee..
oooooooo, you’re finally going home!! whee!! dah lama you’ve been waiting for this, eh? enjoy yourself… bila balik?
twang? always had one. hahahahahaha.
ateek: that depends on who’s butt cheeks we’ll be hurtin’
may: tenkew muimui. i’m packing as we speak haha!
kudo: hish susah betul cakap dgn orang banyak guitar ni