My most recent Malay lessons have focused on the topics of activities and food, along with my continued study of numbers. A goal I had set for myself - to gain a stronger foundation in the number system and less hesitation saying them - is still being worked towards , however I am nonetheless quite happy with the speed with which I am progressing with regard to numbers and, loosely, pronunciation (though I still struggle with certain words, such as "dengan"). As I have expanded my vocabulary related to activities I like to do and food I like (or do not like) to eat, I have recognized that sentence structure is quite similar to English and even Mandarin, Loan words from both languages also exist, e.g. "epal" for apple and "mihun" for noodle (面, miàn, in Mandarin). A new goal of mine related to this is to learn to what extent loanwords from English and Mandarin exist in the language, something that was mentioned in the article by Tim Ferriss to more easily expand vocabulary in the target language. In addition, I have benefitted from learning some basic adverbs, such as "telah" to indicate that something has already happened (since, similar to Mandarin, no verb modifications for tenses exist in Malay) and "sangat" to indicate an extreme degree.
My conversations with Melissa have yielded some interesting and unexpected cultural insights. When I travelled to Malaysia last Fall, I realized that, anytime I ordered coffee, it automatically came with cream and sugar. According to Melissa, simply ordering "kopi" or "teh" implies that it will come with milk and sugar added unless you explicitly say one of the following: saying "O" after to forgo milk but keep the sugar, or "O kosong (zero)" to forgo both milk and sugar. Another interesting concept was related to the word for 'love' in Malay. The language has two separate words for this ("saya" for love of family and "cinta" for a lover and your nation). Additionally, you cannot say that you 'love' a certain food with either of these words, but instead have to opt for 'really liking' that food. I would be interested in exploring more deeply how this connects to nationalism and what nationalism means in Malay and to Malaysians. Melissa has been very good about offering insights such as these throughout our lessons and, even more so, indicating when something I have learned is too formal or seldom used. This is one of the most salient advantages of having a dedicated language partner assist me in my language learning endeavors and something for which I am quite grateful already.
Last Wednesday, I got to take a quiz that Melissa put together that tested my knowledge of existing material and assessed my ability to fuse together disparate parts and form new sentences or meanings. This went well and, following my completion, I got to review the content with Melissa and see how I fared. The last part of the quiz comprised of a simple dialogue that I had to complete. After reviewing my responses, Melissa and I recorded this dialogue out loud and I got to fill in both roles to practice my pronunciation, speed, etc. I would like to continue to use these types of recording methods and see how I can improve my speaking by listening to myself and noticing my slip-ups or general areas of difficulties.
Comments