As the date draws near, the MIL suggests having Ilhan sleepover on weekends, which is fine with me since I have that features writing course for the next eight Saturdays. Surprisingly, it was easy prising Ilhan away from me. He seemed understanding when I told him I needed to go to ‘work’ and he said “OK” and ‘pomised’ to be a good boy, which he was, apart from charming his atok-nenek with his vocabulary prowess.
Eg1: When passing by that Eunos road where a lot of car showrooms are:
“Banyak cars bayu.”
*Hmm….how did he know that? He’s never consciously passed that road before, neither has he been explained that those are car showrooms*
Eg2: When following atok-nenek jalan raya and politely refusing to accept duit raya:
“Tak nak. An-an dah ada banyak.”
*Baik betul budak ni*
Eg3: When in the back-seat with 2 cousins, clowning and kidding around and laughing sampai terbatuk-batuk.
Nenek (front seat): Duduk diam-diam, nanti ketawa banyak-banyak, batuk-batuk muntah, baju kotor.
Ilhan: Tukar baju bayu, ah.
*speechless*
Eg4: When asked mana Yoyot? (his late great-grandfather who passed away 3 weeks ago)
“Yoyot ninggal”
*no one taught him this word, he seemed to have picked it up from adult conversations*
Being in my line, I’ve seen too many Malay kids not being able to speak decent Malay, be it the oh-i-not-melayu type, the i-think-I’m-intellectual type, or the mat-bola type. Even among friends, there are those who pseudo-lament “Oh anak I tak tahu cakap Melayu, lah” as they recount how their parents mencacau cakap omputeh bila nak berbual dengan cucu sendiri.
Based on experience, it’s sad seeing how these kids are strangers to their own language, with all the intangible value, weltanschauung and heritage attached to it. Sometimes I feel like I and them come from different worlds altogether. I mean, I’ve never met kids who roll their eyes and whip out a book to read under the table when shown P.Ramlee classics (not heavy duty stuff, just the Bujang Lapok series), and who don’t find the Bujang Lapok series the least bit funny. Try menyindir using peribahasa and it just go over their heads altogether (I miss the BP days when I could spar with the kids using peribahasa and we’d keep score).
I’m rather paranoid about Ilhan not speaking in his mother tongue, which is why I’m proud to say he’s a Malay-speaking kid. Ok, so most of his nouns are mostly in English (dog, cat, car, train etc) but his verbs are mostly Malay and so are his sentences. At the same time I also feel a twinge of guilt and wonder too if I’m not giving him a headstart in English. Should I practice that one parent-one language approach, or will he learn English through his environment?
Currently:
Daily conversations and communication : Malay
Barney/High-5/Cartoons (basically tv) : English
I was thinking especially since we’ll be living in Down Under in his formative years and he’ll be going to playgroup and kindy there, he’ll absorb the English Language like a sponge, right? So I should continue the Malay drilling at home. Right?
I remember Aajarn Titima’s experiment. When she had Nong Kwan, she spoke to him only in Thai, while his Israeli dad spoke to him only in Hebrew. As they were living in
What do you think?
hehehe...nanti angah ajar ilhan f-language!
ReplyDeleteI had an experience with a Malay family who lives in Sydney since their kids were born, the mum told me that she regretted speaking English from Day One thinking that the children will have a headstart in the language. Her advice is to speak Malay at home, the English will be automatically picked up in school with the slang included, no doubt about that. It only works for children. But if you heard an adult Malay, speaking with Aussie slang after 5 years staying downunder, that's a hoax!
ReplyDeleteDidnt speak any of the local language nor a word of English when I started P1.
ReplyDeleteMalayalees are proud of being 99% literate and speaking well..and I think being the oldest child I picked up the language the best...& I've turned out pretty ok I guess, being fluent in all four of the official languages of Singapore..
..you are spot on about world view and heritage there...
me and wife now struggling to practice the one parent-one language approached as encouraged by mansor sukaimi. till now, we still had to remind each other to stick to the language we agreed upon... (wife malay, while me english) but most of the time, we end up speaking to our son in english. it seemed as if english language has been totally drilled into us as a spoken language, instead of malay. stress giler bila fikir pasal nie.
ReplyDeletelagi teruk when the local libraries has such limited malay books suitable and interesting enough for his age. we are also still sourcing for good children vcds/dvds in malay. found only one called roda bas (a direct translation for The Wheels On The Bus). itu pon only the conversation in malay. but when comes for the songs.. they sang in english. very the confusing!
nauruz, what i think you can do is pinjamkan aje buku inggeris, bacakan, tapi terangkan dalam bahasa Melayu.
ReplyDeletelike when i read 'The Magic Porridge Pot' to Ilhan, after reading each page, i'll explain how "kakak tu terlupa nak cakap 'stop, pot, stop' jadi periuk tu masak bubur banyak-banyak sampai tumpah".
tu kirakan macam sambil menyelam minum air. hopefully it works.
I came to live in Australia when I was 5. So my Malay is at a very basic level ... that of a primary school kid, I guess. At home, my mum spoke Malay with me all the time; my dad spoke English and of course at school I spoke English.
ReplyDeleteThe consequences of all this? Well, I'm not able to read or write formal Malay .. bahasa pasar bolehlah and that's something I'm proud of. So I think it's important that Malay is spoken in the home; English proficiency can always be developed at school and amongst your children's friends but they will have very little opportunity to maintain their bahasa if it is not practiced at home. Being bi-lingual is an asset and something to be proud of.
