By Jestine Loh

“Where did you come from?” is often the question I get asked in Australia. The way the words reveal themselves as I carefully rehearse in my head how I want to sound like. Did I sound “Malaysian” today? Did I choose the right words? Did I come off too strong? How do I allow others to perceive my identity, the way that I shaped it?

My language that has been drilled inside of me. But then again, what is my language?

Is it the one that I use when I talk to my peers in university?

Is it the one that I use when I call home?

In one of my classes, as we were talking about prestigeness of language, I spoke about the way that oftentimes as Malaysians, we code-switch as if our lives depend on it (it sometimes does). A study from Ng and Diskin‐Holdaway (2021) perfectly describes this, where Colloquial Malaysian English is often favoured as opposed to Standard Malaysian English, a sign of solidarity to our own community. But I often wonder where we stand on this. When I choose to speak in a neutral tone, am I facing away from my community? Should I shorten my vowels? Should I elongate my ‘O’s?

I have spoken to so many of my Malaysian friends in Australia. My ears perk up when I hear the familiar sounds of our tunes. Automatically, as if conditioned to do so, my accent crawls out of its shell, as if eager to show that “I, too, am Malaysian”.

But the eagerness retreats back into its sanctuary once my other peers hear that I’m from Malaysia, they assume that we know lots of languages. Which is true, so then why are we trying to hide it? I don’t remember my kata ganda or peribahasa any longer. I can’t write my karangan as I could when I was 17. Let alone my understandings of 文言文 (Classical Chinese). I hang my head in shame when I tell people that I came from a private Chinese high school. I am proud of the languages that I speak, but how proud can I be when English is the only one that I can truly think in?

To what extent should I change the way I sound, to fit into a community that hasn’t decided if they want to accept me yet?

I don’t know what I should sound like. But I hope that the “la”s and “leh”s that I end my sentences with, become part of the solfege of our Malaysian harmonies. And maybe that’s what makes us Malaysian, and us.

Maybe the right question isn’t: “Did I sound ‘Malaysian’ today?”, but rather:

“Am I proud of sounding Malaysian today?”