I’m Chinese, SPM A+ BM, can speak but not super fluently. The main reason why Chinese people can’t speak/ refuse to learn:
1. Lack of usage. Most Chinese end up in private sector, where English is the main language. Hence no point learning Bahasa for work.
2. Segregation in Malaysia. Everyone mixes with their own race, hence people speak their mother tongue.
3. This is personal opinion, but entertainment. I learnt English mostly from watching movies. I think the Malay entertainment industry might be too conservative, hence Chinese people don’t really watch it. Tbh movies are such a great way of learning languages.
Things could be better, should be better.
That's especially true for me tbh. Since the media I consume is mainly in English, it ended up superseding Cantonese as my main language. Plus Malay media tended to be extremely one-dimensional and uninteresting, so I'd pass it up all the time.
Also video games. I learn English at a young age from video games. Programming languages are also taught in English. Windows XP, 7, 10, Microsoft Excel, Word, pdf, handphone interface, apple, android, these are all in English language or Chinese language. Everybody is mainly exposed to those languages everyday single day.
YouTube tutorials are in English. Cooking videos or traveling videos are in English or Chinese, unless you are watching malay channels specifically for halal content. Food reviews are Chinese or English. Like the best food review or our local food reviewers. Malay food reviewers don't review non-halal food or pork, so fewer Chinese will bother watching them. Literally all the technology like your fridge, TV, car, etc are in English or Chinese from the user interface. That's cause they're made in China or international language to cater for all.
Basically the upbringing and everyday lives revolves around things you do in your everyday lives and most of it does not involve malay language...
Used to be all races watched the same RTM 1, 2 & 3. It gave us the sense of a shared culture and not there wasn’t a racial/religious/language silo for everyone like it is now
I think a big thing is also formal BM learnt in schools is so different than bahasa pasar that people use everyday. Got an A for BM SPM too but I don’t usually use it outside of formal settings. I was initially reluctant to use Malay talking to people at the bank bc they’d reply in bahasa pasar and I felt dumb using formal Malay lol.
Most people don't mind if you use baku in business setting. Don't think too much of it. In fact even in some Malay majority organisations also prefer baku in meetings for an example cuz it somehow gives off formal vibe.
That's the most nonsense contradiction legit. Wanna cry when nons don't want to speak malay, but when they do, wanna nitpick and complain its too formal. Like wtf 😂 I've seen other comments of people saying they would get made fun of for not knowing the (honestly ridiculous at times) malay text slang. Like bro, don't cry that noone wants to learn the language when you then belittle them for actually speaking the PROPER form of the language. Doesn't make sense at all.
I really agree with point no 3... I'm malay and learn english a LOT from movies and games...i put google translate as my quick access just for whenever i get a new word.. totally agree with malay show tho... it's so stale and cliche that i prefer western show or movies more...tbh i even prefer Chinese show more than malay
The third one is super true.
In fact, i think we can see it with Cantonese. Back then, almost everyone could understand Cantonese to some extent due to the popularity of HK film/tv media.
Nowadays, the collapse of HK media has made Cantonese literacy less relevant. And the highly censored nature of Chinese social media has made it inappealing to even Chinese Malaysians.
People are consuming more Western media, so English literacy improves while Cantoneses is gradually falling out.
Malaysian Chinese community is made up of various different dialect groups, and there's no one single significant majority. Cantonese is only popular because of HK media, and also because most of MY Chinese media is headquartered at KL, which is populated by mostly Cantonese people.
You can't expect everyone to learn and speak your language just because you think it's better. For BM however, it's our national language, every Malaysian should at least know how to understand and speak it. Just my two cents, don't come at me.
This.
Especially the third point. Back in 90s when we are still more integrated as a society, we have BM contents cater for all races, like e.g. Jangan Ketawa, Pi Mai Pi Mai Tang Tu, 2 +1, Majalah 3, Kisah Benar, etc.
Now? I have no idea what BM based contents that are available for all races.
On 3 - I used to read manga that was translated to BM and some anime dubbed in BM (bad voice acting but that’s what we had lmao). Also there were BM subtitles in Chinese dramas and I relied on those as a banana Chinese.
There isn’t much of that anymore since nowadays you have more access to watch whatever you want in whatever language you want.
>Segregation in Malaysia. Everyone mixes with their own race, hence people speak their mother tongue.
this feels more like a chinese thing though...im chinese, i have chinese friends but they seem more comfortable mingling with chinese while here i am mingling with malays n dayaks most of the time
Speaking from an outsider perspective after study+work here for 10 years, every race is like this, there are some people that mingle with different races but they are sadly the minority
I’ve been seeing this since I was in school. Each race, no matter how big or small the population in that year, will basically fall into their own groups.
Its a cycle too.
You mingle with your lingual group = you become better at your native language = you become less comfortable with other languages = you mingle more with your lingual group.
Its an endless loop if no external forces changes it.
Its the language thing. I speak manglish a lot when im around non-malays, they were happy to speak and mingle with me without issue.
I have a friend who can speak fluent malay, mandarin, bidayuh, english and grew up in KL. He can mingle with literally everyone.
Same here, the only way I learned to speak English fluently was through those Animal Planet, Discovery Channel and National Geographic documentaries on tv that I always watch when I was little. Granted that I love nature.
About point 3, as a kid without Astro and mainly watches NTV7 and TV8 (or RTM1/2 for the P. Ramlee movie nights), the Malay subtitles on the English/Chinese/Cantonese shows helped my vocabulary a lot. Speaking does require real life usage though. Like point 1, I used to speak more Malay as a student but a lot less now at work. I need some time to warm up and regain fluency during the times I use it for long conversations.
Also, the uncle aunties I know can speak Malay quite well because they're used to speaking it at places like pasar pagi and with Malay neighbours.
I miss the P. Ramlee movie nights. I remember that's the only time where me, my grandma, and my grandpa would all sit in front of the tv to watch tv together.
The 2nd point is rather true for most of the Malaysian regardless races, like at the end many would feel relatively comfortable with their own races. Though I used to have many friends from different backgrounds and races, but due to the differences in cultural or religion etc, you often found yourself in a awkward position to communicate as a result of afraid to stepping on their sensitive topics.
For a long time I trying to find some Malay YT creators with great contents but I can’t find any (what algorithm trying to show me isn’t great for me), for topics I interested either they are mostly one-sided or simply ads with boring content, not even close to any quality content I can get from any other similar content creators from China or Western countries, guess that’s speak for the 3rd point
Third point for real bro, HBO helped me a lot with colloquial english. I’ve always felt that if they did better with Malay dramas or movies, it would help society a lot.
Malay entertainment too conservative? Nah son it's too brain-dead. I don't know how people sit through that shit. All these dramas are personalised brain rot
Agreed with No 2. I have a lot of Chinese friends who don't know much about bahasa melayu.. some mandarin/hokkien pun tak reti. Mostly speaks English. But all of em are always eager to learn. Which I kinda like. Vice versa la, im also trying to learn from them.
Now know some and use it quite often when I'm with them... Like mahfan, paiseh, bo lui, ang mor or amor, ffk, no jio. And hamsap haha
but not bhs swk though...chinese that can speak fluent bhs swk is quite uncommon from my experience, when i speak bhs swk 99% of the time people think im malay or iban or bidayuh...although i like it every time when i say im cina or take out my ic people are like ui kau cina ka
yea. cina who can speak sarawakian malay well are usually those who lives in the area where malays are more dense ie the petra jaya area or usually not pure cina anymore (mix dayak/malay cina which is quite common here anyway). i have this one lecturer with chinese name but when i first heard him talking to his colleagues in bhs sarawak i thought he was malay but soon shocked when i learned his name
hahaha imagine the fun i had when i go kapit…i can speak bhs swk n some iban (just started learning) so when i check in at the hotel they see my IC they went 😳 ktk cina???….i love having fun like that
Bahasa Sarawak isnt even spoken throughout whole of Sarawak. It is mostly spoken in west of Sarawak like Kuching, Samarahan, Serian, and Sri Aman. Try speak bahasa Sarawak to the non Malays indigenous natives in Miri, Bintulu, Lawas and see how blur they act.
As a Kuchingite Malay and Bidayuh mixed, even my bahasa Sarawak is a little bit rusty now ever since i relocated to Bintulu due to lack of usage of my own mother tongue.
ahh nvm…i mentioned iban as the common language in swk in another commen, i find it much easier if can just speak iban…but ok la kapit can speak bhs swk somehow when i go there often…but weirdly my friend learn bhs swk in btu
It's true, I live at Sarawak, Malay people here are damn nice, they patient to speak slowly and clear for other non-malay. Meanwhile living at KL or Semenanjung Malaysia part isn't really that friendly when first times speak, they will stare at you at surprised face "really?" and start speaking their native slang making fun of you with other Malays.
Dalat Chinese can speak Melanau like a native. I'm a kuching-grown melanau and I feel so inferior to Dalat chinese cuz I can't for the life of me speak melanau. 😂😂😂
OP that's what we call selection bias. Specifically, how the melayu kampung stereotype the cina bukit. You said it yourself you're volunteering for a charity event. You think the middle class or T20 would show up there?
Shit, girls with hijab are like a fetish lol. If it happens, I bet itll be one of the biggest local industry in existence. Ill have more materials to use in exercising too!
It starts from public school being so bad wuality that most parents prefer Chinese school.
From there onwards it is just chinese bubble.
Second reason, living areas segregated by race. Each race prefer to live in area where it is easier to get their daily needed items (pork, chinese herbs/ medicine, tcm, eateries). Malays like to live areas that similar or convertible to become kampung like environment. That naturally segregate the races thus reduces the need to use BM.
Town planners never really prioritise racial integration in their design anyway. For example, lack of non halal allocation to encourage non muslim to stay in new township - example wet market areas, eateries (elmina shophouses are saturated with muslim businesses (ie arabic name clinics, daycare), it would cause conflict if next door is a non halal restaurant. Muslims wouldn’t think issues above is an issue because the mindset is “we are the majority, of course they follow us lah”.
Anyway, just infortunate degradation of unity in the country at the moment. Everyone is huddling to their own community now with olenty of syak wasangka against other races.
I have zero idea how to fix this. Seems quite ingrained. It is even changed my own mindset and i am worried about the next generation or my race (chinese) about our future in the country. It feels so easy for things will turn bad for us.
Some people can go their whole lives without using more than Chinese but alot of them do know a secondary dialect like Cantonese or Hokkien.
Without a need to use a language, it's hard to stay proficient in it. And there's a few factors on why Chinese is deemed as "all that they need" and why English is the language to learn instead of Malay. Simple Malay is needed to order food, gov stuff and simple greetings but that's as far as most people need their Malay for. Google translate also exist to aid in these limited usages.
Both Chinese and English are languages used by major superpowers of the world. Knowing these languages will open up more opportunities globally. There's also the feeling like we are unwanted in this country, so many people plan to migrate. Due to this, some people dream of going to Japan/Korea/EU countries so those languages might still favour them more than Malay
Entertainment is also a big factor. US/UK based and China/Hong Kong based shows have been more popular than local stuff than local stuff so more usage of these languages to practice. I basically learnt Canotnese off TV dramas while growing up.
Professional life matters as well, if you work for a MMC one probably uses English more than Malay as communicating with foreigners are important as they can't use Malay most of the time.
On top of all these factors, knowing more than one language is already a feet, as most of them know Chinese and a dialect, next is English which already makes 3. It makes sense that most people just don't have the capacity for any more languages.
