Manglish


Manglish is an informal or basilect form of Malaysian English with features of an English-based creole principally used in Malaysia. It is heavily influenced by the main languages of the country, Malay, Tamil, and varieties of Chinese. It is highly colloquial and not one of the official languages spoken in Malaysia.
Manglish spoken in West Malaysia is very similar to and highly mutually intelligible with Singlish of Singapore, a creole of similar roots due to historical reasons. There is generally little distinction between the two creoles although subtle differences do exist, with Manglish vocabulary containing more Malay words while Singlish containing more words from Chinese languages such as Hokkien and Teochew.
The vocabulary of Manglish consists of words originating from English, Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, and, to a lesser extent, various other European languages and Arabic, while Manglish syntax resembles southern varieties of Chinese. Also, elements of American and Australian slang have come through from imported television series. Manglish is sometimes historically known as Bahasa Rojak, but it differs from the latter by the use of English as the base language. The term rojak derives from "mixture" or "eclectic mix" in colloquial Malay. The East Coast and Borneo versions of Manglish may differ greatly from that of the western coast of West Malaysia.
Besides mixing multiple languages, Manglish includes mixing the syntax of each language. Idioms, proverbs and phrases are also often translated directly to English from Malay, Chinese, and Tamil. The accent and vocabulary used is highly dependent on the formality of the context and language dominance of the speaker. The speaker would also vary the quantity of Manglish spoken depending on their counterpart. As a result, foreigners unfamiliar with the region are generally unable to grasp Manglish; it is mostly understandable only to native-born Malaysians and some Singaporeans. Some Malaysians are able to speak their native language fluently but choose to speak Manglish locally in their daily lives and conversations.

History

The term Manglish is first recorded in 1989. Other colloquial portmanteau words for Manglish include : Malish, Malaylish, Malenglish, Malglish, Malayglish, and Malanglish.
Manglish shares substantial linguistic similarities with Singlish of Singapore, although distinctions can be made, particularly in vocabulary. Initially, "Singlish" and "Manglish" were essentially the same language, when both Singapore and the states now comprising Peninsular Malaysia were under various forms of direct and indirect British rule, though never forming a single administrative unit except for a brief period between 1963 and 1965. In old British Malaya, English was the language of the British administration whilst Malay was the lingua franca of the street. Even non-Malays such as the Chinese and Indians would speak Malay when addressing their counterparts who did not speak their language.
English as spoken in Malaysia is based on British English and called Malaysian English. British spelling is generally followed. Since 1968, Malay has been the country's sole official language. While English is widely used, many Malay words have become part of common usage in informal English or Manglish. An example is suffixing sentences with lah, as in, "Don't be so worried-lah", which is usually used to present a sentence as rather light-going and not so serious; the suffix has no specific meaning. However, Chinese languages also make abundant use of the suffix lah and there is some disagreement as to which language it was originally borrowed from. There is also a strong influence from Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Tamil, which are other major languages spoken in Malaysia. Manglish also uses some archaic British terms from the era of British rule.

Malaysian English and Manglish

In Malaysia, Manglish is considered to be a less formal form of Malaysian English which has features of a pidgin or a creole, rather than a fully-fledged creole language. While all varieties of English used by Malaysians may be considered Malaysian English, some make a distinction between Malaysian English and Manglish; Malaysian English being a form of English that largely follows the standard rules of English grammar but with some local characteristics, while Manglish is a pidgin that does not follow the grammatical rules or structure of English. Many Malaysians however tend to refer to the colloquialisms used by those taught in English-medium school as Malaysian English, while some argued for the basilect form or pidgin as the "real" Malaysian English. At the lexical level, limited lexis is used and consequently, a number of words serve a variety of functions, giving extended meanings not normally accepted in standard British English.
There are some differences of contemporary words used between Malaysia and the United Kingdom. The use of Manglish is discouraged at schools, where only Malaysian Standard English is taught.
The term Malaysian English is not used in any official context except for the ever-changing school curriculum modules in attempts to improve the command of English but without going into advanced lessons.
It is however, possible to speak Manglish without substituting English words with those from another language.

Influences from other languages

Speakers of Manglish from the country's different ethnic groups tend to intersperse varying amounts of expressions or interjections from their mother tongue – be it Malay, Chinese or one of the Indian languages – which, in some cases, qualifies as a form of code-switching.
Verbs or adjectives from other languages often have English affixes, and conversely sentences may be constructed using English words in another language's syntax. People tend to translate phrases directly from their first languages into English, for instance, "on the light" instead of "turn on the light". Or sometimes, "open the light", translated directly from Chinese.
Aside from borrowing lexicons and expressions at varying levels depending on the speaker's mother tongue, Malay, Chinese and Tamil also influence Manglish at a sentence formation level.
For example, Chinese languages do not mark the verb for tenses. Instead, information about time is often acquired through contextual knowledge or time-specific markers such as 'yesterday', 'today' and 'tomorrow'. This is also replicated in Manglish with sentences like 'She go to the shop yesterday' and 'I come here every day'.
The Chinese also tend to speak Manglish with staccato feel as it is syllable-timed, unlike English which is stress-timed.

