hey, man!

Everyone knows my brother listens to weird music. I remember once he introduced me to some electrophunk band that he liked because of their band name. !!! was the name of the band. Three exclamation points. You could call them anything you want but I don't think "three exclamation points" was the right name. You were supposed to make an exclamation point a word. So you could call them "gush gush gush" or "pow pow pow" or any other combination of whatever you thought ! was supposed to sound like. Well, in Malaysia they use little words (suffixes) at the end of their phrases or sentences that have different functions. A couple are like exclamation points in bold font, a couple are like question marks, and one is even like a frowny face :( but with letters. Nobody told me about this before I got here but the suffixes are used a lot. It's not uncommon for the bahasa melayu (Malay) suffixes to be used when the speaker is speaking in English, so I can easily give you examples for bahasa melayu suffixes. Get ready class.

student: "Teacher, I want to go to the bathroom."
teacher: "Then go la!"

Allisun: "I think I'll just walk to the bus stop."
friend: "Don't do that ba. That'll make you tired."

"La" and "ba" are used interchangeably. I haven't discovered a place to use one over the other. The funny thing about me is that I think I like punctuation, or else I wouldn't be telling you all about this stuff. I am likely to use ?!?!! at the end of a question or ?! or !!! depending on the situation, whereas, in Malaysia, they have words that can pretty much do that for you. It is also important to note that "ba" is only used in local Sabah the state that I live in. Using "ba" identifies where an individual learned to speak bahasa Melayu.

auntie: "Are you hungry ka?"

"Ka" makes it obvious that it's a question, which is funny because bahasa melayu also has the tone change for a question mark ("I'm Ron Burgundy?") and question marks do exist. This one isn't used with english.

Allisun: "Not really, I can help you cook though, kan gu?
This one is 100% translatable, therefore, I use it the most often. kan? is like saying "right?" and gu just refers to any teacher at this entire school. If I'm talking to a taxi driver or a student then tacking 'gu' to the end would be completely inappropriate and I would probably look silly. Although they're together in this example they don't have to be in order to be used.

friend: "Sejuknya."

Allisun: "oh? where's your jacket?"
The suffix here is "nya" and the word I used for an example "sejuk" means cold. I'm guessing this one is just emphasis and is never used with english words. You wouldn't say "coldnya" but it basically means "It's really cold." I know what you're thinking, who the heck said this to me? Is there such thing as feeling "really cold" in Malaysia? And the answer is, no, not really. So maybe "nya" actually implies sarcasm. Ha! I doubt it.

Allisun: "I got caught in the rain!"
friend: "Oh lo lo lo."
Lo... the rarest of them all. Pretty much always negative. It's akin to saying "oh bummer" or "that's too bad." I'd also like to point out that it is used here three times. Lo and la are used like that. I've actually counted once when a woman said, "Ah la la la la la la" and then I exclaimed "SIX!" A little grammar lesson on this language about plurals: one word twice makes it plural. So at school we have cikgu cikgu (teachers) and I am a cikgu (teacher). Obviously, this makes typing/text messaging rather annoying so Malaysians have developed a shortcut "cikgu2" would be teachers. In a text message, if someone were to use this response to my being stuck in the rain, they would say "Oh lo3," and I'm not even joking. It's fantastic.

I must admit that I feel a little silly using a blog to talk about suffixes in bahasa melayu but I want you to share in my joy. I have so thoroughly enjoyed learning, practicing, and being bewildered by a new language. Plus, I have decided that "la" and "ba" can maybe be swapped with "dude" and still make sense. Therefore, I have A LOT of fun listening to people talk and attempting to translate their words and imagining them saying "dude." There's a lot more about bahasa melayu I could try to explain here but I have yet to figure out the prefixes... yeah they have those too. Just know that I am happy and smiling here. I am thankful for you all. I am so glad to finally be reconnected to the cyber world and I even got to pray with Holy Trinity via Skype! Life is definitely good.

It's a double rainbow. In the middle of my town.