Long ago, while in school, my Engrish teacher said to me, "If you wanna improve your Engrish, read more books and start speaking Engrish. Better if you mix with Engrish-speaking fwens." So, I did. Even though I didn't excel in my Engrish but I have since manage to write a few postings in my blog, wrote articles published in some magazines and hosted a few shows for the mass public.

Recently, I felt like I have been neglecting my own mother-tongue, the Malay language. Even though I managed to exhume a few praises from the former ministers like Sidek Saniff, Ahmad Mattar and Cikgu Suratman Markasan at a recent event which I hosted, in Malay!! I think I could do better with an improved vocabulary of the Malay language.

So, with that in mind I decided to improve myself, and that was when I remembered the former teacher's saying. I took the first Malay language peripheral I found at home and read it. It was a Malay magazine - Media Hiburan. To my disappointment, not only the words are still the same as it was 20 years ago, I thought I found spelling mistakes in all the articles. No improvement there, I decided to take the second advice. Start mixing with Malay-speaking fwens. Here is where I encounter more problems.

After a week with my Malay-speaking fwens..... I came home more confused than before as I didn't understand many parts of the conversation, In fact, I tried looking up some words in the Kamus (Malay Dictionary), but to no avail. Not sure if it's just me or the Malay language has gotten too sophisticated. Here's a list of words and phrases that I was still trying to figure out.

sachok, sachek - ??

wancheng - ???

berg - ???

step yek - ??

kajon - ??

"fuh, dek ni duk sek ah!" (referring to a girl?)

"mesti potong angin" - (I dunno what they were referring to....)

"ada budak kena kicap!" (I think it refers to a fight?)

"gua tak bohong ah, depan lampu gua cakap....." (got this from a fwen....)