BM = Bahasa Malaysia = Bahasa Melayu.
No… I’m not here to debate the usage of Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa Melayu in school subject. To me, they are both the same. Our national language. In short, I’ll just refer it as BM.
I used to have very good command of BM years back when I was in secondary school(more than 10 years back) but now… It’s quite rusty but the funny thing is that it can still be as good as it used to more than 10 years ago. My writing wasn’t good but speaking was good, even better than my English.
Nowadays, I can be very good in speaking BM if only when I’m in KL. If I’m in Kuching, my BM is pretty cacat.
I spoke fluent BM with no accent, similar to those Malay movies on TV when I was in KL. When I met a Malaysian stranger in KL, if I’m not sure what kind of language he/she used, I would automatically talk to him/her in BM but not here in Kuching.
In Kuching, it will be English automatically. I’m sure I’m not the only one that does this ;p During my previous KL trip, many taxi drivers were quite surprised that I’m from Sarawak, they said that I didn’t sound like one, they thought I’m local.
I remember that last time when I was in my first year college, my BM was still good since I had only left secondary school in less than two months, I went to a government department to ask about something, the officer actually asked me whether I’m from Semenanjung *LOL* I told him I’m pure breed Sarawakian, he was surprised, he told me my BM sounded very Semenanjung. Thanks to all those Malay dramas that I watched when I was young. Now? Hahaha… I just can’t open my mouth to speak in BM here, even if I did, it would sound extremely weird.
However, I have almost no clue of Bahasa Sarawak. Hehehe… I remembered I made a huge boo boo last time when a lady spoke to me in Bahasa Sarawak. She asked one thing, I answered another thing. She just said, “Oh…”, then left ;p I didn’t know until I left the place and my friends told me I gave the wrong respond earlier on hahaha…
How about you? How rusty is your BM now?
My BM masih boleh tahanlah. Hehehe. Cuz dealing mostly with semenanjung in my line of work. Haha.
Plus Deluxe is Indonesian.. So it’s more to BI now rather than BM.. HAha
Alex, once you don’t use it, it will get rusty ;p
During my primary school to high school years BM was so emphasised, teacher always drill us with vocabulary to ensure distinction in public exam.
When I’m out of Malaysia, studying, I ended up impressing the Malays, the native speakers themselves. They have said that my exposure to BM is free of slangs, the Bahasa Baku that we’ve always been taught in schools.
As soon as I step out of Malaysia, I find little chance to apply my BM except when I talk to my Malay friends. I even use BM with Indonesians but there’s a risk that they misintepret my message.
The most annoying part of BM is the grammar keep changing! Darn DBP. That mean when my son/daughter ask me to clarify grammar of BM, I can’t. If you listen to politician’s speech carefully you can catch “grammatical errors” by today’s standard – they’re not incorrect, but the grammar was correct, their grammar was not updated when things changed.
Biopolymath, indeed, when will Malaysia start standardize or be stable on their education system and stop taking students as their guinea pigs.