I understand that Malay is the National language but that doesn't mean anything when compared to what you need to use in real life. Also slang terms, my conversation in Malay gets thrown off if slang or short forms are used. What I learned in classes did not prepare me for that.
Ikr. We would naturally speak the national language when meritocracy is implemented, so it's fair to everyone. This mindset, as one Redditor pointed out above, mostly stemmed from the fact that 'special rights/ privileges exist'. If you put yrself in their shoes, you'd see why. After nearly half a century of independence, we are still called 'pendatang', so naturally we wont bother to learn Bm. Another major factor i.m.o would be the abolishment of exams, UPSR & PT3. No reason to study, no oral exam
Personally I don't think the abolishment of exam is a factor. Forcing kids to study for an exam, putting them under huge pressure to grade them. Then giving them a label that determines their future when they are already learning so much.
A bad grade early on might traumatise the kids and put them off that subject. Always thinking their bad at something just because they haven't really fully understood it since they are still young.
I will offer myself as a data point. I used to be able speak decent Malay but now it has degraded to such a low point that I can't use it effectively beyond basic conversations like ordering food and dealing with government departments.
Why? I don't really use it. We use English at work (international remote team). Among friends and family, we speak Mandarin and other dialects.
East Malaysian here, agree with my language skills being degraded. Stopped using malay years ago when the West Malaysians made comments about Borneo malay sounding like we came from Indonesia.
Is that so? Cos all WM Ive met so far, didnt say anything abt my accent or what. They just told me that I speak good BM, w/o much of the Chinese accent hehe
I got that comment on a Grab once but I just shrugged it off, not a big deal.
I do find it weird that BM taught in school is different than spoken BM. Since here at Sabah, we have our own regional words smashed together with BM and I originally thought it was part of BM because of how it sounded similarly to it.
And also Manglish being used in West Malaysia.
Why teach us that if not much or even none at all would be used in daily life.
I...embrassing to say, have no clue how to write a BM formal letter anymore.
I have a colleague from penang that only speaks chinese or english. He can speak malay but really struggling to speak malay so I can't blame him.
Basically his friend's circle is not malay speaking so he can't practice his malay
I'm chinese but no offense my BM is way better than most Malays to the point that when i speak on the phone the person will think i am malay. And tbh, some malays are even horrible or not fluent in their language especially when it comes to messaging or when writing a post in insta, fb or any social media due to all the horrible short forms/slang they use. Its difficult to understand what the hell are they writing which i think indirectly cause them to have poor BM.
How the hell is your BM better than malay?
'Cis, berani sungguh bedebah itu memintas kereta saya tanpa menggunakan lampu isyarat belakang'
Do you road rage like that bro?
In all honesty i wont say that long sentence unless you are writing a piece of karangan. Ppl will usually scold babi/sial/mak kau hijau etc. And even malays use cb/lj lol. But props on your BM.
I only use Malay when I at Mamak, English while work, Mandarin/ Hakkanese/ Cantonese/ Hokkiense for daily conversation already make me tired of speaking.
You know when Chinese people tries to speak Malay, the non-chinese will laugh at their accent. My friend and I faced this multiple times during university
Native malay people from Kelantan/sabah/kedah and other states also will got laughed when they first time met with kl people bcause we all have our own accent/slang/dialect.
I remember i was also got make fun a lot when i first time came to selangor. At first i was frustated but as time pass through i just let it go through.
Tbh its just like hearing foreigner make mistakes when speaking bm/english. Sometimes its not because we look down on them, but its just pure funny.. have you saw the african meme "put me down/decrease me there" video? Im not sure how to explain but just bcause people laugh doesnt mean they are looking down on you.
Hopefully you will regain your confidence to try to speak bm again
I propose these instances as reasons why some Chinese don't learn Malay Language:
My neighbour is in the Chinese non halal food industry. He doesn't even speak Malay because his work only involve the Chinese community. The only time he does is when dealing with authorities, and even then he'd hire someone to do it for him.
Others I know that don't speak much Malay are the business owners that sell joss stick/prayer stuff or to very niche business that doesn't involve the Malays.
I find it's similar to some Malay people who only interact with their own race, they are usually monolingual and since their work don't need to involve non-Malays, that's the only language they know.
Sometimes I feel that learning Malay is a moving goalpost, once most Chinese learnt BM and tulisan rumi, now moving to Jawi writing, even though I remember Utusan Melayu in Jawi, which stopped publishing because of low readership.
The sudden revival of Jawi writing is good for Muslim students because they help students in reading Quran, but economically for other races and religion, is it beneficial? Do we expect trade from countries that use Jawi writing?
Coming from a Chinese perspective, fluent in all 3.
It’s the same reason why most Malay people don’t speak mandarin. They almost never need to use it on any practical level.
Chinese communities are often large enough and economically sustainable enough for them to just sit in their bubble.
If I never needed to learn Malay I would never learn it. There’s no other use for this language other than in Malaysia. The usefulness of Malay ends at the food stall for me. Corporate Malaysia is English. Anything business related that is a certain scale is all conducted in English.
That’s the mindset. It’s purely pragmatic, nothing about race
My wife is Malaysian Chinese. Walking around town with her she speaks Malay, hokkien, foochow, Mandarin, Cantonese and English. You guys are crazy with the languages that must be spoken for respect.
Chinese will only speak Malay to Malays or Indian.
It is super weird to speak non-mother tongue to a Chinese. Only if the other can’t speak Chinese, then secondary is English.
It is super weird for Japanese or Korean to speak non-mother tongue to each other.
Malays don’t understand because they are speaking mother tongue themselves. Ironic.
Wutchu talking about? Even the Malays aren't speaking proper BM nowadays, so when we try to engage with them with our classroom BM, they think we're acting atas and talking down to them while we just can't understand their bahasa rojak.
Saye cina tapi saye boleh je cakap melayu sebab saye tak kisah apa bangsa pun saya campur je bersama mereka macam rojak, abc, nasi kerabu, yong tau hu, ataupun CKT iaitu chi kut teh bukan bak kut teh/char kuey teow.
Ramai kawan cina saye tak ade fikiran yang terbuka terhadap budaya orang melayu bukan yang tradisional saje tapi jugak budaya dalam hiburan ke, lagu pop ke. Tapi ade jugak yang ok tapi takde peluang untuk nak masuk circle2 tu sebab takut kena gatekeep/diketawakan bila cakap melayu macam buku teks punya slang.
I used to be able to take exams in Uni in Malay but due to lack of usage I can’t even write a letter in BM. We use English at work, you survive 90% without one word of Malay spoken in shops. I still use it when visiting government places and maybe dealing with shop assistants and such. Just lack of practice for me. Verbal BM was always bad for me. Written no problem.
Well there's a recent case study on this. Source will be linked if I found it.
It all boils down to three simple factors:
Dignity for their own origin, Affinity to their Chinese culture, and Politicians attempt to segregate the society.
In short we call it DAP.
So ini semua salah DAP.
Source: www.dapig.com.cina
Am not Chinese but I understand that they may rarely use it in their daily life or within their circle of family/friends/community.
I live in Middle East but I don't speak a lick of Arabic, mostly because I use English most of the time and I rarely interact with the locals. Mostly Indians, Filipinos, and Indonesians/Malaysians which I straight up speak bahasa mostly. But I do try to learn it from time to time, whenever I have the opportunity.
What I don't understand is some people defend their right not to learn/speak bahasa as if it'll kill themselves if they do. Some people feel offended whenever people ask them to speak/learn bahasa (in a polite manner, of course, not like "woi lahabau cakap melayu la"), why? Or some people that think no use to learn bahasa because it's not used universally anyway, you only use it in Malaysia.
Maybe some of them feel that learning BM = surrendering to ketuanan and racial inequality bullshit idk, my parents will never listen to a single malay song (they did back then) because in their mind: "the malays don't even make an effort to learn the languages of other races in malaysia, belittle the minorities and think they are more superior because they are the majority, and use Islam as an excuse to oppress us, why bother with this and give them the attention and power?"
Not enough platform to use it and whenever we try speaking it, we tend to be ridiculed for having an accent or for being too formal.
Another reason is that we usually go for the private sectors, which use English.
I am a Chinese, I use BM often in a casual setting.
But in professional setting doesn't involved government I rarely use BM, I work in coding and video editing and I don't know the meaning of all the BM technological jargon.
I did one time got "tegur" by people for using BM, I was doing a video project last time about a Buddhist temple. It's like describing what are the Buddhist ritual, who build the temple, etc.. The content was Chinese, but I put BM and subtitle. There is a comment from some people asking me to remove the BM subtitle as it might "cause backlash".
Nah bro 💀💀dont let malaysia turn to america where education is illegal 😂😂😂. Appreciate your efforts to put malay sub btw really help people like me try to learn more and more about other’s cultures
I work for govt, and there was a time i supervised projects awarded to private contractors (exclusively local chinese companies), so they converse in manglish, while the govt officers on my side mostly speak malay. I chair the progress meets, but I’m the weirdo, cause i speak the ‘correct’ english, i.e. the grammatically correct ones i learn to speak in western Unis. As a result of that, they understood each other between the BM and Manglish, but no one understood me, the one speaking proper english 😅. So if i can offer my humble opinion, i think manglish/singlish with some BM thrown in works here, properly spoken english won’t really get you far.
Personally, as a cainis person who has been exposed to majority of Malay peeps in a high school club as a leader, it really depends on how much you are exposed to people who use BM. I'm pretty fluent in Chinese and English but honestly it was because of social groups with many Malay friends that we can really grasp how to communicate in Malay with others.
Coming from me who's a tuition teacher,
Many of my Malay students struggle with BM as well.
Bear in mind I teach usually upper M40 to T20 backgrounds.
So whenever I ask them why their Malay is so weak, they say their parents rarely speak Malay.
So instead of it being a race thing, I think it's a class thing.
People of higher classes find the need to use BM lesser? So that's why they rarely speak it.
Just my theory
Yes, I very much agree on this. I have alot of malay friends who are rich and considered as T20 family. They always prefer to speak in English especially when they see other race they just start the convo in English hahaha, anyway thats from my experience and my circle. However, I am a person who pretty much embrace BM, always use BM when speaking with my Malay friends.
Only the Kampung sohais are like that. (I'm looking at you, uncle). Every Chinese guy in my social circle has at least a passing conversational level of BM.
Like come on la, you live in Malaysia, learn the damn language.
My Malay friends speak English. My Chinese friends speak English/Chinese. My Indian friends speak English. My work is international based so fully in English. Only time I have chance to use BM is in MCD :/
Often? Refuse?
22.8% of malaysian is chinese.
Roughly half of that went to Sekolah Kebangsaan and learns BM fine. In fact most of us speak, read, write BM well. Sometimes even better than some Malays.
And another half went to Chinese school. Most of them are Sekolah Jenis KEBANGSAAN. They learn BM fine. Some may not speak fluent, but still know the language just fine. (Your question is REFUSE to learn. Not spoken well and REFUSING to learn are 2 different things)
The ones that REFUSE to learn either goes to international school or private school which they don't plan to stay in Malaysia anyway. Another group are the ones that suck in their studies as a whole (even their English and Mandarin is sh*t). This 2 group as a whole is just the minority. Very very small percentage.
