Missing Manglish

It's strange how being away from home affects me. Whilst in KL, I often got mistaken as a tourist, simply because my inflection wasn't apparent. Lately though, I'd go heavy on it at every opportunity (read: when meeting AG and Min Wye). Friends marvel how I've contracted a Malaysian accent in spite of my current location.

What constitutes a Malaysian accent? To me, it's the additonal affixtures at the end of the sentence. The occasional reversal of sentence structure. The substitution of words/ phrases in a different language/ dialect when you can't think of it in whatever tongue you were speaking in (You ingat I siow ah? - Do you think I'm crazy?). The accents shifts to accommodate your audience. People in my close social circles are mainly English speaking, with most of them overseas-educated. As a result, I've picked up a little bit of everything from everywhere.

I'd never given too much thought to my own speech but here, it's been pointed out at least once a week I have an American accent. People even go as far as, "Were you raised in the States?" It's especially amusing since I've never stepped foot in the country. Fellow Malaysians tell me it's pretty common, since we were all raised on a diet of American television. Toh-may-toh, not toh-mah-toh.

My personal theory is, that all Malaysians have a inbuilt colloquialism quota. When you're surrounded by your own kind, you tend to speak at your most natural. In my case, that would be English with the odd Malay/ Hokkien/ Tamil word thrown in. And maybe some wans and lahs too. However, X still can't digest anything more than a little bad grammar. He and my mother are slowly beginning to understand each other, but it goes without saying our communication remains slang-free.

Therefore I'm completely fertile with pent up colloquialisms by the time I do meet people who understand sentences like Dun want lah, so ma fan or So sien talking to this guy, bodoh sial. The latent slangs rise from every cell in my body and exude from my pores.

And then I fire.