I was vacationing with a friend on Scotland island, off Sydney, #Australia in this amazing B&B. We were having breakfast at the verandah when the host approached us hesitantly.
“I hope I am not offending you if I ask this, but we were curious why you were speaking English after we have left.”
My friend and I were happy to answer though we were surprised that she didn’t know that Malaysians often choose to speak English among ourselves.
That’s when I realised that the world is generally confused about Malaysians. π
I don’t blame her at all btw. I don’t know many things about Australians and do not expect people to know all about Malaysia.
Another funny incident in Australia was when a friend and I slipped into Manglish. (You can think of it as a kind of Creole.) A Mauritian friend listened for a long while, then said:”What language are you speaking?”
We laughed because we thought Manglish was quite understandable⦠but when you think of it, things get confusing really quickly when you mix Chinese, English and Malay words together.
Malaysians are gifted linguists and we take that for granted. Our people can speak to Western nations, Indonesia, China and India. On top of that, we understand the cultural context of each as we are exposed to all the cultures via direct contact (either through travel or by literally living the culture every day) or media.
Thanks to my travels around the world, I realised what a blessing my multilingualness was. Being able to translate for friends when I was in Beijing or Indonesia⦠I may not be a professional translator but being able to do this is kinda cool. (I wish I knew Thai or Tagalog too btw!!)
Sadly, some bad hats have maligned this trait, rather than celebrate it. I hope things are changing. This ability will be handy in our current world, which is currently becoming more multipolar. The ability to context switch and communicate with various parts of the world is invaluable at a time like this.
Elizabeth Tai 
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