Group Members - Class: 16E3

Nguyễn Thị Thùy Dung

Phan Khánh Huyền
Trần Thị Thanh Nga
__________________________________________________________________

OUTLINE:
THE VARIATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
IN MALAYSIA

I. Background, history and some policies:

1. Background:
- Nowadays, the English language has been widely spoken and used
in Malaysia. Nearly every household in the city in Malaysia uses
English, even if it is not the first language of the house.
2. History:
- The British introduced English to Malaysia more than two
centuries ago.
- When Malaysia became independent in 1957, English was made
the second language.
- Then, in the 1990s, spurred by the government’s objective to push
the nation into globalization, the importance of English increased.
- With Malay, Chinese, Tamil and other indigenous languages,
English got quickly jumbled up with Malaysian native languages,
creating what we call “Manglish”.
3. Policies:
- In 2003, the Malaysian Government required English to teach
mathematics and science to help students improve their
Englishàstop: in 2012
- The English language is introduced to the Malaysian child as early
as preschool. It was reported in 2013 that less than 50% of the
students who had completed six years of primary education were
literate in the English language (EPU 2016, pp. 10-2)
- The Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Government of Malaysia
(GoM henceforth) had rolled out several notable reforms spanning
more than thirty years of English language education or ELE in the
country:
- The Integrated English Language Syllabus for Primary schools or
KBSR introduced in 1982, which employed the Communicative
Language Teaching (CLT) approach, emphasizing on learning
language for communicative purposes and not for grammatical
knowledge.
+ MoE adopted the SMART School approach conceived by Perkins
and his colleagues at Harvard (Perkins 1992 as cited in Mirzajani et
al. 2016, p. 12) in 1997. The Malaysian SMART way of teaching
Maths, English, Science and Bahasa Melayu was implemented in
1999.
+ The new Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 (MEB
henceforth) which was launched in 2012.
+ The launch of the English Language Education Roadmap for
Malaysia 20152025, (Don et al. 2015).
II. Features in variation:
1. Phonology: Pronunciation:
- A strong tendency to syllable-timed rhythm
- A simplification of word-final consonant clusters.

Be generally non-rhotic. “car”- /kɑːr/

(not pronouncing “r”) -> /ka/

Have no English consonant-cluster “new”-/ˈnjuː/

reductions after /n/, /t/, and /d/. “tune”- /ˈtjuːn/
“dune”-/ˈdjuːn/

“think” - /θɪŋk/
Pronounce “th”, which is fricative in
-> /ting/
English, as stops: /t/ for /θ/ and /d/ for /ð/.

Tend to pronounce /ɑː/, rather than /æ/. (“cab” - /ka:b/)

The diphthongs are monophthongized:

+ /ow/ ([əʊ] or [oʊ]) becomes [o] “throw” - /θroʊ/ -> /θro/
+ /ay/ ([eɪ]) becomes [e]. “pay” - /peɪ/ -> /pe/
 2. Vocabulary:

Manglish vocabulary consists of words + “cincai” - casually or

originating from the main languages simply doing things
spoken, namely English, Malay, Chinese + “aiyah” - expression of
and Tamil. exasperation, equivalent to
“Oh no!

Manglish use the enclitics:

- “Lah/la”: A popular suffix to phrases and “Come on, hurry up lah!”

sentences in order to either affirm a
statement or soften a command.
- “Meh/ke”: An optional suffix usually used "yeah meh?" or "ye ke?"
to donate a question mark to yes.
- “Mar”: a suffix. (as “Lah”) “Are you sure ar?"
- “Ar”: an optional suffix usually used to
donate a question mark.

Homophones: some words and phrases that “To revert”:

have one meaning in British English and + British meaning: to return
another in Manglish. to a previous state
 + Manglish meaning: to reply
to someone.

3. Grammar:
- Take structure from varieties of Chinese and Malay language
- Become simplified in the mesolectal and basilectal varieties:

Subject: Sentences may be English: “I have never not seen you

constructed with no apparent for a long time.”
subject. Manglish: “Long time never seen
you already.”

Pronoun: using reflexive pronouns to English: I’m sick.

form emphatic pronouns. Manglish: Myself sick I’m sick.

