You speak Manglish?



Rabia Abubakar

I was walking past a counter when what I heard stopped me in my tracks. A customer was waiting to collect some documents and the person attending to her asked: "Do you in a rush?"

At first, I wondered whether I misheard the question but it was loud and clear. The question was also put in such a nice and polite way that I could almost believe that it was grammatically correct.

As I continued to my destination, it became my mantra. I was amused at how confident the young lady sounded posing the question. It just so happened that prior to the incident I had read a hilarious article of two American brothers on an odyssey in West Africa, dwelling on their brush with corruption and the language barrier. What interested me the most was not the journey itself but one of the brother's valiant attempts to use Pidgin English (a compound of some elements of the local language and the English language).

I am a West African with a watered-down British accent but you wouldn't catch me speaking pidgin without armour to protect me from the laughter that will definitely assail me. So a picture of an American trying to talk in Pidgin English was just too much to take in. I was chuckling away while reading the article. I guess it just means that in a lot of countries where English is widely spoken, people have formed their own ways of expressing themselves in the language. It doesn't have to be correct but it is understood among the people.

In West Africa people speak pidgin, which is really English hacked to pieces beyond recognition. Manglish (Malaysian English) is also a form of pidgin.

"Do you in a rush?" might be termed as Manglish, as it could have been what the lady might have said had she been speaking in her language or it could have just been a bad case of the grammar bug. Even though I caught on to the meaning I guess a native English speaker might find it a tad difficult to fathom.

What I am trying to say is that Pidgin, Manglish or other forms of the English language are part and parcel of who we are. However, we must also remember to learn to communicate effectively in English so that we are not embarrassed in formal situations like in the office or at important events and conferences.

I may not speak Pidgin English but my country people are surprised when they realise that I can understand "Wetin you talk?" translated into "What are you saying?", "You wan go market?" (Do you want to go to the market?) or "Na oyinbo dat wan" roughly meaning "She thinks she is a white person" (orang putih or mat salleh in Bahasa Malaysia).

I am sure Malaysians or other foreigners who visit a West African country for the first time and hear this sort of hacked English will find it a conundrum just like foreigners who come to Malaysia and hear Manglish.

My first experience with Manglish was in my second week in Malaysia. My friend and I were waiting at the bus stop. Her bus came along while I was still waiting for mine so she said, "I go first, lah"

In Malaysia the ubiquitous "lah" and "mah" are discourse particles used in most phrases. These expressions did not come as a total surprise because in my country we have the equivalent, "sha", which I grew fond of using after a short stay in a local boarding school. I must say that my joy at finding a new word was short-lived, as my mother was not amused.

At a time when everyone is scrambling to be proficient in English, the butchered forms of English are frowned upon. However, language in any form is part of culture. We have to understand that not everyone is able to speak "global English" (whatever that may be), therefore, knowing how to speak Manglish or other hatched forms of the English language can come in handy. We can also learn a lesson or two from the chameleons, those who for example, can switch from Manglish to the Queen's English without skipping a beat.

Rabia is a mass communications graduate with a passion for writing.