Manglish / Malgish

Variant of colloquial English spoken in Malaysia. The language shares a substantial pool with Singlish, some experts claim they are the same languages with a few slang words found in one and non-existent in another.

Malay is the country’s official language since 1968. As English is widely spoken, many Malay words penetrated into informal English or Mangled English. The impact of other languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, Hokkien) spoken in Malaysia is also taken into account.

Many speakers of Manglish belonging to various ethnic groups tend to pepper their speech with the words from their mother tongue which is the example of code-switching

Manglish particles

l Lah – used in the end of the sentence to affirm a statement which often ends with an exclamation mark Don’t be an idiot lah! Mah – less intensive than lah

She’s like that mah

l Liao - means ‘ already’ No more liao!

l Meh – used in questions, often skeptical Really meh

l Lor - used when explaining smth Like that lor!

l One - used as an emphasis in the end of the sentence Why is she so naughty one?

l What - unlike AE & BrE is used with an exclamation mark

What! How could you do that?

Manglish Vocabulary

Kapster – a talkative person

Blur – confused

Jalan – to walk

Kena – to get caught

Makan – to eat

Minum – to drink

On/ off - to activate/ deactivate

Pon – to skip school

Saman – to issue a traffic ticket

HP (handphone) - mobile/ cell phone

KIV – keep in view - keep for further consideration

Outstation - out of town/ overseas

MC – He is on MC today (medical certificate) - sick note

Can - yes/ alright

Cannot - no

Photostat - photocopy, Xerox

Different meanings

l Driver - a personal chauffeur/ odd job man, often sent on errand

l Alphabet – a letter of alphabet (The word ‘vase’ has four alphabets.

Exclamations in Manglish

l Best/ syok – indicates that the object is superlatively good, Die/ finish/ gone – to indicate trouble like English ‘damn it’

l Many things were borrowed from Chinese dialects: Why are you so like that one? =

Why are you behaving in that way? (BrE)