My mother is a second-generation Malaysian immigrant, while my father is a second-generation Javanese immigrant. Naturally, my first language is English. Growing up, my parents communicated with me in a mixture of English and Malay, with certain Javanese words peppered in for flavour. Even though my father speaks fluent Javanese, he is the last of his generation to do so, and the language skill further deteriorated with my generation, with my personal vocabulary bank of less than 50 words.
Said Javanese vocabulary bank includes important child-oriented words such as “bobok” (sleep/nap) and “lengket” (sweaty). Other words include numbers one to six, while the number five is lost to memory. The Malay language fared better in terms of personal retention, however. While my parents would primarily communicate with me in a mixture of English and Malay, my responses would only be in English.
Due to the linguistic imperialism that affects most of us growing up, my primary media consumption was a mix of British books and American shows and movies. While one would discount it as a small aspect of a child’s linguistic journey in comparison to direct communication with peers and family, as an introverted child, it apparently formed my primary language and inner voice.
Growing up, my day-care providers were my grandparents, with the aid of a domestic helper from Indonesia. My parents had hired the domestic helper in hopes that she would communicate with me in Bahasa, while my grandparents were instructed to only communicate with me in Malay. This was in hopes of strengthening my Malay skills, but that approach did not work out as planned, as I would still respond in English, in turn strengthening their English communication skills instead.
Entering primary school, I was exposed to formal Malay, otherwise referred to as Bahasa Baku, a method of formal Malay pronunciation devised from pronouncing words exactly as they were written. While many consider this form of Malay awkward and unnatural, it was much easier for me to digest and use, with the simplified one-letter-one-sound system. Through school, I was also exposed to other Malay children of my age, although we did still communicate mostly in English. My written Malay excelled, as although my productive vocabulary was stunted, my receptive vocabulary worked perfectly fine. From there, I simply answered questions in English in my mind, and translated them before writing them down.
Up until National Service, I was not properly exposed to a fully Malay speaking community. During NS, for the first time, I had to exercise my productive vocabulary in order to fit in. This improved it significantly, albeit in the colloquial version of the language. Thus, while I am technically proficient in both written and spoken Malay, I learned them both separately, the former in an English-tinged formal sense, and the latter in a more localised manner. From my travels, I have found that I am also technically proficient in spoken Bahasa Indonesia, due to the linguistic similarities of the two varieties.
This post was written by Wiranto, our #SGUnited Intern. Wiranto is a 2nd year Psychology and Linguistics student and speaks English and Malay.
At the Brain, Language, and Intersensory Perception Lab (BLIP), we investigate how learning particular languages might shape the way we experience our world. In Singapore, this is especially interesting since most of us grew up speaking or hearing more than one language. We thought it’d be fun and interesting to capture these memories of learning language!