Malaysians feel with their livers: and other funny things about Malaysians and their language

So this is just a fun post of random observations about Malaysian culture and language.  Nothing is supposed to be negative.  If it seems like I’m making fun, well, I am, but Malaysians would readily agree with what I am saying and find it funny, too.

• In English, we use say feelings come from our “hearts,” though we know they don’t literally.  Feelings come from our brains.  In Malay, however, instead of “heart” they say “hati,” which literally means “liver.”  Funny organ to feel with.  Heart is actually “jantung.”
• Malaysia has lots of great fruits.  So maybe they use “buah” (fruit) in combination with so many other words to give them new meaning.  Here are a few examples (this gets a little raunchy, so be forewarned):
• Buah Hati–Fruit of Heart (ok, actually “liver”)–a girlfriend or boyfriend
• Buah Fikiran–Fruit of Thinking–an idea
• Buah Dada–Fruit of the Chest–breasts
• Buah Zakar–Fruit of the Penis–testicles
• Sandwiches leave a lot to be desired in Malaysia because it’s a rice culture.  Lots of times you’ll just get two pieces of bread with margarine and a kind of coconut and egg spread (better than it sounds).  That’s called “roti kahwin,” which literally means “married bread.”
• Malay is heavily influenced by English because of the long British rule here.  So there are a lot of English words in Malay.  But in Malay, verbs have to have a prefix and/or suffix for them to be used properly, so you get a lot of funny sounding English words with goofy prefixes.  Here a few examples (aggressively roll your r’s to get maximum hilarity):
• Berbuli–to bully someone
• Berjoging–to go jogging
• Bersnorkel–to go snorkeling
• Speaking of jogging, Malaysian jogging is amusing.  Malaysians are pretty lazy.  And they’ll admit that, so I’m not being mean by saying that.  Look at any of their sports teams.  And the most popular sport here is probably ping-pong–not exactly a workout.  I understand, too–it’s way to hot and humid to do any serious physical activity.  So when people go “berjoging” here,  it actually means running for about 2 minutes and then walking for 10.  Repeat this process for about 1/2 an hour.  When I’ve gone jogging with a few Malaysians, they are very confused and upset when don’t stop.
• Malay has a unique syllable that gets thrown in almost anywhere in a sentence.  ”Lah.”  It comes at the end of a word–almost any word.  It  doesn’t really have any meaning.  I sort of emphasizes the word, but that’s about it.  There’s no equivalent in English, so don’t try to find one.  It’s like saying “I want to go to the mall-lah.”  ”Yeah-lah, I want to go, too.” “I want to buy some new shoes-lah.”  It’s sounds really funny (at least to me).  And when they speak English, they’ll still use “lah” anywhere they would in Malay, which drives me insane.
• Unique to Sabah, in addition to “lah” they’ll throw in “bah.”  This has even less meaning than “lah.”  A popular Sabahan phrase is “Can-bah, if it’s you.”  They’ll even throw both of them in together: “Yeah-lah-bah.”
• Another thing unique to Sabah is “anu,” which is like saying “hmmm…”  What makes it funny though is that is sounds like a word.  Unlike “hmmm…,” which sticks out and is clearly not a word because it’s hummed, “anu” will be thrown in the middle of the sentence and you can’t tell if was meant to mean something or just a thought pause.  They will combine this with “bah” or “lah,” too.  For example, “anu-bah itu.”  The only word that has any meaning in that phrase is “itu,” which means “that” or “those.”  So it’s just a silly way of saying “that one” or “those.”
• One more thing unique to Sabah, and especially the area I am, is that when they don’t know how to make a proper verb for what they mean, they’ll add “kasih” in front of the verb, which literally means “love.”  For example, instead of “Weigh the paper down so it doesn’t blow away,” they’ll say “Love weight the paper down…”  Or instead of “Dry out the towels” they’ll say “Love dry the towels.”  Or instead of “Teach him how,” they’ll say “Love learn him how.”  Stuff like that.

Well, this wasn’t particularly reflective, but I hope you at least found it entertaining.  I head to Indonesia today to renew my visa.  I’ll be gone for one week in the Jakarta area with the other Malaysia YAGMs, our country coordinator, and her family.  Chinese New Year starts on Valentine’s Day, and that’s big deal.  I’ll be sure to blog about that and hopefully get some good pictures of Indonesia and CNY on my blog for you.  Hope all is well with all of you.  Peace be with you.

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