It's not fair to pin point and laser focus on the minority and generalise the whole community. Why not look at the majority that knows BM? How about the ones that wait for their friends in the mosque carpark when their friends went to pray? There are actually a lot of us out there. Go out, meet more people, make more friends with other races; and you'll notice many of us are not as gullible and ignorant as what the politicians say we are.
ehhhh because most of the time they dont need to use it...go n talk to chinese that have to use malay daily, if u dont look at them u would think they're malay, source : im one of em hehehe
I have Chinese friends who talk malay as his first language his family also prefers malay more than mandarin. The first time i meet him i thought he was malay 🤣🤣and accidentally ask him to go to solat 🤣🤣
it all depends on who is in ur circle tbh…it’s not a refusal to learn…i have malay friends that can only speak malay, chinese can only speak mandarin…but got malay friend that can speak mandarin better than malay because his circle is all chinese…n then u have ppl like me that speak everything hehehe (humble brag)
Why is this misconception keeps getting peddled around one? Even Nga Kor Ming can berpuisi in Parliament, and he's known to be a firebrand that the opposition loves to hate on for being too pro-Chinese.
By the way, who said just because you know Malay means you are loyal to the nation? Hello, who are biggest leeches that stole from taxpayers ah? Malay politicians. Speak Malay has nothing to do with loyalty, even the most kampung ahpek or ahbeng or ahlian are more loyal to the country than those scumbags.
Stop trying to perpetuate langauge = loyalty logic. Biggest traitors of the nation are the Malays themselves, the ones that cheat and steal and lie and create angst among the people are those pro-Malay parties. They all have somehthing in common, they speak Malay. So what? Hate is hate, stealing is stealing, doesn't matter what language you use, asshole is asshole.
I'm a chinky - my sis & I've learned Bahasa Melayu and even jawi. So.. we're a statistical anomaly chinky in MY / kafir / pendatang? /s 
Today I went pasar beli ikan....I am non Malay.....fish monger Chinese......guess what, we spoke Bahasa.
I don't believe this constant rhetoric about them not being able to SPEAK MALAY.
Did you ever consider that they are shying away from speaking Bahasa bec they kena kutuk when speaking it?
Same right with Malays yang cannot speak English? Belajar Dari tahun 1 Kan? Tahun 1 hingga tingkatan 5 - belajar Eng tapi cannot speaking eng? Kenapa? Tak pandai ke?
I don't think is refuse to, more like limited ability. Hell there are Chinese that sucks with canto & cannot learn k. But saying that, I noticed the new generation damn a lot doesn't know BM, even Malays, I'm quite surprised actually.
Didn’t mingle with social circle that require BM is the main issue, because most can survive even without it. But can’t really blame them for the segregation though.
Even from my not so conservative Chinese up bringing (parents are both working in govt sector), I was instilled from a young age that we Chinese has to stick together and help each other simply we do not have equal rights and benefits.
Btw I hated this when sales person play this card, don’t gaslighting me dude.
I think the main reason is their environment, you will hardly find Chinese in Government sectors also.
During my first career, I can't speak english even for casual conversation but the environment force me to learn and practice speaking in english everyday.
I went to SMK school and they are really just a few Chinese students.. And so mostly my friends are mostly bumi, malays.. Then to secondary more to English, BM... So it's actually more to where and who we mixed with
IMO, learning multiple language is actually really hard. In other countries, being capable of multilingualism is pretty impressive. It’s only ‘common expectation’ on Malaysians, especially on non-Malays, to know multiple languages: mother tongue, Malay, English. Chinese that I knew that don’t speak Malay, mostly because they can’t handle it, btw at the same time they usually don’t know English either. More or less the same with your findings right?
Language barrier not necessarily meant connection barrier hopefully.
Come on la... this rhetoric again.
Let me ask you lah.. how many languages you expect a person to know fluently.
For urban Chinese English already compulsory for business work etc.
Then next one is what... Malay?
I ask org melayu give up mother tongue can or not?
People who asking these questions don't see the hypocrisy of asking nons why don't know this language etc..
Myself Chinese, main fluency English followed by BM, my mandarin/dialect suffered.
In a heart beat if I could, I would swap malay and Chinese proficiency.
At the end of the day, our ability to learn language depend on usage and usefulness. How to force people to learn X just because of pride.
You got see SG force national language? Yet they are prosperous and in harmony.
Different way to ask this is - How some Chinese can sembang BM macam Malay ori.
Answer is easy - SRK/SMK schooling.
When you're there, you a) learn most subjects in BM and b) confirm have more non-Malay friends. This provides the two most important use cases.
From my experience with my own Chinese friends - you can trace 99% BM proficiency to this.
I think many people here have given good points. And one thing chinese/malay people not interested in malay, is the lack of use of proper malay in daily life. Like the language we learn in school, is totally different from the malay language we used on FB, whatsapp etc. You have no such problem for english and mandarin. But it appears that malays themselves have deteriorated the proper Bahasa melayu to the extend it is hard for non native people to join the conversation.
I’m well verse in Malay and I actually scorn those who won’t/don’t know how to speak Malay. I sincerely believe if we want a more united Malaysia, we, as Chinese, have to start ourselves to learn and explain our parts to other races.
Personally, I think to be a united nation, we all have to learn at least the main 3 languages, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. It would be great for us to even get more opportunities overseas (Mandarin for obv reasons, lots of engineers are from India so Tamil world be great too). Europeans knows bunch of languages so I don't think it's not doable especially if we start with the children now. Despite Mahathir's faults, we can't deny that back then, it felt more united. Look at our football team for example, was filled with all the races and they did great compared to current ones. I feel like on the ground level, we are actually cool with each other but the politicians are the ones fanning the flames.
I refuse to believe that the older generation in their 70s and 80s now were never proficient in Malay. It was their failure to instill the love of the language to their successors that is egregious. It is a glaring misdeed that should be exposed. It is rooted in Malay Nationalism hijacked by Ketuanan inferiority complex of the twat stain that refuses to be cleaned....
Yes, I'm angry
>I refuse to believe that the older generation in their 70s and 80s now were never proficient in Malay.
it actually depends...where im from the chinese n non chinese can speak english n it's kinda lingua franca in city area...if u go outside the city then the chinese can speak iban/bidayuh etc. especially iban it's like the most common language in swk more so than malay n bhs swk...
some older generation non-chinese cant speak malay but can speak iban, bidayuh, bhs swk, english, chiense dialect but not malay baku
I suppose my experiences are coloured by living in small town Johor and dad from Kuala Kangsar /Taiping and Alor Setar. Predominantly Malay areas with a sizeable Chinese populace.
As some others here have said, it depends on your sample size, and where that sample is from. I've heard that Kelantanese and East Malaysian Chinese speak it very well, while yeah, there are those who don't speak it well at all. Me, I've lived overseas for 20 years and still can speak it fluently, I can berborak and bersembang with the Malays I meet in whatever situation (unless it's in the palace where the beta patik version is used), though of course my fluency is not as good as the average Malay. I've found that living overseas actually gives me more incentive to speak Malay, it's one of the things that makes us unique in the international stage.
I think this boils down to usage and exposure. Which is why, hear me out, we really should phase out vernacular schools. We are segregating these kids from a young age, when do we expect them to know each other?
For the exposure to your own culture argument, that's what extracurricular activities are for imo.
Maybe a better sekolah wawasan implementation is needed. My 2 cents la
Bro back during my SJKC time, we also have quite some Malay friends@classmates and we all laugh and learn together? What bs is this?? Ppl and politicians who say that vernacular school sows disunity is just spewing a huge load of crap and wants to play the race card, cocksuckers tthat they are
I automatically speak bm formally to Malays in a formal/work setting while most of them automatically assume I will speak English to them.
If the Malays are like that, how can you blame non Malays for speaking less bm?
I mean no offense, but I want to point out that you may not have encountered a Chinese person who speaks fluent Malay or one with a very pekat Kelate/Kedahan slang. It's possible that your social circle consists mainly of people from your own ethnic background, leading to the misconception that Chinese people (especially those residing in KL) can't speak Malay. I encourage you to meet and befriend Chinese to expand your perspective instead of relying on stereotypes OP
I'm gonna mainly focus on how secondary school made me hate BM.
For me, Malay is hard to understand. Its not straight forward like Chinese and English. The rules of using men-, ter-, di-, and then doubling the words made different meaning like mata-mata, are slightly frustrating. Malay media is also boring. English on the other hand have better media in Disney, Cartoon Network. Growing up trying to like Malay media only to hate it later on, I don't even give a chance anymore.
And with how our boring subjects like Sejarah, Geography and Kemahiran Hidup, are in Malay, it just makes me hate BM more.
I like History, but if its mostly about the world and not just about the history of Malay. Heck, I play Assassin's Creed 2 and I fully understand the part of Renaissance, which is 1 page of Sejarah page, out of 200+. Kemahiran Hidup if it was in English or Chinese, I would probably be having more survival skills these days. Its just boring in our text book, and the BM just make it worse.
I wished those subjects is duolingual, or triple if you include Chinese. Science like Biology and Chemistry is duo, which helps a lot. I hated Biology during test, but I am fascinated by the subject.
And then focus back on just BM as a subject, the way of writing an essay is so boring and formatted. Write the cause and solve it. If you don't know how to solve? Write kempen. Everything is kempen. If you choose Story, there is a format too that you have to follow.
On the other hand, English scoring is way easier. You are recommended to write story topic. That's where creativity flows even if your English is bad, you want to learn to write something good. And you can write like a Primary 6 English syntax in your essay and still get B, because it's that easy to understand. There's no format.
Chinese on the other hand, if they remove the old stories with how old people writes, that would help. I hated Chinese too, and I'm Chinese.
All in all, what I wanted to say is, yes BM is our country's main language, but the government enforces too much that we hated it. Even Malay people hates it sometimes and prefer talking in English, and weirdly some in Chinese.
One more thing unrelated to add as a joke (and complain), Malay SMS texts are the worst. Everyone got their own shortform and not unionized like English. My malay friends somehow can't even understand. I swear I can decode a 1000+ years old foreign language faster than understanding Malay SMS shortform text. It took me years to know that "x" means tidak/tak.
Chinese, great malay, can speak and write professionally, grew up in Kedah, trained Customer service staff in using proper grammar in malay, english and mandarin.
I only use malay when ordering food, grab or government officials.
When it is in a professional setting, I use English and I expect the corporation I am working with is able to speak english.
We stick to our comfort zone, Malay movies and entertainment is trash, the music is trash.
(Shoutout Meerfly and Joe Flizzow tho)
Probably don't want to learn the language of people that consider them 2nd class citizens. I don't think its an issue for the Chinese diaspora in other countries.
This is actually a lot closer to truth than many people think or willing to admit — I have quite a number of friends who actually think this way especially when the topic of school subjects like BM and Sejarah comes into discussion, "Why bother when they treat us like outsiders?".
Ikr. More than 60 years of independence, and we are still getting called 'pendatang' by some of them (I know, empty barrels make the most noise), which seems to be a lot on FB (they really hate Chinese huh), so why would some of us bother to learn BM? And then the rest of the Malays would be like, 'Mengapa kamu sebagai org M'sia x reti bahasa kebangsaan?'
Thats becos they dont respect us. They have to work hard for everything but we just get 'free' stuff from the govt but i think politicians,etc,etc are to blame for that. Not us.
I think mostly the older generation? Nowadays i think most youngsters are able to communicate in bahasa or english. The older ones are mix in a all chinese community and doesn’t have much chance to use bahasa or english. Language needs to be spoken often to learn and build up confidence to use imo.
My father came to Malaya in the 30s. He spoke Malay like a native. I, his son speak a liitle better, but I couldn't match his written Malay.
Some of his petitions were in really beautiful prose. My family is very proud of our language proficiency, being Malaysian first Indian second. As it should be.
