I was about this age in the picture when I referred to my mother as “she” in English. The exact words to my father were “What colour plate does she want to use?”. He shot me a strange, stern look and told me to “speak properly”. Puzzled, I wondered what was wrong with my sentence. Was it the grammar? Did I mispronounce something? My father saw the confusion on my face and he cleared it up for me. He explained to me that the way I asked was impolite to my mother. Now, that made me even more puzzled. Rather, what I was supposed to say was “What colour plate does Ibu want to use?” or “Ibu nak guna pinggan warna apa?”

At 6 years old then, I knew what pronouns were and how they worked in the English language. We both knew “she” referred to my mother, the only other female person in the house. Pronouns did not work the same way in Malay, though, the other language we used at home. It concerns hierarchy, social distance and formality. Unfortunately, my poor sweet father was unable to find the words to simplify these complex systems for a very young child. He did not know how to explain the concept of adapting pronoun use in English to accommodate its nuanced usage in Malay. I was already fluent in both Malay and English but had yet to learn the unique position occupied by many multilingual speakers – to navigate the cultures attached to these languages as their rules bleed into each other, in a household where both exist simultaneously.

The understanding came with time as I eavesdropped on more conversations between my family members among themselves and their friends. From these observations, I learnt the unspoken rules that govern English-Malay bilingualism – illeism, modified syntax, and other things I have yet to place the name to the concept.

I finally understood how my father felt when my 5-year-old cousin pointed at me, squarely in the face, and said to his brother, “I don’t want her to come to our house” as I shovelled away the walking hazard of Lego bricks he scattered on the kitchen floor in his little game. His teenage brother looked at him horrified, “That’s not nice! Why do you not want Kakak to come to our house?”

I was not upset, but rather amused at how the passage of time has gone full circle as another young and confused child is introduced to the intricacies of multilingualism.

This post was written by our intern, Irdina. Irdina is a 3rd Year student majoring in English Literature and speaks English and Malay.

Multilingual Memories is a collection of stories about our experiences learning language growing up as a bi- or multilingual! Childhood is when most of us start learning languages, and we think that it would be fun to reminisce about those memories together. Want to read more Multilingual Memories? Click here!

At BLIP Lab, we’re keen on investigating these language mixes at home! If you have a child between the ages of 0-4 years old, we’d love to invite you on our journey to understand more about this. Click here to know more about the Baby Talk-a-thon: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/blip/baby/talkathon/

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