Earlier this week, I was in Bath with some friends. We were waiting for our bus back to Chareeyan’s apartment when I suggested we play a game: we would speak to each other only in Malay until we got home and started playing Monopoly.
(Evidently, we chose that end point because we knew how difficult it would be to play Monopoly in Malay!)


The game was good fun. Yee Ching, who’d been talking SO MUCH – as in more than Jinho-much, which, if you know me, is a lot – suddenly had NOTHING to say. I was amazed. When queried about the change in behaviour, she said with great effort and minute speed, “err… saya tak ada apa-apa nak cakap” – I have nothing to talk about.

A few minutes into this game, I was struck by how significantly language influenced our relationship(s) with one another. We were now speaking more slowly, less naturally and with many sudden gaps as we dug earnestly for evasive words in the recesses of our rusting Malay vocab-banks. Our effortless flow of thoughts, emotions, opinions, feelings and humour now seemed like a sputtering junk car hobbling along a gravel road.

That was how we felt, just trying to engage in “small talk”. Imagine what it was like when we started talking (or trying to talk) about politics and religion.

Interesting, how the 5* of us, all of whom got A1 for SPM Malay, were now rendered verbally (and relationally) retarded by having to speak in Malay.


We gave up, sort of. And resorted instead to a “peribahasa challenge” – quoting Malay proverbs in succession until only the winning player remained. That, too, was quite good fun!!

Perhaps I am exaggerating slightly, and my friends with me that evening can correct me on some of the (humiliating) details on the comments page. But I’m sure that many Malaysians can relate at least a little bit to the gist of what I just shared. How many times have we found ourselves with another Malaysian from a different race and found it difficult to relate? As Zhi Wei once put it:

The best instance I can ask you to imagine is to picture yourself among a group of strangers, or people you are unfamiliar with. Assume that everything else is constant, and the only variable is race. Who would you first talk to, honestly? Where do your natural instincts ask you to go? Is it someone of another race, or is it someone of your own?

The problem that this produces is minimal communication between races, as we prefer to stay within our own language-groups. This means limited closeness, as we hang out together less and are not able to freely express ourselves to one another. This distancing places an uncertainty about each other, making it difficult to build trust – as we tend to trust the people we know.

The result? When an inter-racial issue arises, we tend to see it through unsympathetic lenses. If we’re from one particular race, it’s natural for us to initially look at an issue from the perspective of that race. And that’s perfectly fine, because we need to look at how the issue affects us personally. But if we’re only hanging out within our own racial or linguistic groups, then it would be unlikely for us to also see the issue through the eyes of those outside our groups – simply because we don’t know what it is like to be outside that group. How can we appreciate the different culture, values, attitudes, struggles, faith and hopes of people we have minimal contact with?

Shall we be informed solely by the media, which tends to oversimplify deeply rooted matters and select extreme opinions? Or shall we seek to understand the other races by superficial, argumentative discussions with peers? Or are we getting to know individuals from other races on a personal level?

But how can we get closer to those we barely communicate with? And how can we communicate more if our Malay is so rusty we can barely be the same person when conversing in that language?

I’m not saying that English is to be sidelined and that Malaysians should only interact in Malay. Or that we should only interact outside our first-language groups. But Malay is our national language and it’s the common tongue among most of our population. If Malaysians want better lives, a necessary (though insufficient) element is a better country. And to build a better country, we need unity among the rakyat. Of course, relationships are based on non-language factors too, such as common interests, experiences, circumstances, etc. But as the experience of my friends and I back at Bath showed, even existing close relationships can be severely limited by a language barrier.

Justeru, kita perlu berusaha untuk bercakap dalam Bahasa Malaysia. Boleh, tak?


*myself, Chareeyan, Wei Jie, Voonhui, Yee Ching. Chareeyan's Malay was actually ok, but the rest of us...