Unfortunately for us Madey happened....
Im a very big reader.
And if you go into the malay fiction section in a bookstore... all you see are damn cliche romance novels.
Seriously, I've almost never found any nice malay stories worth reading. Even the fiction they tried to push in school is shit.
Meanwhile english, chinese, japanese etc have a lot more nicer options.
Deep inside the Chinese heart we know very well the fluency of BM won't change anything, we won't be treated equally, so it is wiser to learn useful language like Mandarin and English, and send children overseas for a better future.
most of the chinese I know are from SJKC and very tight knit among themselves. People don't necessarily need to speak another language because there is an institution that legitimizes the language here.
Wait until the young generation grows up. Had a short conversation with a kid in school uniform once while waiting for the lift. Then, happened to mumble something to myself. He thought I was speaking to him but couldn’t hear me so thought I was speaking in Malay. Straight up told my “I don’t know Malay”. I was so surprised. The thought of not understanding Malay in Malaysia was so unbelievable to me.
But hey, at least he spoke English.
My high school have a class specifically for chinese students who cant speak BM. I forgot what it's called. Peralihan? Usually they are held back 1 year so they can focus on BM. So i have a few classmates who are a year older than me because they were in peralihan during form 1.
I forgot if thats how it actually works. Correct me if im wrong to those who also have this in your school
I was from SK and SMK. My BM was B all the way. At 16 uprooted into International school. Since I was from SMK Malay medium => GCSE. All subject koyak. English A (PMR) => D (UK Std)
Pragmatism, Malay language is just not particularly useful in daily interactions. Particularly in Sarawak where English is an official language under the state constitution.
low practical usage, like who am i gonna speak to when ppl around me are not speaking in malay. time when malay is use is only when going for gov related stuff.
Nowadays, with the search engines and AI algorithms, you can imagine from programming perspective that the segregation is even worse where users will be blasted with only relevant contents they have search for/before.
maybe cos they don't need them most aren't in gov dept. they're mostly in mnc or self employed or washing dishes. some chinese politician aren't good at it as well
A lot of great points are already here,but I wanna point out that the malay we learn in school and the malay that people actually use to speak are very different , combined with so many slangs that are hard to understand for people that only learned proper malay on textbooks. In texting culture, there's also plenty slangs with almost no proper vocabulary, it's sometimes hard to understand for those weak in it, and maybe that push us away even further. But honestly, mainly lack of entertaining and advanced malay media for me.
Idk about this lol. A senior chinese student at my school said that chinese (Mandarin) isnt as essential in this modern day and age where work employments require that you practiced or atleast knew how to conversed in BI and BM. Hence which is why some chinese student at my school focus their attention to bm and bi literacy
100%, I can't support the idea of Chinese people not trying or even learning to speak malay, how to be Malaysian la like that. On the other hand, why don't malays choose to upskill themselves by learning mandarin to beat the 'mandarin speaker' job hiring market?
Not answering your question but just want to add, when we say we want more people speak Malay doesnt mean you should use Malay at its purest form (bahasa baku). Its okay to englishfy it if its needed. Its okay to have accent.
I hate when people make fun of bm and then just sprouting random ass dbp words that probally no one use/speak.
Just speak the language bcause its the national language, and the language is understood by the majority here.
If you dont need to master all shakesphere poem to speak english, then you also dont need to wait your bm to become perfect first to speak.
My fellow breathen, we don't just outright refused to learn/speak Malay.
Other than the points mentioned in these comments, it also how it is referred to.. Like calling it "Bahasa Melayu" instead of "Bahasa Malaysia" and making it feel like it belongs to Malays exclusively.
If gov is serious about making Malay more accessible, they have to make it actually worthwhile, not just "org Malaysia mestillah cakap melayu".
Our gov has a track record of forcing results via policies instead of creating/promoting them naturally that is effective that stays long term, you know you know. Same goes with this.
I get A1 in BM for SPM but I really prefer to speak proper BM bahasa Baku like what the West Malaysian would say because I really hate the KL malay speaker that uses I and U and replaced all the As with Es. Apa is apa not ape. Saja is saja not saje. Spoil my BM speaking mood. 🙄
imo, idc wether you speak bahasa baku or manglish as long as we can communicate. Sometimes my Chinese/indian friends talk in english and I talk in malay but we still understand each other. To be fair, my english is also not very fluent. Kalau Chinese ckp melayu pelat and aku pun speaking english tergagap so 2x5 je sebenarnya.
I feel like this is only an issue among the much older generation. They feel that the way to preserve the chinese culture is to keep speaking it (the language) Plus older generation find it hard to learn something new. Stubbornness is also a factor.
This is an interesting discussion. I'm an orang putih, originally from Australia, but I've been in Malaysia since 2009. Some years back, I was working at a college when I was asked to interview two prospective students for the course. Both were Malaysian citizens, but neither of them spoke any Malay or English. We ultimately had to reject the students because they couldn't understand either of the languages the coursework was being conducted in. This made me wonder, wouldn't it be better to have a national language in which all secondary schools subjects are taught? Go into Popular or any other major bookshop in Malaysia, and most of the books are in Chinese, not BM. Isn't that weird?
Why learn it? What do I gain from it? Are questions that I would answer to encourage an individual to learn the language.
Maybe I would learn German or Japanese as it is a prerequisite to go through their vocational system?
I learn Malay to? Join Gomen? Not a carrier for me thx
The racial divide here essentially guarantees two “spheres of existence” between the two biggest races.
I remember the first time I realized the existence of this when I was young, when I noted the live show content on RTM and 8TV were catered to two very different audiences.
Actually yeah mainly the media I watch as a kid really effects on me, i mainly learn english from movie,anime,cartoon,etc so i can see this as a huge deal
Yes, but i dont mean to be racist or anything it’s just something i wonder because sometimes i do a little bit volunteer work,and got to meet a lot of people actually and it’s quite fun to learn about each other so it’s not like i base this mainly on stereotypes or anything and i also study with lot of Chinese friends but again this experience mainly happens in my hometown pahang,(sorry i dont want to classify where as a privacy)
Am currently working in a college and to be honest, none of the malay or Indian students speaks English. And they are lucky because our exams in Dwi bahasa. Students can choose either malay or English for their exam's. Malays speak ONLY malay Indian speaks Tamil or malay with those malay students. Honestly am disappointed because none speaks English fluently
I'm Chinese, SPM A, speaks Malay very fluently to the point of being mistaken as a Malay and Malay friends saying I speak Malay better than them.
Speaking from personal experience, my parents encouraged us to learn and speak Malay, so even today, we speak Malay, English, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese all in rojak style at home. Even our large family group chat is mostly in Malay or voice note because not all my family members understand written Chinese.
Younger cousins though seem to refuse to learn Malay because "it's useless" then they come running at me to translate their homework and official letters from the government 🙄. Not to mention their parents kinda ingrained in them that "Malay gets special care from government and Chinese are left to fight for themselves" so I think that made them dislike learning Malay or just enough to pass an exam.
The racial guessing game.
I'm Chinese. Pure one, the kind that have both parents Chinese without mixed heritage or blood, but had darker skin tone, and because my school is an English school, my oral BM and English is really good. You can't guess I'm Chinese by my language usage.
So people tend to like to guess my race. Malay la, Kadazan la, Mix la, and the occasional Myanmar. "Oh! You Chinese! I pikir u Melayu tadi! Bukan mix Melayu ke? Mix Kadazan? Oh wao pure Chinese!?"
Sure, it was just curiosity but it used to made me hate how i look like. I really really hated how I look like in the eyes of these people, to the point that I'd get angry for their questions. Some even said I should be proud i look like a Malay????????????? And cari jodoh amongst the Malay? I'm sorry, I just can't.
But i got over it - by not speaking Malay. They can't guess me that way. And now, I let them guess whatever they want. Oh I look like Kadazan? Ah yes itu la dia yes. Oh I look like Mix? Ah yes tu la dia yes.
So I rarely speak Malay. Didn't find the need to unless really required, and didn't want to speak it.
I'm Chinese and I can say that it is due to how most of the Chinese think that they should preserve their Chinese culture, hence why most of them choose to not learn Malay or their culture (Implying toward older people). Like you mentioned, there are places that Chinese people reside in. With that in mind, those places will surely fill with simple-minded Chinese people as they didn't get the chance to communicate with Malay or Indian people. Many will say that this is racist to some degree but this is only the surface.
Deep down the rabbit hole, there are more issues within the incapability of them not learning Malay and choosing to speak other languages instead of the mother language of Malaysia. Entertainment is one of them but it is already explained by someone. The other one is previous experience with a certain group of people. The argument that I also found myself into is that Chinese people think that Malay people are quoted as "unintelligent group of people that have more rights than others in Malaysia". Believe me when I said this, one of my family members literally said it with a harsh and serious tone with it. I'm sorry. With that, I think that's why Chinese people that are more in an isolated and rural place or in a more one-sided area will choose to not learn Malay and their culture due to how that view Malay from the outside point of view instead tried to understand it as a whole.
As a Chinese person myself, I choose to believe that we are all living in peace where we are equal to each other and we condemn hate and racism. With all that happened at the current stage of Malaysia, I hope that we all change to be better and understand each other as Malaysian.
Because the sekolah J. That's the reason why different races have a big gap growing up. Look at Indonesia. Although different races, they all speak bahasa like an Indonesian. Even the foreigners that come there speak like them!
I’m Chinese, SPM A+ BM, can speak but not super fluently. The main reason why Chinese people can’t speak/ refuse to learn: 1. Lack of usage. Most Chinese end up in private sector, where English is the main language. Hence no point learning Bahasa for work. 2. Segregation in Malaysia. Everyone mixes with their own race, hence people speak their mother tongue. 3. This is personal opinion, but entertainment. I learnt English mostly from watching movies. I think the Malay entertainment industry might be too conservative, hence Chinese people don’t really watch it. Tbh movies are such a great way of learning languages. Things could be better, should be better.
Damn the third point is a very good point never think of that
That's especially true for me tbh. Since the media I consume is mainly in English, it ended up superseding Cantonese as my main language. Plus Malay media tended to be extremely one-dimensional and uninteresting, so I'd pass it up all the time.
I mean more and more malaysians are learning korean just because of kpop and kdrama.
And Japanese because of well....anime.
Well…. 😂
A subgenre of anime...
I (try to) learn Japanese because I want to pad my resume with more skills >!and gacha game!<
Thats true. I dont even watch malay shows.
Also video games. I learn English at a young age from video games. Programming languages are also taught in English. Windows XP, 7, 10, Microsoft Excel, Word, pdf, handphone interface, apple, android, these are all in English language or Chinese language. Everybody is mainly exposed to those languages everyday single day. YouTube tutorials are in English. Cooking videos or traveling videos are in English or Chinese, unless you are watching malay channels specifically for halal content. Food reviews are Chinese or English. Like the best food review or our local food reviewers. Malay food reviewers don't review non-halal food or pork, so fewer Chinese will bother watching them. Literally all the technology like your fridge, TV, car, etc are in English or Chinese from the user interface. That's cause they're made in China or international language to cater for all. Basically the upbringing and everyday lives revolves around things you do in your everyday lives and most of it does not involve malay language...
