50. I speak more Malay in Tanzania than I do in Malaysia

Although I’m a Malaysian I don’t really speak the Malay language. I spent all of my formative years overseas and my parents only ever used English with us. After moving to Kuala Lumpur 9 years ago I have a rudimentary understanding in that I can order my food and sometimes get the gist of a conversation, but I don’t really understand what’s being said.

However since moving to Dar es Salaam earlier this year I have found that I am using Malay a lot more. There are a couple of reasons for this but to first set the context I am out here with a team of Malaysians.

1. The majority of the team here use Malay to converse to one another. Back in KL the majority of my friends use English to converse to one another (even though 99% of them are Malaysians). This means that I am embedded in Malay here more than I normally am in KL, strange I know.
2. Using Malay here is like having a secret language. We can use it to discuss things in front of people when we don’t want them to understand. For example when haggling the price of something. Now because I don’t want to miss out on all the fun “secret language” type of conversations I have had to try and improve my Malay.

It’s not been easy and there are times when I just switch off from the conversations around me because it is too tiring to try and follow them. But on the whole I’m enjoying expanding my Malay. Hopefully in another 9 years I might be able to say that I can speak Malay.