I'm a language coach and I ALWAYS use the example of the average Malaysian person as a response when my clients claim they "don't have space" for a foreign language in their head. It's a bit of a lazy excuse – if so many ordinary people in Malaysia manage, so will they!
And you just confirmed this to me.
I'll share your piece with my clients 💜 (and if you're ok with it, maybe also talk about it on my LinkedIn someday)
A fellow malaysian here with a slight difference in background. Learned
1. Hainanese (mother tongue) while living with our grandparent during childhood
2. English for schooling at Canossian Convent (some form of christian missionary school)
3. Malay being the government official language & a compulsory subject if you hope to pursure higher education in national university
4. Mandarin cause dad said we got to learn our chinese history & culture or at the least understand when being scold & to argue back when being call a banana 😅
5. Cantonese for working in Kuala Lumpur where during the 90’s, cantonese are still widely spoken in office environment. Was once told-off by colleague (a cantonese mind you) that being in KL, I should speak in cantonese & not english only. So I pickup my 5th language due to peer pressure (survival mode)
6. Hokkien in order to communicate with uncles that my aunties married to
7. Hakka in order to communicate with maternal grandmother who only speak Hakka
We not only switch between languages, depending who we meet, we even greet same race in another language eg Selamat Pagi when a chinese see another chinese 😅 without a second thought. When oversea, we will speak in Malay to communicate among us (safe-guard reason)
Its a wonder that we are not confuse ourself 🙏 for being brought up in such a multi-lingual & multi-culture society & environment structure 🤣🤣
This ability to switch between languages is something we do take for granted, don't we? And I only know two (English and Filipino), and I only write really well in one!
(I suppose I'd know a third language if I grew up elsewhere in the Philippines.)
Fellow multilingual here! We are so lucky to be Malaysians and lucky to be able to pick up all these languages by just "growing up" in the environment that allows us! When I learn my first ever foreign language as an adult, German, and struggled, I truly treasure all the gifts of languages I was given when I was young. Hence now I am trying my best now to pass on to my children, as many languages as I possibly can.
And the art of code switching is quite unique to us! Even here in Germany, where the natives all speak good English, they don't code switch as easily with these languages.
People who live in multilingual and multicultural societies and switch between several languages daily is a living proof that learning another language (or many) doesn't have anything to do with talent, like many Americans think.
I'm a Brit living in the US, two essentially monolingual cultures right there. But, I lived in Holland for 6 years, and at the time was bilingual. That was 35 years ago, so I'm a little rusty. I've just found a couple of Dutch Substacks, so I've been reading and even commenting.
I've also at various times been functional in French, German, and Spanish. Of course, these are all indoeuropean languages. My hat is off to you for speaking four languages across three language families and two scripts!
I'm a language coach and I ALWAYS use the example of the average Malaysian person as a response when my clients claim they "don't have space" for a foreign language in their head. It's a bit of a lazy excuse – if so many ordinary people in Malaysia manage, so will they!
And you just confirmed this to me.
I'll share your piece with my clients 💜 (and if you're ok with it, maybe also talk about it on my LinkedIn someday)
A fellow malaysian here with a slight difference in background. Learned
1. Hainanese (mother tongue) while living with our grandparent during childhood
2. English for schooling at Canossian Convent (some form of christian missionary school)
3. Malay being the government official language & a compulsory subject if you hope to pursure higher education in national university
4. Mandarin cause dad said we got to learn our chinese history & culture or at the least understand when being scold & to argue back when being call a banana 😅
5. Cantonese for working in Kuala Lumpur where during the 90’s, cantonese are still widely spoken in office environment. Was once told-off by colleague (a cantonese mind you) that being in KL, I should speak in cantonese & not english only. So I pickup my 5th language due to peer pressure (survival mode)
6. Hokkien in order to communicate with uncles that my aunties married to
7. Hakka in order to communicate with maternal grandmother who only speak Hakka
We not only switch between languages, depending who we meet, we even greet same race in another language eg Selamat Pagi when a chinese see another chinese 😅 without a second thought. When oversea, we will speak in Malay to communicate among us (safe-guard reason)
Its a wonder that we are not confuse ourself 🙏 for being brought up in such a multi-lingual & multi-culture society & environment structure 🤣🤣
This ability to switch between languages is something we do take for granted, don't we? And I only know two (English and Filipino), and I only write really well in one!
(I suppose I'd know a third language if I grew up elsewhere in the Philippines.)
Fellow multilingual here! We are so lucky to be Malaysians and lucky to be able to pick up all these languages by just "growing up" in the environment that allows us! When I learn my first ever foreign language as an adult, German, and struggled, I truly treasure all the gifts of languages I was given when I was young. Hence now I am trying my best now to pass on to my children, as many languages as I possibly can.
And the art of code switching is quite unique to us! Even here in Germany, where the natives all speak good English, they don't code switch as easily with these languages.
People who live in multilingual and multicultural societies and switch between several languages daily is a living proof that learning another language (or many) doesn't have anything to do with talent, like many Americans think.
Didn't know you spent time in Johor. As a kid, I spent most of my school holidays there
Switching languages from one to another and...another is indeed great :D
This just reinforces my desire to return to my studies and to learn another language! Thank you for sharing!
I’m quite impressed with how multilingual people in Malaysia. And it’s not just the number of languages, but the number of language families.
I'm a Brit living in the US, two essentially monolingual cultures right there. But, I lived in Holland for 6 years, and at the time was bilingual. That was 35 years ago, so I'm a little rusty. I've just found a couple of Dutch Substacks, so I've been reading and even commenting.
I've also at various times been functional in French, German, and Spanish. Of course, these are all indoeuropean languages. My hat is off to you for speaking four languages across three language families and two scripts!