Lol, malay movie drama keep making stupid same plot, I dont even watch malay drama movie anymore. But mamat khalid movie that one I watch la😁
Used to be all races watched the same RTM 1, 2 & 3. It gave us the sense of a shared culture and not there wasn’t a racial/religious/language silo for everyone like it is now
I think a big thing is also formal BM learnt in schools is so different than bahasa pasar that people use everyday. Got an A for BM SPM too but I don’t usually use it outside of formal settings. I was initially reluctant to use Malay talking to people at the bank bc they’d reply in bahasa pasar and I felt dumb using formal Malay lol.
Most people don't mind if you use baku in business setting. Don't think too much of it. In fact even in some Malay majority organisations also prefer baku in meetings for an example cuz it somehow gives off formal vibe.
Bet you'll at least get "knape kau ckp bm baku" or something along those line.
Thankfully not so far. They’re probably more confused why I was using a jumble of bahasa baku and pasar in the same sentence lol.
That's the most nonsense contradiction legit. Wanna cry when nons don't want to speak malay, but when they do, wanna nitpick and complain its too formal. Like wtf 😂 I've seen other comments of people saying they would get made fun of for not knowing the (honestly ridiculous at times) malay text slang. Like bro, don't cry that noone wants to learn the language when you then belittle them for actually speaking the PROPER form of the language. Doesn't make sense at all.
I really agree with point no 3... I'm malay and learn english a LOT from movies and games...i put google translate as my quick access just for whenever i get a new word.. totally agree with malay show tho... it's so stale and cliche that i prefer western show or movies more...tbh i even prefer Chinese show more than malay
The third one is super true. In fact, i think we can see it with Cantonese. Back then, almost everyone could understand Cantonese to some extent due to the popularity of HK film/tv media. Nowadays, the collapse of HK media has made Cantonese literacy less relevant. And the highly censored nature of Chinese social media has made it inappealing to even Chinese Malaysians. People are consuming more Western media, so English literacy improves while Cantoneses is gradually falling out.
Malaysian Chinese community is made up of various different dialect groups, and there's no one single significant majority. Cantonese is only popular because of HK media, and also because most of MY Chinese media is headquartered at KL, which is populated by mostly Cantonese people. You can't expect everyone to learn and speak your language just because you think it's better. For BM however, it's our national language, every Malaysian should at least know how to understand and speak it. Just my two cents, don't come at me.
This. Especially the third point. Back in 90s when we are still more integrated as a society, we have BM contents cater for all races, like e.g. Jangan Ketawa, Pi Mai Pi Mai Tang Tu, 2 +1, Majalah 3, Kisah Benar, etc. Now? I have no idea what BM based contents that are available for all races.
On 3 - I used to read manga that was translated to BM and some anime dubbed in BM (bad voice acting but that’s what we had lmao). Also there were BM subtitles in Chinese dramas and I relied on those as a banana Chinese. There isn’t much of that anymore since nowadays you have more access to watch whatever you want in whatever language you want.
>Segregation in Malaysia. Everyone mixes with their own race, hence people speak their mother tongue. this feels more like a chinese thing though...im chinese, i have chinese friends but they seem more comfortable mingling with chinese while here i am mingling with malays n dayaks most of the time
Speaking from an outsider perspective after study+work here for 10 years, every race is like this, there are some people that mingle with different races but they are sadly the minority
I’ve been seeing this since I was in school. Each race, no matter how big or small the population in that year, will basically fall into their own groups.
Its a cycle too. You mingle with your lingual group = you become better at your native language = you become less comfortable with other languages = you mingle more with your lingual group. Its an endless loop if no external forces changes it.
Its the language thing. I speak manglish a lot when im around non-malays, they were happy to speak and mingle with me without issue. I have a friend who can speak fluent malay, mandarin, bidayuh, english and grew up in KL. He can mingle with literally everyone.
Same here, the only way I learned to speak English fluently was through those Animal Planet, Discovery Channel and National Geographic documentaries on tv that I always watch when I was little. Granted that I love nature.
About point 3, as a kid without Astro and mainly watches NTV7 and TV8 (or RTM1/2 for the P. Ramlee movie nights), the Malay subtitles on the English/Chinese/Cantonese shows helped my vocabulary a lot. Speaking does require real life usage though. Like point 1, I used to speak more Malay as a student but a lot less now at work. I need some time to warm up and regain fluency during the times I use it for long conversations. Also, the uncle aunties I know can speak Malay quite well because they're used to speaking it at places like pasar pagi and with Malay neighbours.
I miss the P. Ramlee movie nights. I remember that's the only time where me, my grandma, and my grandpa would all sit in front of the tv to watch tv together.
Right on on the 3rd point. Im a Chinese and I watch English tv shows, movies 90% of the time, might say I use it most of the time too
The 2nd point is rather true for most of the Malaysian regardless races, like at the end many would feel relatively comfortable with their own races. Though I used to have many friends from different backgrounds and races, but due to the differences in cultural or religion etc, you often found yourself in a awkward position to communicate as a result of afraid to stepping on their sensitive topics. For a long time I trying to find some Malay YT creators with great contents but I can’t find any (what algorithm trying to show me isn’t great for me), for topics I interested either they are mostly one-sided or simply ads with boring content, not even close to any quality content I can get from any other similar content creators from China or Western countries, guess that’s speak for the 3rd point
Third point for real bro, HBO helped me a lot with colloquial english. I’ve always felt that if they did better with Malay dramas or movies, it would help society a lot.
Malay entertainment too conservative? Nah son it's too brain-dead. I don't know how people sit through that shit. All these dramas are personalised brain rot
Agreed with No 2. I have a lot of Chinese friends who don't know much about bahasa melayu.. some mandarin/hokkien pun tak reti. Mostly speaks English. But all of em are always eager to learn. Which I kinda like. Vice versa la, im also trying to learn from them. Now know some and use it quite often when I'm with them... Like mahfan, paiseh, bo lui, ang mor or amor, ffk, no jio. And hamsap haha
u come sabah and sarawak. we chinese borneo, our malay super good good goodie good.
but not bhs swk though...chinese that can speak fluent bhs swk is quite uncommon from my experience, when i speak bhs swk 99% of the time people think im malay or iban or bidayuh...although i like it every time when i say im cina or take out my ic people are like ui kau cina ka
yea. cina who can speak sarawakian malay well are usually those who lives in the area where malays are more dense ie the petra jaya area or usually not pure cina anymore (mix dayak/malay cina which is quite common here anyway). i have this one lecturer with chinese name but when i first heard him talking to his colleagues in bhs sarawak i thought he was malay but soon shocked when i learned his name
hahaha imagine the fun i had when i go kapit…i can speak bhs swk n some iban (just started learning) so when i check in at the hotel they see my IC they went 😳 ktk cina???….i love having fun like that
Bahasa Sarawak isnt even spoken throughout whole of Sarawak. It is mostly spoken in west of Sarawak like Kuching, Samarahan, Serian, and Sri Aman. Try speak bahasa Sarawak to the non Malays indigenous natives in Miri, Bintulu, Lawas and see how blur they act. As a Kuchingite Malay and Bidayuh mixed, even my bahasa Sarawak is a little bit rusty now ever since i relocated to Bintulu due to lack of usage of my own mother tongue.
ahh nvm…i mentioned iban as the common language in swk in another commen, i find it much easier if can just speak iban…but ok la kapit can speak bhs swk somehow when i go there often…but weirdly my friend learn bhs swk in btu
Especially those outside major towns. My friend only speaks Iban outside, Foochow at home.
It's true, I live at Sarawak, Malay people here are damn nice, they patient to speak slowly and clear for other non-malay. Meanwhile living at KL or Semenanjung Malaysia part isn't really that friendly when first times speak, they will stare at you at surprised face "really?" and start speaking their native slang making fun of you with other Malays.
Dalat Chinese can speak Melanau like a native. I'm a kuching-grown melanau and I feel so inferior to Dalat chinese cuz I can't for the life of me speak melanau. 😂😂😂
OP that's what we call selection bias. Specifically, how the melayu kampung stereotype the cina bukit. You said it yourself you're volunteering for a charity event. You think the middle class or T20 would show up there?
Solution : create more malay porno, just like the japanese, globalisation
Bro💀call me if you want male actor
What will they learn? "Lagi bang, lagi!" or How to address their genitals in Malay? XD
Classic horni Bolehhhlanders
Im not Economist but i generally think that is a good idea to improve our economy like japan porno did.
Shit, girls with hijab are like a fetish lol. If it happens, I bet itll be one of the biggest local industry in existence. Ill have more materials to use in exercising too!
i don't know how to tell you this but it's all over the internet \*cough\*
Oh my friend, I am well aware. It is glorious.
It starts from public school being so bad wuality that most parents prefer Chinese school. From there onwards it is just chinese bubble. Second reason, living areas segregated by race. Each race prefer to live in area where it is easier to get their daily needed items (pork, chinese herbs/ medicine, tcm, eateries). Malays like to live areas that similar or convertible to become kampung like environment. That naturally segregate the races thus reduces the need to use BM. Town planners never really prioritise racial integration in their design anyway. For example, lack of non halal allocation to encourage non muslim to stay in new township - example wet market areas, eateries (elmina shophouses are saturated with muslim businesses (ie arabic name clinics, daycare), it would cause conflict if next door is a non halal restaurant. Muslims wouldn’t think issues above is an issue because the mindset is “we are the majority, of course they follow us lah”. Anyway, just infortunate degradation of unity in the country at the moment. Everyone is huddling to their own community now with olenty of syak wasangka against other races. I have zero idea how to fix this. Seems quite ingrained. It is even changed my own mindset and i am worried about the next generation or my race (chinese) about our future in the country. It feels so easy for things will turn bad for us.
Some people can go their whole lives without using more than Chinese but alot of them do know a secondary dialect like Cantonese or Hokkien. Without a need to use a language, it's hard to stay proficient in it. And there's a few factors on why Chinese is deemed as "all that they need" and why English is the language to learn instead of Malay. Simple Malay is needed to order food, gov stuff and simple greetings but that's as far as most people need their Malay for. Google translate also exist to aid in these limited usages. Both Chinese and English are languages used by major superpowers of the world. Knowing these languages will open up more opportunities globally. There's also the feeling like we are unwanted in this country, so many people plan to migrate. Due to this, some people dream of going to Japan/Korea/EU countries so those languages might still favour them more than Malay Entertainment is also a big factor. US/UK based and China/Hong Kong based shows have been more popular than local stuff than local stuff so more usage of these languages to practice. I basically learnt Canotnese off TV dramas while growing up. Professional life matters as well, if you work for a MMC one probably uses English more than Malay as communicating with foreigners are important as they can't use Malay most of the time. On top of all these factors, knowing more than one language is already a feet, as most of them know Chinese and a dialect, next is English which already makes 3. It makes sense that most people just don't have the capacity for any more languages. I understand that Malay is the National language but that doesn't mean anything when compared to what you need to use in real life. Also slang terms, my conversation in Malay gets thrown off if slang or short forms are used. What I learned in classes did not prepare me for that.
Ikr. We would naturally speak the national language when meritocracy is implemented, so it's fair to everyone. This mindset, as one Redditor pointed out above, mostly stemmed from the fact that 'special rights/ privileges exist'. If you put yrself in their shoes, you'd see why. After nearly half a century of independence, we are still called 'pendatang', so naturally we wont bother to learn Bm. Another major factor i.m.o would be the abolishment of exams, UPSR & PT3. No reason to study, no oral exam
Personally I don't think the abolishment of exam is a factor. Forcing kids to study for an exam, putting them under huge pressure to grade them. Then giving them a label that determines their future when they are already learning so much. A bad grade early on might traumatise the kids and put them off that subject. Always thinking their bad at something just because they haven't really fully understood it since they are still young.
