In happier times wakakaka a couple of years back, I penned an article
for the Centre for Policy Initiatives (CPI), titled London is cultural Mecca for M’sian English speakers? In
that article I discussed the snobbery of the English speaking middle class
Malaysians (and I didn’t exclude myself wakakaka). I have to admit the CPI
editor did a good job improving on my submitted draft, but I’ve always been
greedy for words, so I have not only resorted to my original more lengthy draft but also
amended and expanded on it to publish on KTemoc Kongsamkok.
Two Chinese
businessmen from a transnational organization met in a Kowloon bar for drinks
after a company’s workshop in Hong Kong. As the local man spoke only Cantonese
and English while the Malaysian spoke Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, Malay,
English and even a few handy (mainly swear) words in Tamil but alas, no
Cantonese, both soon realized to their mutual embarrassment that their only
common language was English.
After several
copious dosages of the happy brew had passed their lips, and the conversation grew
friendlier, the Hong-Kongite felt comfortable enough to inform the other person
in his sing-song Canto accent, “Your English is very funny”, smirking as he did
so.
The Malaysian
guffawed and replied, “If you say so” by deliberately imitating the other’s Cantonese tonal
rise and falls. Imagine ‘... say so’ being uttered respectively in the first and
third tone common in most Chinese dialects.
Now, we all know
the general English speaking Hong-Kongites have a delightful Canto lilt in
their spoken English though we have to admit they would, for some strange
reasons, pronounced don’t as a disconcerting doe’ng (and won’t as woeng). But
then, just how well does a typical English speaking Malaysian speak English,
bearing in mind that not everyone is a Patrick Teoh or (the late) Robert Lam.
But it did say
something for those two Chinese businessmen to be teasing each other on their
spoken English. Obviously both men felt he was superior to the other in his
oral English proficiency.
There’s a
frightful snobbery in a person’s command of a non-native language. In the past
the snobs in the English speaking world, especially the English themselves,
would frequently resort to Latin phrases in their conversation or even written
word. I have to admit I’m at times just as guilty wakakaka.
While admittedly it
would be fairly difficult to find good English substitutes for some Latin phrases
– eg. fait accompli, pro rata, etcetera (etc) - imagine using verbum sapienti
satis est (a word to the wise is enough) when one could easily resort instead
to enough said or the more modernised colloquial ‘nuff said.
But obviously the occasional judicious
employment of Latin words and phrases would allude to the speaker’s or author’s
elite education, as it was intended to do.
To Britons of an
earlier era, the allure of Pax Romana with all its attendant powers was a
glorious association, particular for their own pro-empire ambition of a Pax Britannica. And by adopting use of some of the dead language's phraseologies, it would as
if in some indirect ways confer on the user a patina of the old magnificent
grandeur of the Roman Empire.
Perhaps in the subconscious of those language snobs,
they became citizens of Great Rome, then the centre of the known world, a glorious mantle they wanted for Great Britain to inherit as the ‘rightful’ successor, when they could utter at
political rallies, say, vox populi, vox Dei (the voice of the people is the
voice of God).
Today some
English speaking people might have abandoned the idea of belonging to the by-now
amorphous Pax Romana but that haven’t stop them from mingling their English
with what they believe to be continental sophistication, as in ‘There is a
certain je ne sais quoi in Ms Molek. She excites me.’
And all I need to
say in place of that French phrase would have been mademoiselle having ‘a
quality or attribute that is difficult to describe or express’. But then, how
dull, how unsophisticated that would be for snobbish me!
Well, for some
Malaysians and Hong-Kongites, Pax Britannia is just as attractive as Pax
Romana. The way we non-natives speak English, if we believe we speak good
English, would be something to flaunt around especially among our linguistic
‘inferiors’.
Snobs, snobbish,
oh, the snobbery of the English speaking middle class in Malaysia.
