10 most commonly used Manglish that only Malaysian will understand

1. My one
When someone tells you that something belongs to her, she is likely to say, “This is my one!”

2. Gostan

You want to park your car in the porch. As you reverse your car, your father directs you: “Gostan, gostan some more!”

3. Chop
This one is even more interesting. When you need to put the company stamp and your signature on a document, your colleague will remind you to “chop" and sign it.

4. Action
If you like to show off your wealth, you’ll probably get snide remarks like, “This fella (fellow) is very action one!”

5. Cook myself
If your friend declines your offer to eat out, she might say to you, “I will cook myself tonight.”

6. Kena sound
Your colleague shows a long face after a meeting with her boss, and you ask her why. She tells you, “I just kena sound from the boss.”

7. Terror
A friend helps you solve a complicated mathematical problem. You exclaim in awe, “Wah! You so terror lah!”

8. No Eyes See
You have very low expectations of the term paper that you have just submitted. You are very sure of it, so you tell your coursemate, “I no eyes see already!”

9. Tackle

If you tell your buddy that you like a particular girl, he may encourage you to go and "tackle" her.

10. Blur
You suffer a temporary lapse of judgement and can't seem to think straight. Your friends say to you teasingly, “You blur blur one.”

On and Off

It's not uncommon for Malaysians to say, "Please on the light", or, "Don't forget to off the fan." 

The words 'on' and 'off' are used as verbs in the two examples above. This is ungrammatical. If 'on' and 'off' can be used as verbs, then the following should be correct: 

1. "I am onning the light right now."	- 'onning': continuous (progressive) tense of 'on'
2. "I offed the fan just a minute ago."	- 'offed': past tense of 'off'

But they are not - because 'on' and 'off' are not verbs, and do not have tenses.

We use 'on' as a preposition ("The book is on the table"), an adjective ("The debate was on when we arrived"), or an adverb ("He looked on while others worked").

Similarly, we use 'off' as a preposition ("The ball is off the ground"), an adjective ("The other party can't come, so the debate is off"), or an adverb ("He ran off with the money when no one was looking").

But we don't use 'on' and 'off' as verbs.

So, don't say, "Please on the light." Say, "Please turn on the light."

Don't say, "Don't forget to off the fan." Say, "Don't forget to switch off the fan."  

What's up?

I found this interesting write-up from the Internet about the word "up". The write-up is replicated on several websites, the following being just two of them: 

	http://wordinfo.info/unit/3039?letter=P&spage=12
	http://www.digitaltermpapers.com/b2809.htm

I don't know the original source, so I'm unable to give due credit to the author. The write-up is reproduced verbatim below, warts and all:

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'up'. It's easy to understand up, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake up? At a meeting, why does a topic come up? Why do we speak up and why are the officers up for election and why is it up to the secretary to write up a report? We call up our friends. We brighten up a room, polish up the silver; we warm up the leftovers and clean up the kitchen. We lock up the house and some guys fix up the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning: People stir up trouble, line up for tickets, work up an appetite, and think up excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed up is special. A drain must be opened up because it is stopped up. We open up a store in the morning but we close it up at night. We seem to be pretty mixed up about up! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of up, look the word up  in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes up almost 1/4th of the page and can add up to about thirty definitions. If you are up to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways  up is used. It will take up a lot of your time, but if you don't give up , you may wind up with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding  up. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing up. When it rains, the wets the earth and often messes things  up. When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry  up. I could go on and on, but I'll wrap it up, for now my time is up  so ... it is time to shut  up!

Can you think of other ways the word  up is used?

Pronunciation gone awry...

The other day, I heard a newsreader use the word "awry" while reading the news on television. She pronounced the word as "awe-ree": /ˈɔ:ri/. I believe that's also how the majority of Malaysians pronounce the word.

Be honest, now - how do you pronounce it?

The correct pronunciation is "a-rye":  /əˈraɪ/.

When is a bungalow not a bungalow?

In Malaysia, a 'bungalow' is a large detached house, often with more than one storey. The operative word here is 'large'. Sure, we have mansions in Malaysia, but we hardly call them that - they are all huge bungalows. We of modest means often look at bungalow-dwellers with some envy, and bungalow-dwellers are understandably proud that they live in such grand houses.

An Englishman, however, would probably speak with more than some humility when he admits to living in a bungalow. That's because to an Englishman, a bungalow is not the abode of the rich. A bungalow is a low detached house having only one storey (Oxford Dictionary definiton). 

It's perhaps unfortunate that Malaysians associate bungalows with the rich. This opens up many opportunities for the word to be misused, mangled and corrupted. The property development fraternity is especially guilty of this: pamphlets abound that unabashedly advertise double-storey bungalows, 3-storey bungalows, semi-detached bungalows, linked bungalows, cluster bungalows, zero-lot bungalows - the list goes on. There are even 'sky bungalows' reported to be under development in Penang. I can only hazard a guess that these are 'bungalows' built on top of high-rise buildings.

So, when is a bungalow not a bungalow? Actually, we should rephrase it thus: When is [a house that is] not a bungalow a bungalow? When it is in Malaysia.

Note

Origin of the word: late 17th century, from Hindi baṅglā, meaning 'belonging to Bengal', referring to a type of cottage (in the style of a Bengal house) built for early European settlers in Bengal. 

To b or not to b?

Most Malaysians would've learnt about silent letters in school and are probably familiar with silent 'k' words (e.g. knife, knee, knight, knack, knob), silent 'p' words (e.g. psychic, pneumonia, pneumatic, psalm, pseudonym), and silent 'g' words (e.g. gnash, gnu, gnarl, gnaw, gnat).

There are many other silent letters, of course (practically all the letters of the alphabet are silent in some words), but one letter I think many Malaysians fail to keep silent when required is the letter 'b'.

In all of the following words, the 'b' is silent:
  

	aplomb	/əˈplɒm/
	bomb	/bɒm/
	catacomb	/ˈkætəˌkoʊm/
	climb	/klaɪm/
	comb	/koʊm/
	crumb	/krʌm/
	debt	/dɛt/
	doubt	/daʊt/
	dumb	/dʌm/
	jamb	/dʒæm/
	lamb	/læm/
	limb	/lɪm/
	numb	/nʌm/
	plumber	/ˈplʌmər/
	subtle	/ˈsʌtl/
	succumb	/səˈkʌm/
	thumb	/θʌm/
	tomb	/tum/
	womb	/wum/

Are you guilty of not keeping the 'b' silent when pronouncing the words above?

Me and I

Some years ago, I heard a jingle for an air conditioner over the radio.

The last line for the jingle went like this:

"Brand X, for a healthier you and I."

That line is grammatically incorrect. It should be:

"Brand X, for a healthier you and me."

Do you know why "me" should be used instead of "I"?

Here's the answer:

"for" required the object form of the pronoun. The object form of the pronoun "I" is "me".

If we remove "you" from the sentence, leaving only the first person "I", we can notice the mistake better:

"...for a healthier I."  --> Incorrect

"...for a healthier me."  --> Correct