Language Loss

The higher your educational background is, the bigger possibility your hometown dialect is getting lost on you. You may disagree but can do nothing cos I myself have been experiencing all this!

 

In Malaysia, like many other countries in the world, has a variety of dialects spoken by Malaysians regardless of which state they come from. 

Diverse dialects notwithstanding, Malaysians still find less difficulty understanding any communication they’re involved in. The most preferable language amongst these varieties is standard Bahasa (or standard Malay). It functions just like a lingua franca and is widely spoken in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. It's also a language which is well understood and accepted by the whole Malaysians, be it in Peninsular Malaysia or even Borneo Island (Sabah and Sarawak)

You know what? This phenomenon is typically undergone by local university students. Seeing that a varsity comprises thousands of students coming from the entire country, like it or not, they’ve no choice to make themselves understood unless to try hard speak standard Bahasa. 

Based on my personal experience, my hometown dialect is dying. Don’t carry out a Terengganuvian dialect test or else I mightn’t pass with flying colours. The purpose of claiming such things doesn’t mean to underestimate the dialect, but just realise that my dialect is now fading away. 

I’m quite positive that I’m still able to interpret certain terms most typically spoken although I’m not used to. Instead, I’d much rather speak standard Malay words. It’s still stuck in my head when a friend of mine corrected me for mentioning a standard Malay word [rosak] for ‘punoh’. 

Presumably I’d see eye to eye about this scenario too. I firmly dare to say that the way one speaks is also affected by their educational background. You can distinguish between the educated and the uneducated, can’t you? Have a think, then. 

I assertively believe that Malay dialects are very unique that much research has been done. I used to find a few books investigating thoroughly about Kelantanese and Terengganuvian dialects. Isn’t this interesting? 

The teaching of Malay literature component at school has engaged me more in gaining new Malay vocabulary I was never familiar to before. Reading Malay short stories [ Cerpen ] for instance, has exposed me with bombastic Malay words and, of course, rarely are they used in spoken Malay. Some words are too classic spoken in the bygone era. At first, I thought the words were wrongly pronounced such as ‘drebar’, ‘payah’ and ‘dan’ as in ‘Tak dan aku nak cuci muka tadi!’. The word ‘dan’ here isn’t a conjunction. 

I’ve no idea whether or not we really should perpetuate our hometown dialect. I’ll leave it to you to evaluate it yourselves. 

Should we ‘Martabatkan Loghat, Mantapkan Bahasa Melayu’ ?

In fact, the government urge us to…

‘Martabatkan Bahasa Melayu, Mantapkan Bahasa Inggeris’