Being an Anak Malaysia means possibly being more fluent in another language than your mother tongue, but being equally just as proud.
Like many other Malaysians, I started off primary school in an SK - where English & Malay are almost the only languages spoken. There would be some POL (people's own language) classes offered, but they never stuck around for long - at least not long enough for us to truly learn enough. So effectively, with no formal education of Mandarin classes as well as a very similar family background, I'm rendered a total banana until I learned a few terms here and there in my workplace.
In Malaysia, a banana is referred to as a person who's Chinese, but can't speak Mandarin, or any forms of Chinese dialects.
My parents sent me to an SK knowing this is the outcome, as they wanted to avoid putting me through the infamous strict rules of SJKCs. To this day, I'm grateful for the consideration and wonderful childhood that I've had, but can't help but wonder how different things would've turned out if I could understand & fluently speak my mother tongue, instead of having to stare blankly at the kopitiam aunty that's trying to clarify my order.
My primary schooling years was a period where I focused extensively on mastering the Malay language. After all, my English was fine considering it was the language I most commonly used, while Malay was still something new to me then. I got my As in Penulisan & Pemahaman during UPSR, and happily skedaddled my way into secondary school.
It was only during this time that I realised that I in fact, did not understand Mandarin. Albeit being an SMK, there are many students that entered from SJKCs, which meant their main language mastery was Mandarin, and often very little English or Malay. From there, a language barrier formed which opened my eyes to how little I knew about Malaysia itself as a diverse country.
Even now, as I approach 26 years (young), I still can't form proper sentences in Mandarin. Being in the workplace requires more patience from colleagues who have to translate key points, but after 5 years of being in the corporate jungle, I've absorbed enough just to understand the important messages that need to be delivered across. I still don't do presentations in Mandarin…because I literally can't.
However, presentations to Malay customers are my forte - there's conversational Malay, and then there's karangan Malay, which unfortunately are spoken by those who do not speak Malay on a daily basis. Conversational Malay includes mastering slangs and common pasar words used in everyday conversations - those that help to form an immediate connection, and make you feel a special bond with whoever you're speaking to, regardless of race.
With that, I'd say I'm still a pretty proud Malaysian, albeit being a banana - there's beauty in mastering the Malay language, and there's a beauty in mastering Mandarin.
The most importing thing is that we all stay connected.
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C Chai (crystal.chaijeecheng@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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