Belajar B.Melayu di NIU

We already looked at one of the words for 'please'. Sila duduk refers to 'Please sit'.  Next, we also learned another phrase Sila berdiri 'Please stand up.'

Sila is the word that means please, when the speaker thinks that the action suggested will be of benefit to the person he/she is addressing.

Sila duduk 'Please sit [you will be more comfortable]'

Sila berdiri 'Please stand [you have been sitting too long, you need to change your posture and be refreshed.]'

Now we have studied

Sila makan 'Please eat'

Sila minum 'Please drink'

So we can say:

Sila makan ayam itu 'Please eat that chicken'.  (ayam = chicken)

Sila minum kopi ini 'Please drink this coffee. (kopi = coffee)

*****+++++++*****

We can make many sentences and ask many questions now.

Stavros dan Terrence pergi ke Starbucks. Mereka nak minum kopi.

Stavros and Terrence are going to Starbucks. They want to drink coffee.

Marah dan Tracy pergi ke restoran itu. Mereka nak makan ayam.

Marah and Tracy are going to that restaurant. They want to eat chicken.

Mike dan Derek tak pergi. Mereka tinggal di DeKalb.

Mike and Derek are not going. They are staying in DeKalb.

mereka 'they, them, their'

di 'at, in'

We have learned some words:

kedai makan 'a modest restaurant'

kedai minum 'a coffee shop, not to fancy'

kedai TV 'store selling TVs and other electronic stuff'

kedai komputer 'store selling computers, printers, scanners and so forth'.

 Remember to point with your thumb, not with your index finger!

We have learned some pronouns in Malay. Saya is the most neutral way to say I (me, my, mine). Dia is the usual way to say he or she or it (him her, his her). 

The second person pronoun, you, is more complicated in Malay.  There are several pronouns and other ways to address people.  First, you have to choose a way to address a person based on his or her age.  Then you have to consider his or her job.  Usually in Malaysia you must know or must guess about someone's ethnic background.  Is the person you want to talk to a Malay, Chinese, Southern Indian, Northern Indian or a Eurasian? And you try to guess the person's education too.

So it is very complicated. However, in our class, students will address each other by each other's first name. Students will address our teaching assistant as Cik or Cik Jocelyn, and the teacher will be addressed as Prof. Jim or Prof. Later on we can learn other ways to say you.

In Malay there are two different pronouns for we (us, our).  If we say we and what is meant is all the people in the room, the word is kita.  This is the inclusive we. We include in the meaning of we (kita) everyone who can hear or read what we say or write.  There is another 'we' in Malay. If 'we' only refers to some of the people in the room, the word is kami. We might say 'Us teachers will write a test.'  Us (we) is exclusive because it doesn't include the students in the room so it needs to be kami, not kita.  This is the exclusive we.  We will see more examples and become accustomed to these two kinds of 'we'.

There more pronouns to learn, but these are good for now.

About thanks. In most languages, we say thanks many times every day. It is a formula, a way of being polite.  We say thanks to the cashier in Walmart, to someone who holds a door open for us, to the student at the check out desk in the library. We don't think twice about it, usually we just say thanks automatically.  In Malay too, the phrase for thanks is a formula; people just say it.  In Malay we say Terima kasih 'Thanks'. Usually the person we say Terima kasih to, says Sama-sama in reply.  Sama-sama is used like 'You're welcome' in English.

These are formulas.  In fact terima means 'accept' or 'receive' And, kasih means 'affection'.  So literally it means 'Receive affection'. But no one thinks of that when they pick up an order of fries at McDonalds in Kuala Lumpur. They say Terima kasih, and it's just away of being polite, like Thanks at a McDonalds in Chicago.  The reply is sama-sama, literally 'Same [to you]', but no one thinks of that. It's just a formula like You're welcome.

We have to remember that the place where  Malay is spoken is located between India and China.  Today India and China are economic powerhouses, but until about 1850 India and China had always been economic powerhouses.  Until European colonialism gained control of large parts of the world, China and India were the largest  countries with the largest economies and the largest production of commercial products.  That means that for 2000 years or more  the Malay language has been the language spoken in the narrow straits where the traders of India and China passed.  That is why there are so many borrowed words from Indian languages (especially Sanskrit and Hindi) and from Chinese languages (especially Hokkien and Cantonese); there are also words from Farsi (Persian) and Arabic, as speakers of those two regions became involved in this trade too. Later many words were borrowed from Dutch and English.  So even today many very ld borrowed words are still widely used.