There are few things that foreigners often confuse about Malaysia/Malaysian. Thus, I am here to clarify it.
1. Not all Malaysians are Muslim. Although Islam is considered as the main religion of the country but that does not make all the people are Muslim. We are free to believe and choose our own religion.
1. Not all Malaysians are Muslim. Although Islam is considered as the main religion of the country but that does not make all the people are Muslim. We are free to believe and choose our own religion.
2. Not all the people in Malaysia are Malay. I know it is normal to label the people based on the country’s name. E.g. France - French, Spain - Spanish and etc... But that does not make Malaysia – Malay. Do not take this as a sensitive issue; I was brought up to separate Malaysian based on their races. There are Malaysian Malay, Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indian and others. Even in the newspaper, it is always written “the Chinese and Indians…”, “the Malays…” and etc... I have no idea why they want to label us that way, we are all Malaysians anyway.
3. Not all Malaysians are multi-lingual. Partially, yes, most Malaysians can speak English and Malay languages but not all Malaysians can speak Chinese and Tamil languages. Do not simply go around speaking Chinese and Tamil languages to the people in Malaysia. They may not understand.
4. 90% of the Malaysians cannot pronounce English words in the proper tone. We tend to speak the word in blocks instead of the full word. i.e. Instead of "tomato", we pronounce it as "toh-meh-toh". However, we can speak fluent Manglish/Singlish.
5. Malay language is our national language but it does not seem useful when comes to communication. Non-Malay hardly uses Malay language, except speaking with the Malays as they tend to their mother tongue when communicating with their own race. Anyhow, English language is well accepted and understands by most people.
12 comments:
agree with all the above points!
=) cheer for u!
that's what the Englishmen think about malaysia? hmm.. interesting.. =)
Yah! Most foreigners who are first timer here will think that everyone here are muslim and malay,for regulars here they already understand about our multiculture,multi ethnic and multi religion enviroment.
Most of us speaks English in a monotonic tone.
hahaha....very true!
It is not only the Englishmen, I am talking about foreigners in generally.
The speaking English in mono-tone is the most worrisome. Local education should emphases on proper pronounsion.
foreigners tend to call malaysians as malays, because they thought that malays = malaysians.
also, "tomato" is also pronounced as toe-mah-toe, which is the way to pronounce it in British English.
Nicely written, I like it! Not all of the foreigners are like that. Some really understand about Malaysia.
I see the way we pronounce words like you mentioned before, tomato as an accent. British and American pronounce it a different way and no one, I repeat, no one argues the way the pronounce it. But then, people in Malaysia argue about how we pronounce certain words.
well said.. (:
they actually think like that? doesn't they know michelle yeoh?. what a pity. hahahaha, nice point btw
Nice points...
Point No.2 is not just for foreigners but for locals as well.
Haha nice, specially point #1 and #2. When I was at Dubai, they assume that all Malaysians are Muslim =.=
They kept asking me how can a chinese be Malaysian lol..
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