Duplication of words

Chinese, Malay and Tamil languages often duplicate words for different functions such as to show pluralisation, emphasis or repetition. Similarly, this has influenced the duplication of English words when speaking Manglish, especially when placing emphasis on certain words or to show pluralisation.
Some examples include:
  • You don't noisy-noisy ah, I whack you later then you know.
  • That boy you dated last time is the short-short one in the party is it?

    Words and grammar

Manglish is topic-prominent, like Chinese and Malay. This means that Manglish sentences often begin with a topic, followed by a comment. Compared to Standard English, the semantic relationship between topic and comment is not important; moreover, nouns, verbs, adverbs, and even entire subject-verb-object phrases can all serve as the topic:
  • "That school Chinese orchestra very good one."
  • "She play violin very bad leh."
  • "Yesterday she also give homework, too much lah."
  • "Discussed finish already."
The above constructions can be translated analogously into Malay and Chinese, with little change to the word order.
The topic can be omitted when the context is clear, or shared between clauses. This results in constructions that appear to be missing a subject to a speaker of Standard English, and so called PRO-drop utterances may be regarded as a diagnostic feature of Manglish. For example:
  • "Stupid lah."
  • "Why don't want come?"

    Nouns

  • "ang mo" – White people, from Hokkien "red hair". Used by Chinese, while the Malays use Mat Salleh. Gweilo may be used in Cantonese.
  • "chop" – stamp. From Malay 'cop' meaning stamp e.g. "Put your company chop on the receipt".
  • "dollar" – a loaned currency used especially in relation to business transactions, in lieu of "ringgit".
  • "Mat Salleh" - a Malay term to describe white people.
  • "outstation" – out of town, from the colonial era when British officials went to hill stations to escape the heat.
  • "terrer" – Refers to someone or something being awesomely amazing or good.

    Adjectives

  • "action/ackshun/eksyen" – showing-off, arrogant, from English "action".
  • "aiksy/lan si" – arrogant, overconfident. Laan si is of Cantonese origin.
  • "best" - superlatively good, see also syok/shiok.
  • "blur" – confused, unfocused, ignorant.
  • "chop" – stamp.
  • "" – casually, simply, doing things as one pleases. Comes from Hokkien chhìn-chhái for "simply", "casual" or "slipshod". E.g. "I just cincai order a dish from the menu."
  • "geng" – great, amazing, used to describe a person. e.g. "Wah, he is so geng."
  • "" – to be annoyed, irritated, pissed off. Originally from Malay meaning "angry" or "to feel agitated". e.g. "Eh look at his attitude lah, geram only!"
  • "la-la" – flashy, gaudy appearance. "La-la" replaces the older derogatory term "Ah Lien" that is used to describe girls who wear heavy make-up and outstanding clothes and accessories, which usually end up being rather bad taste instead of looking sophisticated or in fashion. They also usually sport brightly coloured hair. "La-la" can also be used to describe the things these girls are known to wear. E.g. "That salegirl was very la-la"/"The clothes are so la-la." These days, the term is also used to describe guys who sports outstanding/bizarre hairstyle and wear outstanding clothes and accessories resulting in bad taste as well. "la-la zai" and "la-la mui" is commonly used to make distinctions between the genders, with the former referring to guys and the latter referring to girls. The "la-la's" also feature rather punkish attitudes.
  • "macam yes" – to describe when a person believes he is amazing, when in reality, he is not. 'Macam' is a Malay word meaning 'as if' or 'like', and 'yes' in this context means 'amazing/great/best/right'. e.g. "He macam yes one."
  • "ngaam ngaam" - just. From Cantonese, e.g. "It ngaam-ngaam fits in."
  • "pai-seh" – ashamed, embarrassed/embarrassing. 'pai-seh' is of Hokkien origin .
  • "slumber" – relaxed, laid-back; possibly a conflation of the Malay "selamba", meaning nonchalant, and the English "slumber".
  • "sup-sup sui" – easy, no big deal. 'Sup-sup sui' is of Cantonese origin.
  • "seng" - refer to "geng"
  • "/" – indicates the object as superlatively good. "Syok" or "shiok" is a borrowing from Malay syok meaning "pleasing" or "attractive", possibly originally Persian šoḵ or Arabic šawq.
  • "tidak apa" - to have a happy-go-lucky attitude, or be indifferent. From Malay.
  • "" - uncultured or remote, from Malay meaning upriver or remote interior of country. The word has also entered British military slang to mean a remote jungle place.
  • "yellow" – dirty-minded, perverted. Direct translation of Chinese word for yellow to describe a perverted or dirty-minded person. e.g. "Aiyer, he is very yellow, better stay away from him."