Today I:
-Had dim sum in a Chinese restaurant in Pavilion. I ordered food in Cantonese.
-Ordered a jelly birthday cake for Shorty (cuz she doesn’t eat normal cake) at a bakery. Spoke Malay to the really nice salesgirl who took a long time helping me decide which was the right cake.
-Went to Low Yat in the afternoon, bought a new laptop. Spoke English to the sales person there about Windows vs Mac.
– Ended up in the gym before dinner. Chit chat a little bit with one of the staff there in Malay about the parking in the building.
All the people I spoke to today were Malaysians. Sometimes we take these little things for granted. How all of us speak at least 2 languages and how we switch between languages like its our second nature when speaking to other fellow Malaysians. Think about how you know what language to speak to another Malaysian when you see him/her. If you’re a Japanese in Japan and you want to speak to another Japanese, you speak Japanese. If you’re American, you speak English. What about if you’re Malaysian? English doesn’t always work, neither does Chinese or Tamil (and for some of us Malay isn’t our first language).
Sometimes you find immediately that other person speaks English just as well as you do. Sometimes though that person doesn’t… then you try to switch to another language you think that person is better in (even if you’re weaker in that other language) whether it’s Chinese or Malay until you both find a common language you’re both comfortable with.
I’ve never seen this linguistic culture among people of the same nationality anywhere else in the world. It’s amazing how we embrace our differences and unconsciously make so much effort to blend in with each other without realizing how much we do. We talk about 1Malaysia, we talk about tolerance. Look hard enough at the little things we do each day and I think you’ll see plenty of that. Sometimes we just forget to stop and look at what we have.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space