Noun: the countable use of some English: “She lost her jewelries.”
usually uncountable nouns.
Manglish: “She lost her jewelry.”
 Verb:
+ “To be” is commonly discarded “I also hungry.”
(no loss of meaning).
+ Verbs are commonly used in their “She go market yesterday.”
base form. (Tenses are indicated by
time markers.)
+ Auxiliary verbs in the usual sense
are almost non-existent.
+ Phrasal verbs: be innovated cope with -> cope up.

III. Practical Examples: A video showed differences between Manglish and

English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Fz8usO2TI&fbclid=IwAR0MxbTwBJ4uph
Gmkmjrf5KvLh8xvjbnok8suNM1Np1gDNxtTvi76wCCp0Y

IV. Difficulties Experienced by Malaysian Learners & Teachers of

English:
1. Difficulties for Malaysian students:
- Examples of psychological or affective factors are lack of
motivation, and anxiety or shyness in class.
=> Despite the formal learning of English for a number of years,
Malaysian learners are still inhibited by social factors including
 lack of motivation and lack of interest to learn English (Thang et
al., 2012)
- Linguistic factors include difficulties in transferring from the
learner’s first language (L1) to the sounds, rhythms, and stress
patterns of English, and lack of understanding of common
grammatical patterns in English.

2. Difficulties for Malaysian teachers:

- An extremely huge challenge of teachers is a large class of
students with mixed levels of abilities.
=> Teachers are almost impossible to surmount -> affect the
teaching quality.
- Mother tongue in English language classes is used too much:
+ Using English exclusively in the teaching situation does not
improve students’ capabilities but rather leave them feeling
bewildered and confused when they still could not comprehend
the second or third explanations given still in English.
+ Students conduct all of their group work or discussions in
mother tongue instead of trying as much as possible to use
English during these types of activities.
=> It is hard for teachers to maintain using English continuously
during types of activities in the class by asking questions in
English about students’ discussions or progress with the task.
- Students’ expectation in the classroom is the teacher-
centeredness. Teachers do most of the talking while students just
sit and quietly listen
 => Teachers have difficulty to elicit information from them or get
them to talk to aid in the presentation of the lesson as they would
not attempt to answer even though they in my opinion are
capable of answering.

V. Other Interesting Contents:

Words used mainly in Malaysian English

Malaysian English has its own vocabulary, which comes from a variety of influences.
Typically, for words or phrases that are based on other English words, the Malaysian
English speaker may be unaware that the word or phrase is not used in British or
American English. Such words are also present in the vocabulary of some
continuums of Singapore Standard English.

Malaysian British / American

handphone (often abbreviated to HP) mobile phone (British), cell phone

(American)

public telephone or public phone payphone

outstation out of office

keep in view (often abbreviated to kept on file, held for further consideration
KIV)
MC (medical certificate) sick note, aegrotat

bungalow detached house

bank in (cheque) deposit a cheque (UK) / deposit a check

(US)

Many words of Malay origin have made it into the standard form of Malaysian
English used in the media, literature and formal speech. For example, Menteri Besar
(Malay for Chief Minister) even has a plural form in English - Menteris Besar.
 REFERENCES:

1. Primer on Manglish - Mind Our English | The Star Online. (2011). Retrieved
from https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/viewpoints/mind-our-
english/2011/10/14/primer-on-manglish/
2. Malaysian English. (2019). Retrieved from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_English?fbclid=IwAR0AuY-
a5gR4SsibDXkNJQFBSBVQP7PUE0wlYjKnef6mE4DYHlsQTEjMpuo
3. MALAYSIAN ENGLISH | Encyclopedia.com. (2019). Retrieved from
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-
transcripts-and-maps/malaysian-english
4. Wong, I. (2011). English in Malaysia.
5. Pandian, A., Bek, S., & Ismail, S. (2014). Teaching and Learning Language.
Pulau Pinang: Penerbit USM.
6. Azman, H. (2016). Implementation and Challenges of English Language
Education Reform in Malaysian Primary Schools. 3L The Southeast Asian
Journal Of English Language Studies, 22(3), 65-78. doi: 10.17576/3l-2016-
2203-05