FIRST post :D

Blog as assignment? GREAT. I always wanted to start a blog but I've nothing to write about. Finally, I can do it for this subject. I believe that my first post will be quite lengthy, so please bear with me ya :)

Back to the topic : Do You Identify as a Malaysian? Why? Does It Matter?

Asking this question to myself, do I identify myself as a Malaysian? Needless to say, the answer is YES. It's because I have my very own MyKad?? It might be one of the reasons as many of my friends stated in their posts but to me, I think the more obvious evidence is that I speak like how majority of the Malaysians (Chinese) speak in daily life. 

As Dr. Carmen mentioned in class, language represents a culture and it's a very important way of life.To me, LANGUAGE is the most outstanding aspect that is able to differentiate us, Malaysians from others.  Malaysia is the only country which the people is able to speak different languages by mixing them altogether to create sentences that only Malaysians will understand. Of course, I'm proud to be one of them! 

Sometimes, I might degrade our linguistic styles as compared to people from other countries like "Wow, the Westerns can speak so fluent English not like us, I like their accent too!" (just like how I admire Emily's English accent :P) or "Wow, the China people have the so-called "儿化音" (er-hua-yin) Mandarin pronunciation that make them sound so accurate and professional". Compared to Malaysians, YES, we can speak English, Mandarin, Bahasa Malaysia, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka.... But do we master all these languages? Frankly speaking, for me the answer is NO! I admit that I've only "half-bucket-water" for all these languages. 

BUTTTT...that's what that makes us special!! In my opinion, it's nothing special if you can only speak very fluent English or Chinese because in your country, I believe everyone can do it too. In Malaysia, even though we do not master all these languages, but at least we've grabbed enough vocabs from different languages for daily usage. We even combine many of them into daily conversations. 

"Hey, tomorrow we go eat nasi lemak ahh..." 

Did you realize? This sentence is the mixture of English and BM words with a direct translation of Mandarin. Maybe the English scholars will have objection of this sentence, but this is special isn't it? I've heard that many foreigners would like to learn to speak like Malaysians too! :D 

When travelling in other countries, how do we identify Malaysians? Of course, the way they speak is the easiest method. I've once traveled to Taiwan and when I was there, I was trying hard to speak like a Taiwanese but it was really tiring. At last, I realised that why do I have to imitate them? I can just use my own way of speaking because it's my culture, it's my way of life. Unexpectedly, the Taiwanese actually found it interesting and wanted to learn as well. A value learned : Always be yourself!

So, once again, do I identify as a Malaysian? YES I do. Does it actually matter? I think it's yes because it's my nationality, it's my identity and it's my dignity. This reminds me of the second activity held in our first lecture class, where we were required to prove ourselves as a Malaysian when we lose our identity in foreign country. During the discussion, it was a great discovery to me that most of the ideas that we mentioned to prove our nationality were actually interconnected with our cultures, such as languages, music, dance, etc. I realised that it was culture that made and formed us, the Malaysia society. At that moment, I think I felt the power of culture. 

I do acquire Malaysia cultures, thus I'm proud to say that I'm a MALAYSIAN. 

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