ABUSE OF ENGLISH

MANGLING THE LANGUAGE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

We often encounter MANGLISH in our everyday life, but do we have to tolerate it??
CMON lah you all, can you all faster decide lah. This was part of a dialogue in a
kopitiam TV commercial. Hearing locals speaking like this is now very common.
Welcome to the very interesting and intriguing world of MANGLISH.
Malaysia is, as everyone already knows, a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-custom and
multi-cultural country and one can always tell which community a person belongs to
from the way he or she speaks.
Alamak, ayoyo, adoi, apa nama, apa ni, alah, alahai etc, and suffixes mah, kan,
one, and the perennial and lovable lah are now almost always heard in Manglish.
One-word sentences are also heard often when MANGLISH is used: can, cannot,
go, come, and short phrases, questions and sentences such as Can or not?, Want
or dont want?, Go or not?, Come or not?, Also can one, etc. However, some of
these examples, such as go and come, are perfect when used as sentences on their
own as far as English is concerned.
On the switch (Please put on the switch), Off the switch (Please put off the switch),
and Keep and touch (Keep in touch) are some instructions and phrases we commonly
hear too, especially among young people.
Open, closed and sale are words commonly used in notices and advertisements
and many use them wrongly by adding ed to open, omitting the ed from closed or
adding an s to sale. Regardless of the number of stores in a shopping complex
offering lower prices on their goods, it should be year-end sale and not year-end
sales.
English words are also mixed with Malay. Suasana glam was used at the recent
Anugerah Industri Muzik by MC Awal Asyari to refer to the glamorous event.
Radio ERA runs a very popular and delightfully funny series hosted by the effervescent
Aznil Hj Nawawi on weekday mornings. Its called Can I Help You?
The concept of the show is that it makes pranks calls to unsuspecting people (their
numbers are supplied by friends) to ask about products and services. This is done in
impeccable English and with a British accent by someone named Haniff. Most of the
people called cannot speak English properly but they have to because Haniff acts as if
he does not understand Malay at all. You can imagine the MANGLISH that you will hear
over the airwaves! That show always makes my day. But I think, May I help you?
would be a better and more polite tagline.
In MANGLISH, I also find that speakers do not pay attention to grammar and the most
common mistakes are: not differentiating between present tense and past tense,
singular and plural, and spelling errors.
Even with the numerous constructive ideas and suggestions put forth by various
interested and knowledgeable parties on the poor standard of English in the country, I
notice that the problem has still not been properly addressed by the people responsible
for formulating our education policies.
We see examples all the time. A notice at a mobile phone kiosk at Larkin Bus Terminal
in Johor uses cut for card. Even food stall sometime you find these kinds of words
flied lice or one ton mee?
So do we need to tolerate this misuses of the ENGLISH language or just let it be??
Anyway it is MANGLISH and like they say Anyhow oso can.