Interestingly now, I have a son who speaks Burmese. He has just started learning English at his pre-school in Myanmar and speaks with a very strong Burmese accent. So it's like 'here we go again' for me, but in a vastly different context. And what's even stranger is that with his mum, I speak mostly in Thai with her. My son was a little confused by this at first but now we tell him which language we're communicating in and he copies what we say. Kids who are brought up in a bi-lingual environment will eventually come to terms with this and will be able to differentiate between the different languages as they develop.
oh? khun phuut nai phasaa Thai dai reu kha? nice to know that :) such an interesting and colourful linguistic background you have in your family. i think your son will be very fortunate and enriched if he grows up being ermm....quadlingual? (english, thai, burmese, malay)?
ReplyDeleteyup i think you are right - we shouldn't underestimate children's ability to soak up languages, especially in the first 6 years of life. bilingualism is an asset, apatah lagi 'quadlingualism' in the case of your son. he'll find it a breeze should he do business in Southeast Asia when he grows up :)
woits! cakap baik baik...nie anak-anak librarian tau! ...hehehe...
ReplyDeletepandainya ilhan cakap melayu!! You're doing a great job Aunty! I cannot say full sentences in Malay except Alya beyak or Mamma, Alya sakit and a few others.. my parents till now practise the rojak method.. English campur Malay and sometimes they'd translate. When my parents speak to me in full sentence Malay, I'd reply in English but I definitely understand what they say. But I've been listening to a lot of Malay songs, read malay ebooks/books and so my Malay has improved a little bit. Try to get Tok Tam vcds if you go JB.. the music is a little irritating but all the conversations are in Malay. Translating English to Malay is a good idea when reading books ehhh I'll bet there'll be long pauses when I make Mamma translate Dr Seuss's books to Malay.
ReplyDeleteit's great that your son is able to speak in malay....they're really like sponges, don't they? :) i've heard from my frens who are teaching malay about malay students who can't speak malay properly because they don't speak the language at home....but what was more surprising is that their english is so-so only...
ReplyDeletemy husband and i are using the approach of reading to our 1yr old Aisyah in english and explaining the text in malay to her. Her grandparents speak to her in Malay because they're Malay-speaking. Alhamdulillah, she seems to understand most words.
I also noticed grandparents speaking broken English to their grandchildren even though they can actually speak good Malay. imho...I would rather they speak in their mother-tongue language properly rather than below-average English.
Tok Tam vcds? sounds interesting, alya. i'll look for it the next time i go over to JB. susah nak cari quality malay vcds for kids. the only one Ilhan has now is Kumpulan Aliff's IQRA for kids where he learns his alif-ba-ta. but he and me also like this hilarious Kacang cartoon on malaysian tv. i think Suria's Krayon is quite ok, if only they'd turn it into a vcd set.
ReplyDeletehee hee hee...i can just imagine your Mamma stumped when trying to translate Dr Seuss..erm...Sang Musang dalam kotak melambai kepada Sang Kucing dalam topi. the rhyming just doesn't rhyme anymore eh :)
i guess our kids are the original Spongebobs :)
ReplyDeletei know what you mean about the grandparents. it's quite amusing when they say things like "Afiq, don't jump-jump, wait you fall." and in school the kids who are proud of having broken Malay are not doing that great in English either. funny.
As they said "Bahasa menunjukkan Bangsa!" Hidup SingLish!!
ReplyDeleteoooh...anak-anak librarian eh? gie hidupkan lah buku-buku melayu pat library tu la~
ReplyDeleteKhalidah , when are you relocating and where? I speak Malay to Sarah as much as I can. She is only 13 months old and sometimes she gives me this weird look when I converse to her in Malay. Confused maybe? Her dad encourages that I speak Malay to her all the time but it could be hard sometimes when you are surrounded with English-speaking only family members/friends.
ReplyDeleteInitially before Fuaadi started creche/nursery he spoke and understood Malay fully. But when he started creche and then school, he refused to speak Malay with us, but he does understand it. We kept on showing him photos and movies about Malays including P Ramlee movies and slowly he has now become fascinated with Malaysia so he wants now to become a 'Malay'. Last time when people asked him what he is, he says he is 'English'! - because he says he was born here (LOL). This month his Nenek came over from KL and he has been practising speaking Malay to her (alhamdulillah).
ReplyDeleteAt school, Fuaadi is taught French as a second language. He loves it and is teaching me what he's learnt at school. Before we moved to the current house, we have been sending Fuaadi to a mosque school on Saturdays but he wasn't learning as much Arabic as he/we wanted to in that school so now we're trying to enrol him into a Yemeni Arabic weekend school nearby our new house.
I feel that it is important for him to know Malay as that is what he is and what makes him unique than the other kids over here. We make sure to give him the impression that it is very good and very special to be a Malay. It is something to be proud of and not to be ashamed of.
Initially I wanted to teach my son the One Parent One Language approach but in the end it became rojak. However, eventhough my Afzal is not very fluent in Malay unlike English, Im proud to say that the Malay he knows is the Malay Ive taught him and not from school bcos he has never done Malay formally in school until now in primary one. When I thought his Malay is no good, it seem that there are other kids who are worst off. I think it's important how parents view the importance of the language so the anak will know it is important and will learn to appreciate and use it. Im sure Ilhan will be effectively bilingual.:)
ReplyDelete