Words

Words – those building blocks of communication, building blocks since even with the right words our personal differences can mean we interpret those building blocks differently with all those misunderstandings that can occur. Having spent five years communicating mainly in my second language Spanish I know the frustration of not being able to find the right word and even sometimes not being able to remember the proper word in my mother tongue. In Nicaragua I needed to be able to find those words now living and working between Malaysia and the Philippines I can be lazy as I can survive in English wherever I am and in work my colleagues speak at least as good English as me as I still recover from my Spanglish episodes.

Still I aspire to be able to at least to do some basic greetings etc in the local language, in Malaysia that is officially Bahasa Malaysia or Malay as it gets called in English. As will any language that uses the Roman letter system learning to read some words is easier than saying them, although I am led to believe Malay like Spanish is a phonetic language so you should be able to figure out how to  say the words when you read them, unlike in English. I thought I'd share a few of the words I've learnt to read, you'll see if you read them it should be fairly easy to work out what they mean at least if I give you the clue that they are mostly signs you see around town or places or services. I've put the answers below but I'll let you guess first, the first few should be easy

Words in Malay

1.      Teksi

2.      Bas

3.      Stesen

4.      Butik

5.      Imigresen

6.      Trafik

7.      Polis

8.      Keluar

9.      Masuk

10.  Pandu Cermat

Words in English

1.      Taxi

2.      Bus

3.      Station

4.      Boutique

5.      Immigration

6.      Traffic

7.      Police

8.      Exit

9.      Entry

10.  Drive Carefully.

Officially Filipino is the national language of the Philippines but apparently the principal base is Tagalog so it seems most of the Filipinos, at least in the Manila area, call it Tagalog. The main language of education is English which also allows me the privilege of laziness. So far I've learnt “salamat” - thankyou, “bay” for bye and “kumusta” which for anyone who knows Spanish maybe shouldn't be such a surprise that it works as “hello”. I find listening to Tagalog interesting as I haven't got a clue what is being said but every now and again I hear a word that is from English or Spanish that I understand clearly in the middle of a conversation of which I am completely clueless, like the safety briefing on the plane where they mentioned “safety card” and “salvavidas” which is lifejackets in Spanish. So in Tagalog it seems I have words but not enough to enable any communication!