“Takde saiz itu lah kak.”
I can work this out. What’s the worst that could happen? A hundred bucks wasted on a that’s way too small. Right. That’s not something I want to happen. I sigh as I fold my legs up onto my parents’ couch, fingers flicking over my screen for a quick translation.
The family is gathered for dinner at family headquarters. Us ‘kids’ catch up while our children litter their grandparents’ home with hundreds of foam Nerf bullets. Chicken curry bubbles away on the stove. Fragrant cardamom, ginger and chilli wafting and embedding their scent into our lungs and hair and clothes.
“We gotta learn Malay,” I say.
My sister looks up from her phone. “We say this every six months.”
And we have, maybe for the last fifteen years. It always starts the same, with a faithful promise and the best of intentions. We mouth the few words we know in our mother’s mother tongue. We pester her to no longer speak to us in our own. But it inevitably ends in selective amnesia. Back we fall into our familiar rhythms of banter. Our, “how ya garns”, and, “no worries,” and “she’ll be rights.” Words tempered with the frequent interlacing of salams and alhamdulillahs.
How often an accent is the object of ridicule, the punchline in a lazy joke.
“Why didn’t you speak to us in Cantonese, Dad? We could have been multilingual.”
He looks into the distance, and I know he is thinking of his childhood. A second-generation Chinese in Malaysia. “When I can’t read and write the language myself?” he says.
Is this what happens then, when people migrate? A foregone conclusion that we will lose our ties to the language of our ancestors? Easy enough for us to question now that we are grown up and have children of our own.
“We didn’t want you to be at a disadvantage,” Mum says.
The English she’d learnt and spoken since she was a child hadn’t been enough. The BBC accent, practised for so long, no match for the ocker Australian drawl. Not enough for the predominantly white city awaiting her arrival almost half a century ago. For a people who desperately needed her medical services but treated her with disdain. Notwithstanding the fact her understanding of English was, and still is, better than that of her Australian-born children.
What she meant was that she wanted to protect us from the experience she had, having learnt that power and disadvantage can come with an accent.
As a child I remember Mum singing the folk songs of her youth. ‘Rasa Sayang’ and ‘Scarborough Fair’, ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘Yesterday’. I learnt to, “” Whirlwind trips to Malaysia, and extended visits from my Odang and Nenek, helped us grow familiar with the undulating flow of the Malaysian language. Its higher and lower tones. Drawn-out last words. Rhythm like a joyful song, or that surprising burst of sweetness and tartness from a fresh rambutan.
The author as a toddler with her parents and paternal grandmother. Source: Supplied
But my own attempts at Malay always sound stilted, unnatural. Why can’t I emulate the accent? I’ve never really thought about it until now. Now that a pandemic has forced us to become introspective.
It hits me as I watch the white man on screen snickering in a fake accent, “Chinese, Japanese — ricence to kill.”
I pull at a loose piece of skin near my nail. How often an accent is the object of ridicule, the punchline in a lazy joke. How many times I’ve politely let it go?
And now, as I sit on my parents’ couch, I realise what I’ve been doing all this time – wanting to speak my mother’s mother tongue, yet not wanting it at the same time.
I am determined… to communicate with my Malaysian relatives
It’s easy to say, “If only I’d been taught. If only…” when I’ve been ignoring the role I’ve played in my own lack of knowledge. There’s a real fear of trying to pronounce all the intricacies of Malay words with my ‘ocker’ tongue. My distress at the laughter, from both sides of the culture.
“Kita boleh cakap Bahasa Melayu,” I say to my sister with urgency as I see the next generation growing up with even less exposure to the language, as I register I’m more than halfway to becoming old.
I’ve had enough of being afraid. And I’m sick of pretending to be amused.
So, I am determined. Determined to be able to speak my mother’s mother tongue. To communicate with my Malaysian relatives. To be sure I’m ordering the right sized baju kurung, for goodness’ sake. This time I’m going to see it through.
But it’s going to take more than simply memorising new words. I’ll have to loosen my grip on the security of my Australian accent, and reach out to the sounds of my heritage.
