Unique Malaysian English Words

A cousin recently shifted. She also offered to bank my dividend cheque that was posted to her old address into Maybank for me. She’d been very helpful so I promised that I would buy her dinner or maybe take her out for tea. I said I’d call her on her handphone when I arrived next week.

I quickly wrote that paragraph as I thought about “unique Malaysian English words”. What I mean by the term (and I’m pretty sure there’s a better expression out there, but I’m just too lazy to find out) is that these are the words commonly used in Malaysia but may not be understood by non-Malaysians. The seed for this post is because a relative told me she had just “shifted” house.

No doubt you’ll already know that:

1. To shift means to move house.
2. To bank my dividend cheque means to deposit my dividend cheque.
3. Dinner may mean lunch and tea may mean dinner in the UK and Australia.
4. Handphone, of course, means mobile phone (UK and Australia) and cell phone (US)

I wonder why we have these unique Malaysian English words. Some, I’m sure, must be due to out colonial past.

I believe, rightly or wrongly, that dinner is used by the English upper classes to refer to the night time meal but used by common folk to mean the noonday meal. Since the early colonials probably came from the upper classes this was the nomenclature passed on to Malaysians.

I wonder if “shifted” comes from the colonial past as well. I’m guessing that the officials in the civil service had to shift positions which usually meant shifting posts to another town. So this meant moving house. It’s just a guess but you folk may know better.

“Handphone”, I understand, is a literal translation of the Chinese word for mobile phone.

I’m sure there are a lot more unique Malaysian English words out there. Do you know of any?

Slowly, Very Slowly …

Slowly, very slowly, my new children’s encyclopedia is finding its way into the bookshops in Malaysia. It should be available at MPH, Kinokuniya, Popular and others.

It’s also available at MPH online.

The price is RM68 which is a great price. Its in hard back and is in full colour. You can find out more about it here.

It’d like to get the encyclopedia into Amazon and perhaps even other countries but I haven’t worked out how to do it yet!

Kids on the Internet No.2

I still think kids should steer clear of the internet or, at least, they should be strictly supervised.

My daughter wanted an email address. No problem. So many much younger kids are emailing (and receiving all kinds of junk mail). Next it’s Facebook or My Space. Blogging. Second Life. Then Twitter (whatever that is) and then the next technological fad …

When is there time to play outside?

I should talk. Here I am on posting this on my blog. I should be out there taking a walk where the real world is. Or at least reading (I’m currently reading Gavin Menzies 1421 and trying to decide which novel to pick up). Or watching TV. Or talking to the kids.

Apparently, the younger generation don’t watch all that much TV. They are entertained (hypnotised?) by the internet. The cyber world has almost become the real world.

The trouble is that the internet is addictive. That’s why we try to limit the kids’ time on it. That’s why I try to limit my own time on it, but fail miserably.

The only solution? Disconnect.

But then I couldn’t stay in touch with you good folk.

And snail mail it’s just not going to work, is it?

So I’ll still be here … addicted or not!

P.S You can still win a free encyclopedia. Visit http://www.historyofmalaysia.net. I’m giving 10 copies away.
(Oh, what would we do without the internet!)

A Small (Big) Risk?

I knew I was taking a small risk. Well, it may have been a big one, depending on how you view things.

So I was relieved when Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak became Malaysia’s new Prime Minister last week. No … no, all you opposition supporters, please don’t send me hate emails yet …

I try to run an apolitical blog here.

No, I’m talking about my encyclopedia (what else!)

I didn’t want my new book to be out of date months after it was published. So I took a gamble. I wrote:

Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak, son of the 2nd Prime Minister, is to takeover as Prime Minister in March 2009.

I may have been completely and utterly wrong. It might have been Anwar!

At the last minute I took out the words “in March”.

Phew! That was lucky. He became PM in April.

Here’s the page, which might so easily have been wrong. But, as of last week, it’s the most up to date encyclopedia of Malaysian history in print!

You may clap now if you like

I could so easily have been wrong!

By the way, my encyclopedia was mentioned in Daphne Lee’s column in The Star on Sunday. She had some great things to say about the book and some good suggestions too for the future. My thanks to her!

My book was mentioned in The Star on Sunday

History is definitely heating up. There’s a new PM and lots going on politically. But we must always look at the bigger picture. Although history is being made every day, it goes back thousands of years.

History also repeats itself and thus has much to teach us …

For the moment, I’m just happy that my risk paid off!