Why I'll never use the "English isn't my native language" excuse
You know you're horrible Malay when, upon receiving a document both in English and Malay, you skip to the English section because you glanced over the Malay section and realized you had trouble understanding it.
Okay, it's not as bad as I make it sound. But it's my mother tongue, for goodness's sake. I am proud of it and I like being bilingual. But I've gotten so terrible at it. I can and do still speak it often, but if you give me something written in standard, formal Malay I'll take a longer time to decipher it than I would anything in English. And if I had to write anything in proper Malay, I would probably be screwed. I'm a little scared that ten years down the road I'll pick up a Malay newspaper and realize that I can't understand half of it.
It is sort of sad to think that this is because I use English most of the time, out of necessity, and don't use Malay because it isn't necessary. Even with the other Malay peeps,I speak English most of the time. The idea that my native language may ultimately be useless is quite depressing. And I'm not even living in the US or England or anything - while Singapore, freak of a country that it is, has a Chinese majority, isn't this region called the freaking Malay Archipelago? And I'm already neglecting my Malay because, simply put, I don't need to use it...
It would probably help if I took a little more interest in Malay pop culture or something...*glances at all the Japanese songs on her playlist*
Okay, it's not as bad as I make it sound. But it's my mother tongue, for goodness's sake. I am proud of it and I like being bilingual. But I've gotten so terrible at it. I can and do still speak it often, but if you give me something written in standard, formal Malay I'll take a longer time to decipher it than I would anything in English. And if I had to write anything in proper Malay, I would probably be screwed. I'm a little scared that ten years down the road I'll pick up a Malay newspaper and realize that I can't understand half of it.
It is sort of sad to think that this is because I use English most of the time, out of necessity, and don't use Malay because it isn't necessary. Even with the other Malay peeps,I speak English most of the time. The idea that my native language may ultimately be useless is quite depressing. And I'm not even living in the US or England or anything - while Singapore, freak of a country that it is, has a Chinese majority, isn't this region called the freaking Malay Archipelago? And I'm already neglecting my Malay because, simply put, I don't need to use it...
It would probably help if I took a little more interest in Malay pop culture or something...*glances at all the Japanese songs on her playlist*