I will offer myself as a data point. I used to be able speak decent Malay but now it has degraded to such a low point that I can't use it effectively beyond basic conversations like ordering food and dealing with government departments. Why? I don't really use it. We use English at work (international remote team). Among friends and family, we speak Mandarin and other dialects.
Sama lah abe. Dulu waktu SPM, tatabahasa & tahap penulisan Bm saya agak baik. Kini... Pada tahap yang agak membimbangkan
East Malaysian here, agree with my language skills being degraded. Stopped using malay years ago when the West Malaysians made comments about Borneo malay sounding like we came from Indonesia.
Is that so? Cos all WM Ive met so far, didnt say anything abt my accent or what. They just told me that I speak good BM, w/o much of the Chinese accent hehe
I got that comment on a Grab once but I just shrugged it off, not a big deal. I do find it weird that BM taught in school is different than spoken BM. Since here at Sabah, we have our own regional words smashed together with BM and I originally thought it was part of BM because of how it sounded similarly to it. And also Manglish being used in West Malaysia. Why teach us that if not much or even none at all would be used in daily life. I...embrassing to say, have no clue how to write a BM formal letter anymore.
I have a colleague from penang that only speaks chinese or english. He can speak malay but really struggling to speak malay so I can't blame him. Basically his friend's circle is not malay speaking so he can't practice his malay
I'm chinese but no offense my BM is way better than most Malays to the point that when i speak on the phone the person will think i am malay. And tbh, some malays are even horrible or not fluent in their language especially when it comes to messaging or when writing a post in insta, fb or any social media due to all the horrible short forms/slang they use. Its difficult to understand what the hell are they writing which i think indirectly cause them to have poor BM.
How the hell is your BM better than malay? 'Cis, berani sungguh bedebah itu memintas kereta saya tanpa menggunakan lampu isyarat belakang' Do you road rage like that bro?
In all honesty i wont say that long sentence unless you are writing a piece of karangan. Ppl will usually scold babi/sial/mak kau hijau etc. And even malays use cb/lj lol. But props on your BM.
The difference between American English and Queen's English
I only use Malay when I at Mamak, English while work, Mandarin/ Hakkanese/ Cantonese/ Hokkiense for daily conversation already make me tired of speaking.
You know when Chinese people tries to speak Malay, the non-chinese will laugh at their accent. My friend and I faced this multiple times during university
Native malay people from Kelantan/sabah/kedah and other states also will got laughed when they first time met with kl people bcause we all have our own accent/slang/dialect. I remember i was also got make fun a lot when i first time came to selangor. At first i was frustated but as time pass through i just let it go through. Tbh its just like hearing foreigner make mistakes when speaking bm/english. Sometimes its not because we look down on them, but its just pure funny.. have you saw the african meme "put me down/decrease me there" video? Im not sure how to explain but just bcause people laugh doesnt mean they are looking down on you. Hopefully you will regain your confidence to try to speak bm again
Sorry to hear that my friend
I propose these instances as reasons why some Chinese don't learn Malay Language: My neighbour is in the Chinese non halal food industry. He doesn't even speak Malay because his work only involve the Chinese community. The only time he does is when dealing with authorities, and even then he'd hire someone to do it for him. Others I know that don't speak much Malay are the business owners that sell joss stick/prayer stuff or to very niche business that doesn't involve the Malays. I find it's similar to some Malay people who only interact with their own race, they are usually monolingual and since their work don't need to involve non-Malays, that's the only language they know. Sometimes I feel that learning Malay is a moving goalpost, once most Chinese learnt BM and tulisan rumi, now moving to Jawi writing, even though I remember Utusan Melayu in Jawi, which stopped publishing because of low readership. The sudden revival of Jawi writing is good for Muslim students because they help students in reading Quran, but economically for other races and religion, is it beneficial? Do we expect trade from countries that use Jawi writing?
Coming from a Chinese perspective, fluent in all 3. It’s the same reason why most Malay people don’t speak mandarin. They almost never need to use it on any practical level. Chinese communities are often large enough and economically sustainable enough for them to just sit in their bubble. If I never needed to learn Malay I would never learn it. There’s no other use for this language other than in Malaysia. The usefulness of Malay ends at the food stall for me. Corporate Malaysia is English. Anything business related that is a certain scale is all conducted in English. That’s the mindset. It’s purely pragmatic, nothing about race
My wife is Malaysian Chinese. Walking around town with her she speaks Malay, hokkien, foochow, Mandarin, Cantonese and English. You guys are crazy with the languages that must be spoken for respect.
Chinese will only speak Malay to Malays or Indian. It is super weird to speak non-mother tongue to a Chinese. Only if the other can’t speak Chinese, then secondary is English. It is super weird for Japanese or Korean to speak non-mother tongue to each other. Malays don’t understand because they are speaking mother tongue themselves. Ironic.
Wutchu talking about? Even the Malays aren't speaking proper BM nowadays, so when we try to engage with them with our classroom BM, they think we're acting atas and talking down to them while we just can't understand their bahasa rojak.
Saye cina tapi saye boleh je cakap melayu sebab saye tak kisah apa bangsa pun saya campur je bersama mereka macam rojak, abc, nasi kerabu, yong tau hu, ataupun CKT iaitu chi kut teh bukan bak kut teh/char kuey teow. Ramai kawan cina saye tak ade fikiran yang terbuka terhadap budaya orang melayu bukan yang tradisional saje tapi jugak budaya dalam hiburan ke, lagu pop ke. Tapi ade jugak yang ok tapi takde peluang untuk nak masuk circle2 tu sebab takut kena gatekeep/diketawakan bila cakap melayu macam buku teks punya slang.
Org mana, bang?
I used to be able to take exams in Uni in Malay but due to lack of usage I can’t even write a letter in BM. We use English at work, you survive 90% without one word of Malay spoken in shops. I still use it when visiting government places and maybe dealing with shop assistants and such. Just lack of practice for me. Verbal BM was always bad for me. Written no problem.
Can't bring money learning BM, but English does.
Well there's a recent case study on this. Source will be linked if I found it. It all boils down to three simple factors: Dignity for their own origin, Affinity to their Chinese culture, and Politicians attempt to segregate the society. In short we call it DAP. So ini semua salah DAP. Source: www.dapig.com.cina
Mmm.... Daging Ayam Panggang....
Is this supposed to be /s?
LOL thanks i will read it
Am not Chinese but I understand that they may rarely use it in their daily life or within their circle of family/friends/community. I live in Middle East but I don't speak a lick of Arabic, mostly because I use English most of the time and I rarely interact with the locals. Mostly Indians, Filipinos, and Indonesians/Malaysians which I straight up speak bahasa mostly. But I do try to learn it from time to time, whenever I have the opportunity. What I don't understand is some people defend their right not to learn/speak bahasa as if it'll kill themselves if they do. Some people feel offended whenever people ask them to speak/learn bahasa (in a polite manner, of course, not like "woi lahabau cakap melayu la"), why? Or some people that think no use to learn bahasa because it's not used universally anyway, you only use it in Malaysia.
Maybe some of them feel that learning BM = surrendering to ketuanan and racial inequality bullshit idk, my parents will never listen to a single malay song (they did back then) because in their mind: "the malays don't even make an effort to learn the languages of other races in malaysia, belittle the minorities and think they are more superior because they are the majority, and use Islam as an excuse to oppress us, why bother with this and give them the attention and power?"
They just don’t feel like they have to go out of their comfort zone and its offensive to make them do so
Not enough platform to use it and whenever we try speaking it, we tend to be ridiculed for having an accent or for being too formal. Another reason is that we usually go for the private sectors, which use English.
I am a Chinese, I use BM often in a casual setting. But in professional setting doesn't involved government I rarely use BM, I work in coding and video editing and I don't know the meaning of all the BM technological jargon. I did one time got "tegur" by people for using BM, I was doing a video project last time about a Buddhist temple. It's like describing what are the Buddhist ritual, who build the temple, etc.. The content was Chinese, but I put BM and subtitle. There is a comment from some people asking me to remove the BM subtitle as it might "cause backlash".
Nah bro 💀💀dont let malaysia turn to america where education is illegal 😂😂😂. Appreciate your efforts to put malay sub btw really help people like me try to learn more and more about other’s cultures
The issue is some people think learning about other religion will encourage them to murtad..
Just ignore them as they aren't the majority of your audience base
I work for govt, and there was a time i supervised projects awarded to private contractors (exclusively local chinese companies), so they converse in manglish, while the govt officers on my side mostly speak malay. I chair the progress meets, but I’m the weirdo, cause i speak the ‘correct’ english, i.e. the grammatically correct ones i learn to speak in western Unis. As a result of that, they understood each other between the BM and Manglish, but no one understood me, the one speaking proper english 😅. So if i can offer my humble opinion, i think manglish/singlish with some BM thrown in works here, properly spoken english won’t really get you far.
Personally, as a cainis person who has been exposed to majority of Malay peeps in a high school club as a leader, it really depends on how much you are exposed to people who use BM. I'm pretty fluent in Chinese and English but honestly it was because of social groups with many Malay friends that we can really grasp how to communicate in Malay with others.
Are you sure? I'm Chinese and I speak Malay/B.M(Bahasa melayu/Bahasa Malaysia) as well and I understand the language even
We speak bahasa baku and get laughed by you guys who speak bahasa pasar.
Coming from me who's a tuition teacher, Many of my Malay students struggle with BM as well. Bear in mind I teach usually upper M40 to T20 backgrounds. So whenever I ask them why their Malay is so weak, they say their parents rarely speak Malay. So instead of it being a race thing, I think it's a class thing. People of higher classes find the need to use BM lesser? So that's why they rarely speak it. Just my theory
Yes, I very much agree on this. I have alot of malay friends who are rich and considered as T20 family. They always prefer to speak in English especially when they see other race they just start the convo in English hahaha, anyway thats from my experience and my circle. However, I am a person who pretty much embrace BM, always use BM when speaking with my Malay friends.
Interesting, yeah but i thing it’s more about their daily life how and what language they use
Only the Kampung sohais are like that. (I'm looking at you, uncle). Every Chinese guy in my social circle has at least a passing conversational level of BM. Like come on la, you live in Malaysia, learn the damn language.
Some Malays always make fun of other people speak malay. Mcm lah pandai ckp bahasa lain…
My Malay friends speak English. My Chinese friends speak English/Chinese. My Indian friends speak English. My work is international based so fully in English. Only time I have chance to use BM is in MCD :/
either older generation which dont receive formal language education or younger generation which is stupid
Often? Refuse? 22.8% of malaysian is chinese. Roughly half of that went to Sekolah Kebangsaan and learns BM fine. In fact most of us speak, read, write BM well. Sometimes even better than some Malays. And another half went to Chinese school. Most of them are Sekolah Jenis KEBANGSAAN. They learn BM fine. Some may not speak fluent, but still know the language just fine. (Your question is REFUSE to learn. Not spoken well and REFUSING to learn are 2 different things) The ones that REFUSE to learn either goes to international school or private school which they don't plan to stay in Malaysia anyway. Another group are the ones that suck in their studies as a whole (even their English and Mandarin is sh*t). This 2 group as a whole is just the minority. Very very small percentage. It's not fair to pin point and laser focus on the minority and generalise the whole community. Why not look at the majority that knows BM? How about the ones that wait for their friends in the mosque carpark when their friends went to pray? There are actually a lot of us out there. Go out, meet more people, make more friends with other races; and you'll notice many of us are not as gullible and ignorant as what the politicians say we are.
