Tom Pepinsky

Category: Malaysia

  • Funny spellings

    A long time ago we posted about the funny ways that they spell English loanwords here.  We’ve noticed a couple more, and we’ve included them before.

    empayar The British had one, and Malaysia was a part of it.
    falasafah Plato or Aristotle.
    kartrij Toner comes in this.
    seksyen A part of something.
    wayar If you have wireless, you don’t need this to connect to the internet.

    We’ll keep our eyes out for more.  Currently we’re having a tough time trying to get our “Malay chops” back.  As we’ve noted before, we developed a Jakartinese slang when we lived in Indonesia that is actually quite noticeable to locals in both Indonesia and Malaysia.  We use vocab words that Malays never use, such as mengerti for “to understand” instead of faham.  We use Indonesian pronunciations of words rather than Malay ones, saying saya as SIGH-yah, instead of SIGH-yuh.  We use little particles like nggak for “not” instead of tak.  Many sentences in Malay are almost totally different than they would be in Indonesian.  The classic example is “you can speak bahasa?”

    Yu boleh cakap Melayu? (Malay)
    Anda bisa berbahasa Indonesia? (Indonesian)

    At any rate, we’re trying our very hardest to get back into the Malay swing of things.  It’s not easy, and unfortunately, since we’re not going to be here very long, by the time we’re all set we’ll have to get used to another accent: Australian.

  • Brazil fans = Man U fans

    One of the most amazing things about the rest of the world is how successful certain brands have been.  Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Nike, these companies make money wherever they go.  The Economist reports that in some countries, governments rely on Coca-Cola to transport documents between outposts and provincial capitals because Coca-Cola has a better distribution system than anyone else.

    In the realm of soccer, it’s much the same.  You would never know that Malaysia has never sent a team to any World Cup, much less this one, given how popular the World Cup is here.  What I find annoying about it is that approximate 97% of Malaysians are Brazil fans, just like 97% of Malaysians are Manchester United fans.  Now, they are of course just fair-weather fans, but still, it’s a bit weird that there’s no real diversity in the fan base here.  I (TP), for one, don’t like Brazil at all, and on two separate occasions I have had to explain myself to Malaysians on this count.  Where is the sense of rooting for an underdog?  How can you *really* care if Brazil wins or not if you’re not from Brazil?

    An interesting fact: when JM and I first arrived in Jakarta almost two years ago and needed to purchase towels, we ended up traveling to a little podunk mall that had good deals.  And the best deal available were towels celebrating Manchester United for "Bringing Victory back to Old Trafford."