There was a time
when some Malaysians would smile condescendingly at those who spelt ‘programme’
or ‘colour’ in its American versions, dismissing the authors as lower class
creatures. They nodded patronizingly when one of the ‘lower creatures’
pronounced ‘vase’ as ‘vaise’ (as in a Teutonic pronunciation of ‘ways’) and
sometimes would even cruelly feint their inability to comprehend what had been
said.
And not unlike
our Hong-Kongite businessman, they would smirk when the local Ah Beng spoke
in English.
So what if Ah
Beng is a multi-millionaire. That’s not the point - “Look old boy, that dear
old chap can hardly speak a decent word of English. But hardly cricket to
expect him to keep up with us, wouldn’t you say?”
Even our
Indonesian neighbours feel it chic to toss the odd English words into a
conversation or presentation – “Ruang lingkup yang akan kami meng-exposé, as a
team, adalah …..” The presenter would then smile at the startled foreigner and
jokingly gloss over his attempt at multi-lingual sophistication as “Itulah Bahasa
Java.”
According to the
dictionary, a snob is a person who imitates, cultivates, or slavishly admires
social superiors and is condescending or overbearing to others.
Incidentally the
word ‘snob’ originated around 1781. It was purportedly first used as a nickname
for a cobbler or cobbler's apprentice. But its gradual usage eventually came to
imply that ‘snob’ was a person of low class or one lacking good breeding but
one who would imitate in a vulgar fashion his social superiors.
Our English
speaking middle class man - and he has to be a man, wouldn’t he, ‘old top, as
women are such delightful creatures’ wakakaka - obviously cultivates, at least in spoken
English, his Anglo-Saxon ‘superiors’ whom he greatly admires though he would
publicly and vehemently deny that, particularly today when it is no longer
vogue to admit reverence for the ways of a former colonial master.
In some cases, he
not only endeavours to speak pukka English but would perhaps even be as
fastidious in his dressing, mannerisms, social etiquette, etc, as a pompous
English popinjay, though perhaps our Malaysian would be more subtle in his punctilious
imitation of his cultural and linguistic idol.
The occasional
trips to London, his cultural Mecca, and even the Sussex and Cotswold
countryside, would be obligatory, and events to joyfully share with his peers –
“Oh my goodness, they have ruined the Oval. The green is utterly wretched. I am
also mortified with the standards of English cricket today.”
Then to complete
the character of a snob, he would of course need to sneer, or at best smile condescendingly at his own countrymen who cannot speak with the fluency and the
BBC accent he has painstakingly cultivated.
Don’t blame him
as after all Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of an English grocer, learnt to speak
like one to the manner born (and not ‘manor born’ as some would incorrectly argue).
Dear old Bill
Shakespeare himself introduced us, via Hamlet, to that phrase ‘to the manner
born’ when the latter replied to Horatio:
Ay, marry, is't:
But to my mind,
though I am native here
And to the manner
born, it is a custom
More honour'd in
the breach than the observance
Am I not a snob
here? But then, see what good spoken and snobbish accented English has
conferred unto Margaret Thatcher … nothing less than a prime ministership and a
Barony.
Our English
speaking Malaysian snob surely must receive no less.
And among the
various ethnic middle class in Malaysia, especially the non-Malays, each would
smile condescending at the other, assured in his belief that the other’s
English is a joke.
But alas, very
few seek to strive for excellence in his spoken Bahasa, the national language
of his country. They would instead argue, weren’t Sri Vijaya and Majapahit
respectively Buddhist and Hindu empires, where Javanese (and perhaps some form of
Sanskrit), rather than Malay, was the lingua franca?
Balram, the hero
in Aravind Adiga’s (2008 Man Booker Prize winning) book ‘The White Tiger’
confessed in his letter to Chinese premier Wen Jianbao that the first phrase in
English he learned from his ex employer’s wife was “What a fucking joke.”
And I suspect our
intrepid Malaysian businessman in that Kowloon bar would guffaw at the spoken English of his Kong-Kong colleague, and vice versa, and also borrow Balram's now immortalized phrase to say, “What a fucking joke.”