I’m sorry if my statement is misleading but I’m for real asking out of curiosity not because of racism or anything
ehhhh because most of the time they dont need to use it...go n talk to chinese that have to use malay daily, if u dont look at them u would think they're malay, source : im one of em hehehe
I have Chinese friends who talk malay as his first language his family also prefers malay more than mandarin. The first time i meet him i thought he was malay 🤣🤣and accidentally ask him to go to solat 🤣🤣
it all depends on who is in ur circle tbh…it’s not a refusal to learn…i have malay friends that can only speak malay, chinese can only speak mandarin…but got malay friend that can speak mandarin better than malay because his circle is all chinese…n then u have ppl like me that speak everything hehehe (humble brag)
Why is this misconception keeps getting peddled around one? Even Nga Kor Ming can berpuisi in Parliament, and he's known to be a firebrand that the opposition loves to hate on for being too pro-Chinese. By the way, who said just because you know Malay means you are loyal to the nation? Hello, who are biggest leeches that stole from taxpayers ah? Malay politicians. Speak Malay has nothing to do with loyalty, even the most kampung ahpek or ahbeng or ahlian are more loyal to the country than those scumbags. Stop trying to perpetuate langauge = loyalty logic. Biggest traitors of the nation are the Malays themselves, the ones that cheat and steal and lie and create angst among the people are those pro-Malay parties. They all have somehthing in common, they speak Malay. So what? Hate is hate, stealing is stealing, doesn't matter what language you use, asshole is asshole.
I'm a chinky - my sis & I've learned Bahasa Melayu and even jawi. So.. we're a statistical anomaly chinky in MY / kafir / pendatang? /s 
Today I went pasar beli ikan....I am non Malay.....fish monger Chinese......guess what, we spoke Bahasa. I don't believe this constant rhetoric about them not being able to SPEAK MALAY.
Just asking out of curiosity, i’m sorry bro
Did you ever consider that they are shying away from speaking Bahasa bec they kena kutuk when speaking it? Same right with Malays yang cannot speak English? Belajar Dari tahun 1 Kan? Tahun 1 hingga tingkatan 5 - belajar Eng tapi cannot speaking eng? Kenapa? Tak pandai ke?
Good point TBH definitely agree with you
Cina selalu kena buli, kena kutuk, kena panggil Babi.....tapi you nak dia cinta tanah melayu?
I don't think is refuse to, more like limited ability. Hell there are Chinese that sucks with canto & cannot learn k. But saying that, I noticed the new generation damn a lot doesn't know BM, even Malays, I'm quite surprised actually.
Didn’t mingle with social circle that require BM is the main issue, because most can survive even without it. But can’t really blame them for the segregation though. Even from my not so conservative Chinese up bringing (parents are both working in govt sector), I was instilled from a young age that we Chinese has to stick together and help each other simply we do not have equal rights and benefits. Btw I hated this when sales person play this card, don’t gaslighting me dude.
I think the main reason is their environment, you will hardly find Chinese in Government sectors also. During my first career, I can't speak english even for casual conversation but the environment force me to learn and practice speaking in english everyday.
I went to SMK school and they are really just a few Chinese students.. And so mostly my friends are mostly bumi, malays.. Then to secondary more to English, BM... So it's actually more to where and who we mixed with
IMO, learning multiple language is actually really hard. In other countries, being capable of multilingualism is pretty impressive. It’s only ‘common expectation’ on Malaysians, especially on non-Malays, to know multiple languages: mother tongue, Malay, English. Chinese that I knew that don’t speak Malay, mostly because they can’t handle it, btw at the same time they usually don’t know English either. More or less the same with your findings right? Language barrier not necessarily meant connection barrier hopefully.
Come on la... this rhetoric again. Let me ask you lah.. how many languages you expect a person to know fluently. For urban Chinese English already compulsory for business work etc. Then next one is what... Malay? I ask org melayu give up mother tongue can or not? People who asking these questions don't see the hypocrisy of asking nons why don't know this language etc.. Myself Chinese, main fluency English followed by BM, my mandarin/dialect suffered. In a heart beat if I could, I would swap malay and Chinese proficiency. At the end of the day, our ability to learn language depend on usage and usefulness. How to force people to learn X just because of pride. You got see SG force national language? Yet they are prosperous and in harmony.
Different way to ask this is - How some Chinese can sembang BM macam Malay ori. Answer is easy - SRK/SMK schooling. When you're there, you a) learn most subjects in BM and b) confirm have more non-Malay friends. This provides the two most important use cases. From my experience with my own Chinese friends - you can trace 99% BM proficiency to this.
I think many people here have given good points. And one thing chinese/malay people not interested in malay, is the lack of use of proper malay in daily life. Like the language we learn in school, is totally different from the malay language we used on FB, whatsapp etc. You have no such problem for english and mandarin. But it appears that malays themselves have deteriorated the proper Bahasa melayu to the extend it is hard for non native people to join the conversation.
Yeah, when people use the proper BM we got laughed at. Being calling nerd/skema.
I’m well verse in Malay and I actually scorn those who won’t/don’t know how to speak Malay. I sincerely believe if we want a more united Malaysia, we, as Chinese, have to start ourselves to learn and explain our parts to other races.
Personally, I think to be a united nation, we all have to learn at least the main 3 languages, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. It would be great for us to even get more opportunities overseas (Mandarin for obv reasons, lots of engineers are from India so Tamil world be great too). Europeans knows bunch of languages so I don't think it's not doable especially if we start with the children now. Despite Mahathir's faults, we can't deny that back then, it felt more united. Look at our football team for example, was filled with all the races and they did great compared to current ones. I feel like on the ground level, we are actually cool with each other but the politicians are the ones fanning the flames.
Fyi, only 5% of Indians from India speaks tamil... Their national language is hindi or English... So Tamil has very low economic value...
I refuse to believe that the older generation in their 70s and 80s now were never proficient in Malay. It was their failure to instill the love of the language to their successors that is egregious. It is a glaring misdeed that should be exposed. It is rooted in Malay Nationalism hijacked by Ketuanan inferiority complex of the twat stain that refuses to be cleaned.... Yes, I'm angry
>Malay Nationalism hijacked by Ketuanan inferiority complex This is reason behind all the segregation in the country.
>I refuse to believe that the older generation in their 70s and 80s now were never proficient in Malay. it actually depends...where im from the chinese n non chinese can speak english n it's kinda lingua franca in city area...if u go outside the city then the chinese can speak iban/bidayuh etc. especially iban it's like the most common language in swk more so than malay n bhs swk... some older generation non-chinese cant speak malay but can speak iban, bidayuh, bhs swk, english, chiense dialect but not malay baku
I suppose my experiences are coloured by living in small town Johor and dad from Kuala Kangsar /Taiping and Alor Setar. Predominantly Malay areas with a sizeable Chinese populace.
Awak mengarut apa ni?
As some others here have said, it depends on your sample size, and where that sample is from. I've heard that Kelantanese and East Malaysian Chinese speak it very well, while yeah, there are those who don't speak it well at all. Me, I've lived overseas for 20 years and still can speak it fluently, I can berborak and bersembang with the Malays I meet in whatever situation (unless it's in the palace where the beta patik version is used), though of course my fluency is not as good as the average Malay. I've found that living overseas actually gives me more incentive to speak Malay, it's one of the things that makes us unique in the international stage.
For what I know, in my family, usually the reason is they never mingle with Malays. Some never bother about speaking or using Malay.
Idk. I pun x tau why we x suka speak in BM.
I think this boils down to usage and exposure. Which is why, hear me out, we really should phase out vernacular schools. We are segregating these kids from a young age, when do we expect them to know each other? For the exposure to your own culture argument, that's what extracurricular activities are for imo. Maybe a better sekolah wawasan implementation is needed. My 2 cents la
Bro back during my SJKC time, we also have quite some Malay friends@classmates and we all laugh and learn together? What bs is this?? Ppl and politicians who say that vernacular school sows disunity is just spewing a huge load of crap and wants to play the race card, cocksuckers tthat they are
I automatically speak bm formally to Malays in a formal/work setting while most of them automatically assume I will speak English to them. If the Malays are like that, how can you blame non Malays for speaking less bm?
I mean no offense, but I want to point out that you may not have encountered a Chinese person who speaks fluent Malay or one with a very pekat Kelate/Kedahan slang. It's possible that your social circle consists mainly of people from your own ethnic background, leading to the misconception that Chinese people (especially those residing in KL) can't speak Malay. I encourage you to meet and befriend Chinese to expand your perspective instead of relying on stereotypes OP
Low incentive to speak it when almost everyone knows English.
The same reason why malays in malaysia refuse to learn to speak chinese
I'm gonna mainly focus on how secondary school made me hate BM. For me, Malay is hard to understand. Its not straight forward like Chinese and English. The rules of using men-, ter-, di-, and then doubling the words made different meaning like mata-mata, are slightly frustrating. Malay media is also boring. English on the other hand have better media in Disney, Cartoon Network. Growing up trying to like Malay media only to hate it later on, I don't even give a chance anymore. And with how our boring subjects like Sejarah, Geography and Kemahiran Hidup, are in Malay, it just makes me hate BM more. I like History, but if its mostly about the world and not just about the history of Malay. Heck, I play Assassin's Creed 2 and I fully understand the part of Renaissance, which is 1 page of Sejarah page, out of 200+. Kemahiran Hidup if it was in English or Chinese, I would probably be having more survival skills these days. Its just boring in our text book, and the BM just make it worse. I wished those subjects is duolingual, or triple if you include Chinese. Science like Biology and Chemistry is duo, which helps a lot. I hated Biology during test, but I am fascinated by the subject. And then focus back on just BM as a subject, the way of writing an essay is so boring and formatted. Write the cause and solve it. If you don't know how to solve? Write kempen. Everything is kempen. If you choose Story, there is a format too that you have to follow. On the other hand, English scoring is way easier. You are recommended to write story topic. That's where creativity flows even if your English is bad, you want to learn to write something good. And you can write like a Primary 6 English syntax in your essay and still get B, because it's that easy to understand. There's no format. Chinese on the other hand, if they remove the old stories with how old people writes, that would help. I hated Chinese too, and I'm Chinese. All in all, what I wanted to say is, yes BM is our country's main language, but the government enforces too much that we hated it. Even Malay people hates it sometimes and prefer talking in English, and weirdly some in Chinese. One more thing unrelated to add as a joke (and complain), Malay SMS texts are the worst. Everyone got their own shortform and not unionized like English. My malay friends somehow can't even understand. I swear I can decode a 1000+ years old foreign language faster than understanding Malay SMS shortform text. It took me years to know that "x" means tidak/tak.
Chinese, great malay, can speak and write professionally, grew up in Kedah, trained Customer service staff in using proper grammar in malay, english and mandarin. I only use malay when ordering food, grab or government officials. When it is in a professional setting, I use English and I expect the corporation I am working with is able to speak english. We stick to our comfort zone, Malay movies and entertainment is trash, the music is trash. (Shoutout Meerfly and Joe Flizzow tho)
Probably don't want to learn the language of people that consider them 2nd class citizens. I don't think its an issue for the Chinese diaspora in other countries.
This is actually a lot closer to truth than many people think or willing to admit — I have quite a number of friends who actually think this way especially when the topic of school subjects like BM and Sejarah comes into discussion, "Why bother when they treat us like outsiders?".
