Two Voices (Podcast)
A comment posted by Lydia on my podcast What Makes a Good Story? about how very English I sound started me thinking about my two voices - my English voice and my Malaysian one - and how they express two different parts of my personality.
I was going to write a post about it but then I realised that a podcast would be the best way to show what I mean - so you can hear the two sides of me.
You can listen to the podcast with the player below.
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- Posted on
Tue, July 25th, 2006 - Author
Yang-May Ooi - Category
- 7 responses
- Leave a comment
July 28th, 2006 at 4:02 am
Hi Yang-May, thanks for putting up this enjoyable podcast. I was laughing out loud at your Malaysian English. Yes, that’s how we speak, inaccurate pronunciation, bullet speed and all. Obviously you still remember well. I’m glad you can still turn on the Malaysian accent at will when in the company of family and Malaysian friends.
I suppose some things come naturally. Take for instance, Malaysians putting on a fake-foreign accent when we speak to Mat Sallehs. I tell you, it’s a reflex action. We simply do not speak to Mat Sallehs in pure Malaysian accent. They sure cannot understand Manglish one and they’ll be like, ‘pardon me’, ‘pardon me’ all the way till the cows come home.
July 29th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
I guess we Malaysians are all just good at establishing rapport - making the other person feel at ease by speaking in a similar way to them! (To clarify for my non-Malaysian readers, ‘Mat Salleh’ is a local phrase meaning ‘Westerner’.)
August 6th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
It still takes me about 3 days to get my head around my malaysian accent, but when I am in Malaysia and someone speaks to me before the proscribed time, i think I still sound still stiffly western (I won’t say English, cos as you’ve heard, it’s not quite that either). One time, I was speaking to my Uncle about something when he said exasperatedly, “Aiyah! Speak Malaysianlah! What are you saying!”
I enjoyed your story about the science, and I have an opposite number to contribute: when I had to do Home Science (namely cooking and sewing) in Form Two, one of the dishes we had to cook was Ikan Panggang (Grilled or BBQ Fish with a long slit cut parallel to the upper fin and stuffed with sambal belacan). My mother had packed the ingredients we had to bring to school - I think, two mackerel, from the market. She had worried it would go off in the heat and put the fish in the container with some ice cubes.
I brought the fish over for my teacher’s inspection and she shook her head at me and proclaimed what I thought sounded like,” Take out the eyes.” Having limited experience with both cooking and with fish, I felt really puzzled and went back to my table to ponder this instruction. I can still see those fish eyes staring back at me flatly and I can feel that total incomprehension - surely one removed the contents of the stomach? (But I think my efficient mother had already instructed the fishmonger to do this before bringing the fish home.) So I got out my big knife and aimed it in the direction of the glassy looks, but it seemed so improbable I decided to go back and confirm what I had to do. So I walked up to her again with the container and brandished my knife weakly at the fishy heads and said again,” Excuse me, but what is the best way to take out the eyes?” My teacher flapped her hands at me in horror. “The eyes! The eyes!” she said to me, louder and louder. Needless to say the rest of the class was now watching me inquisitively. “Bbbbut, bbut what is the best way to take out the eyes?” I said again, my voice fading even fainter. I thought she was going to explode at how stupid I was being. She finally reached down and said, “Just take it out like thislaah!” I can see her fingers reach past that clumsy knife and grasp a piece of the ice, before she waves it in my face. Of course, it now strikes me like lightning. “Ice” in Bahasa is spelled ais, and even when spoken in an English sentence, is pronounced in that long drawn out way. And “eyes” is pronounced in a faster way which sounds like “ice”. My foreign conditioned brain had stumbled over this fatally. My only consolation was that it wasn’t quite as bad as the girl in the form ahead, who when instructed to wash the prawns, had done so with soap and water.
August 6th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Pey, your story about the fish - and about washing the prawns - made me laugh out loud. Thanks for sharing-lah!
November 25th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Hi Yang Mai,
This is my first posting. I really enjoyed your podcast.
As a Japanese who is still struggling with English, your views are refleshing !
November 30th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Just caught up with this one. You haven’t a split personality but a combined one that is responsive to people around you. Parallel case? When I joined the army we all found ourselves swearing (like troopers!) and worried that we might not be able to switch it off when we went home to our families. No need to have worried: it switched itself off. Our minds are not stupid - trust them.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
This is a difficult question…may be there is no real me. It is amazing how long we can talk about accents, or the A-word as I like to call it…You have a point in wanting to fit it and leaving your accent behind. I lost my Italian accent long ago. When I speak, people cannot place me. I enjoy it and sometimes play little mind games with them
The fact that we want everybody to sound like us and we can relax only with people who do intrigues me… What does it say about tollerance and cultural richness? I do love your Malaysian accent…