Malay and Me

Well, it has been quite a long time since the last time I posted something here! Anyway, what you’ve just read is totally right, it’s not ‘Marley and Me’, it’s ‘Malay and Me’. I’ll tell you things I went through and felt because of the existence of Bahasa Melayu in my life.

I have known Bahasa Melayu since primary school. There was this monthly bulletin that my family get from the committee in my neighborhood. Once, there was a list of words and phrases in Bahasa Melayu, and as an Indonesian society we always have this tendency to compare Bahasa Melayu with Bahasa Indonesia. That list mentioned that the Bahasa Melayu of toilet is ‘bilik merenung’.  I laughed like there was no tomorrow. But now I know that it was wrong, the Bahasa Melayu of toilet is ‘tandas’. It's not that funny anymore.

When I was in junior high school, a cartoon show from Malaysia, entitled Upin and Ipin, went booming. Some of my friends even imitated the characters from Upin and Ipin saying ‘Selamat pagi cikgu!’ which means ‘Good morning teacher!’ and there was this one boy from my class who often said ‘Macam mana?’ which means ‘How?’. Those words seem and sound somewhat familiar and funny in our ears at that time. 

Besides Upin and Ipin, I personally liked to watch Disney’s Waktu Rehat. The language was quite simple, only a bit fast. Indonesia, being a neighboring country of Malaysia, would surely have a lot of language similarities with Malaysia. That was why I could still understand the conversation in the series. Bahasa Melayu at that time was something really fun.

After 2 years of enjoying myself in junior high, the time came for me to move to my current school in Singapore. It is compulsory for me to take Higher Mother Tongue. Living in Indonesia for like almost for the whole of my life (before coming to Singapore, of course) has made my Chinese really, really bad. So, my only choice is Higher Malay or you can say ‘Bahasa Melayu Lanjutan’. At first, I was excited to learn this language. I thought that it was going to be fun, as in this subject would be the easiest subject of all. I WAS WRONG, I was completely wrong.

I admit that I don’t really like studying language, but I never get scared of it. I suck in English, you can see it from my grammatical mistakes I made and the wrong tense that I used, but I still love using it somehow.  Anyway, after two meetings with our beloved ‘cikgu’, I realized how scary and frightening a language could be. Our first assignment was making a three-page-long dialogue; this was something that I had never done even in Bahasa Indonesia.  Few days later, I felt like I was the stupidest person in the world when I got back my paper. It was like the biggest failure in my life. My heart sunk, I couldn’t believe it. Bahasa Melayu was definitely not in my favour.

There are a lot of differences between Malay and Indonesian. 

Malay	Indonesian
kerana	karena
bahawa	bahwa
berbeza	berbeda
loceng	lonceng
nuklear	nuklir
rosak	rusak
aktiviti	aktivitas

These are just a FEW differences between Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia. And this kind of mistakes is the ones that pull my mark down. Don’t you think that this is very ridiculous?

I thought that my Bahasa Melayu would improve as the time goes by. Again, I was wrong! Until this month, I have not been able to pass most of my Bahasa Melayu assignments. I have been the lowest in class since term 1. This was embarrassing. I said ‘was’ because I am not embarrassed anymore, it’s more like depressed.  Recently I put my best effort in making an essay; it took me about 5 hours to do it. I tried my best not to put any linguistic mistake anymore. A week after I handed in that essay assignment, my cikgu finally gave it back. I FAILED AGAIN. I broke down; I couldn’t take it anymore.

Bahasa Melayu had caused my happiness and despair. However, it doesn’t stop there; it has crushed my dream into pieces. I had a dream school. After the O-levels I wanted to go to ACS(I) if my results allow me to. ACS(I) requires high marks to get in. That is why I tried my best to do well in every subject in order to achieve this dream. But then, one of my classmates told me that taking Mother Tongue is compulsory in ACS(I). In the end, I was discouraged to go there. I don’t want to face that language anymore. I don’t want to live in misery just because of one language. I’m not even a Malaysian, why should I care about Malay? Even some Malaysians don’t really use Bahasa Melayu. I think after O-levels I will abandon all my Malay things.

Then, I thought about my Bahasa Indonesia. When I was still a student in Indonesia, I also hated it because I think that it was useless to study things that people don’t really care in real life. Now, I love Bahasa Indonesia much more than Bahasa Melayu, I hate Bahasa Melayu from the bottom of my heart. Well, as David said in the Chrysalids, ‘The ways of the world were very puzzling.’

So, this is the story of my relationship with Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Do you think that I can ‘befriend’ Malay? Well, I think Malay and I are not destined to be together.