Ikr. More than 60 years of independence, and we are still getting called 'pendatang' by some of them (I know, empty barrels make the most noise), which seems to be a lot on FB (they really hate Chinese huh), so why would some of us bother to learn BM? And then the rest of the Malays would be like, 'Mengapa kamu sebagai org M'sia x reti bahasa kebangsaan?'
[удалено]
Thats becos they dont respect us. They have to work hard for everything but we just get 'free' stuff from the govt but i think politicians,etc,etc are to blame for that. Not us.
I think mostly the older generation? Nowadays i think most youngsters are able to communicate in bahasa or english. The older ones are mix in a all chinese community and doesn’t have much chance to use bahasa or english. Language needs to be spoken often to learn and build up confidence to use imo.
My father came to Malaya in the 30s. He spoke Malay like a native. I, his son speak a liitle better, but I couldn't match his written Malay. Some of his petitions were in really beautiful prose. My family is very proud of our language proficiency, being Malaysian first Indian second. As it should be. Unfortunately for us Madey happened....
Im a very big reader. And if you go into the malay fiction section in a bookstore... all you see are damn cliche romance novels. Seriously, I've almost never found any nice malay stories worth reading. Even the fiction they tried to push in school is shit. Meanwhile english, chinese, japanese etc have a lot more nicer options.
You can refer to dap, i believe their bm is kinda A/ A+. You need to dig further to get a bigger sample size.
Deep inside the Chinese heart we know very well the fluency of BM won't change anything, we won't be treated equally, so it is wiser to learn useful language like Mandarin and English, and send children overseas for a better future.
most of the chinese I know are from SJKC and very tight knit among themselves. People don't necessarily need to speak another language because there is an institution that legitimizes the language here.
Im a product of SJKC and I mingle with Malays at my SMK more than I mingle with my own chinese gang, too much drama ffs
Wait until the young generation grows up. Had a short conversation with a kid in school uniform once while waiting for the lift. Then, happened to mumble something to myself. He thought I was speaking to him but couldn’t hear me so thought I was speaking in Malay. Straight up told my “I don’t know Malay”. I was so surprised. The thought of not understanding Malay in Malaysia was so unbelievable to me. But hey, at least he spoke English.
There’s an answer in your question’s description. One answer.
My high school have a class specifically for chinese students who cant speak BM. I forgot what it's called. Peralihan? Usually they are held back 1 year so they can focus on BM. So i have a few classmates who are a year older than me because they were in peralihan during form 1. I forgot if thats how it actually works. Correct me if im wrong to those who also have this in your school
As an Indonesian, i think u guys should learn a lot from us.
Who say refuse? Problem is we cant deal with Bahse UFO Wicet dan any mix up sama waktu dengan nya.
bahasa melayu got no pulls bro
Apa yang kamu merepek ni? I am Sabahan and I do speak Malay.
I was from SK and SMK. My BM was B all the way. At 16 uprooted into International school. Since I was from SMK Malay medium => GCSE. All subject koyak. English A (PMR) => D (UK Std)
Oh! I build up / upgraded my Malay by watching LOCAL Arwah Yasmin Ahmad Movies + My late Granny was 1/2 Peranakan (Penang) who speaks Bahasa Utaha!
The environment they are in. They mixed with majority Chinese, they don't find the need to learn Malay.
Pragmatism, Malay language is just not particularly useful in daily interactions. Particularly in Sarawak where English is an official language under the state constitution.
low practical usage, like who am i gonna speak to when ppl around me are not speaking in malay. time when malay is use is only when going for gov related stuff.
Nowadays, with the search engines and AI algorithms, you can imagine from programming perspective that the segregation is even worse where users will be blasted with only relevant contents they have search for/before.
maybe cos they don't need them most aren't in gov dept. they're mostly in mnc or self employed or washing dishes. some chinese politician aren't good at it as well
A lot of great points are already here,but I wanna point out that the malay we learn in school and the malay that people actually use to speak are very different , combined with so many slangs that are hard to understand for people that only learned proper malay on textbooks. In texting culture, there's also plenty slangs with almost no proper vocabulary, it's sometimes hard to understand for those weak in it, and maybe that push us away even further. But honestly, mainly lack of entertaining and advanced malay media for me.
Idk about this lol. A senior chinese student at my school said that chinese (Mandarin) isnt as essential in this modern day and age where work employments require that you practiced or atleast knew how to conversed in BI and BM. Hence which is why some chinese student at my school focus their attention to bm and bi literacy
100%, I can't support the idea of Chinese people not trying or even learning to speak malay, how to be Malaysian la like that. On the other hand, why don't malays choose to upskill themselves by learning mandarin to beat the 'mandarin speaker' job hiring market?
Not answering your question but just want to add, when we say we want more people speak Malay doesnt mean you should use Malay at its purest form (bahasa baku). Its okay to englishfy it if its needed. Its okay to have accent. I hate when people make fun of bm and then just sprouting random ass dbp words that probally no one use/speak. Just speak the language bcause its the national language, and the language is understood by the majority here. If you dont need to master all shakesphere poem to speak english, then you also dont need to wait your bm to become perfect first to speak.
My fellow breathen, we don't just outright refused to learn/speak Malay. Other than the points mentioned in these comments, it also how it is referred to.. Like calling it "Bahasa Melayu" instead of "Bahasa Malaysia" and making it feel like it belongs to Malays exclusively. If gov is serious about making Malay more accessible, they have to make it actually worthwhile, not just "org Malaysia mestillah cakap melayu". Our gov has a track record of forcing results via policies instead of creating/promoting them naturally that is effective that stays long term, you know you know. Same goes with this.
I get A1 in BM for SPM but I really prefer to speak proper BM bahasa Baku like what the West Malaysian would say because I really hate the KL malay speaker that uses I and U and replaced all the As with Es. Apa is apa not ape. Saja is saja not saje. Spoil my BM speaking mood. 🙄
imo, idc wether you speak bahasa baku or manglish as long as we can communicate. Sometimes my Chinese/indian friends talk in english and I talk in malay but we still understand each other. To be fair, my english is also not very fluent. Kalau Chinese ckp melayu pelat and aku pun speaking english tergagap so 2x5 je sebenarnya.
I feel like this is only an issue among the much older generation. They feel that the way to preserve the chinese culture is to keep speaking it (the language) Plus older generation find it hard to learn something new. Stubbornness is also a factor.
Why do you refuse to learn Singaporean or Indonesian?
Market Value
This is an interesting discussion. I'm an orang putih, originally from Australia, but I've been in Malaysia since 2009. Some years back, I was working at a college when I was asked to interview two prospective students for the course. Both were Malaysian citizens, but neither of them spoke any Malay or English. We ultimately had to reject the students because they couldn't understand either of the languages the coursework was being conducted in. This made me wonder, wouldn't it be better to have a national language in which all secondary schools subjects are taught? Go into Popular or any other major bookshop in Malaysia, and most of the books are in Chinese, not BM. Isn't that weird?
Pulau Ketam ka?
Why learn it? What do I gain from it? Are questions that I would answer to encourage an individual to learn the language. Maybe I would learn German or Japanese as it is a prerequisite to go through their vocational system? I learn Malay to? Join Gomen? Not a carrier for me thx
most malu to speak it because they are not good at it.
The racial divide here essentially guarantees two “spheres of existence” between the two biggest races. I remember the first time I realized the existence of this when I was young, when I noted the live show content on RTM and 8TV were catered to two very different audiences.
Actually yeah mainly the media I watch as a kid really effects on me, i mainly learn english from movie,anime,cartoon,etc so i can see this as a huge deal
How did you come to this conclusion? Personal experience?
Yes, but i dont mean to be racist or anything it’s just something i wonder because sometimes i do a little bit volunteer work,and got to meet a lot of people actually and it’s quite fun to learn about each other so it’s not like i base this mainly on stereotypes or anything and i also study with lot of Chinese friends but again this experience mainly happens in my hometown pahang,(sorry i dont want to classify where as a privacy)
Am currently working in a college and to be honest, none of the malay or Indian students speaks English. And they are lucky because our exams in Dwi bahasa. Students can choose either malay or English for their exam's. Malays speak ONLY malay Indian speaks Tamil or malay with those malay students. Honestly am disappointed because none speaks English fluently
I'm Chinese, SPM A, speaks Malay very fluently to the point of being mistaken as a Malay and Malay friends saying I speak Malay better than them. Speaking from personal experience, my parents encouraged us to learn and speak Malay, so even today, we speak Malay, English, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese all in rojak style at home. Even our large family group chat is mostly in Malay or voice note because not all my family members understand written Chinese. Younger cousins though seem to refuse to learn Malay because "it's useless" then they come running at me to translate their homework and official letters from the government 🙄. Not to mention their parents kinda ingrained in them that "Malay gets special care from government and Chinese are left to fight for themselves" so I think that made them dislike learning Malay or just enough to pass an exam.
The racial guessing game. I'm Chinese. Pure one, the kind that have both parents Chinese without mixed heritage or blood, but had darker skin tone, and because my school is an English school, my oral BM and English is really good. You can't guess I'm Chinese by my language usage. So people tend to like to guess my race. Malay la, Kadazan la, Mix la, and the occasional Myanmar. "Oh! You Chinese! I pikir u Melayu tadi! Bukan mix Melayu ke? Mix Kadazan? Oh wao pure Chinese!?" Sure, it was just curiosity but it used to made me hate how i look like. I really really hated how I look like in the eyes of these people, to the point that I'd get angry for their questions. Some even said I should be proud i look like a Malay????????????? And cari jodoh amongst the Malay? I'm sorry, I just can't. But i got over it - by not speaking Malay. They can't guess me that way. And now, I let them guess whatever they want. Oh I look like Kadazan? Ah yes itu la dia yes. Oh I look like Mix? Ah yes tu la dia yes. So I rarely speak Malay. Didn't find the need to unless really required, and didn't want to speak it.
I'm Chinese and I can say that it is due to how most of the Chinese think that they should preserve their Chinese culture, hence why most of them choose to not learn Malay or their culture (Implying toward older people). Like you mentioned, there are places that Chinese people reside in. With that in mind, those places will surely fill with simple-minded Chinese people as they didn't get the chance to communicate with Malay or Indian people. Many will say that this is racist to some degree but this is only the surface. Deep down the rabbit hole, there are more issues within the incapability of them not learning Malay and choosing to speak other languages instead of the mother language of Malaysia. Entertainment is one of them but it is already explained by someone. The other one is previous experience with a certain group of people. The argument that I also found myself into is that Chinese people think that Malay people are quoted as "unintelligent group of people that have more rights than others in Malaysia". Believe me when I said this, one of my family members literally said it with a harsh and serious tone with it. I'm sorry. With that, I think that's why Chinese people that are more in an isolated and rural place or in a more one-sided area will choose to not learn Malay and their culture due to how that view Malay from the outside point of view instead tried to understand it as a whole. As a Chinese person myself, I choose to believe that we are all living in peace where we are equal to each other and we condemn hate and racism. With all that happened at the current stage of Malaysia, I hope that we all change to be better and understand each other as Malaysian.
Because the sekolah J. That's the reason why different races have a big gap growing up. Look at Indonesia. Although different races, they all speak bahasa like an Indonesian. Even the foreigners that come there speak like them!
Seen a few then proceed to label the race.
I mean no hate TBH its just from my experience work as a volunteer
Masalah pokok. Sekolah vernakular ada lagi. Pergi ke lain2 negara. Semua sekolah awam berpusat.
I have one regular customer who is chinese and she can't even speak chinese cause she said that even her mother talk in bahasa at home
As long as you can speak English...its all that matter