How To Recognize and Remember Vital Words EMERGENCY EXIT in Malay and Indonesian

Problem
I often saw the words emergency exit in English with the words underneath in Malay and Mandarin but could not identify or remember them. You can see the words in Singapore on trains and buses as well as Malaysia and Indonesia.

I sat on a bus in Singapore at night, returning home from Nee Soon East Toastmasters club on a bus. Outside all was dark. How could I make use of my time.  I typed the English into Google Translate.

I saw the sign 

PINTU KELUAR KECEMASAN.

The English read EMERGENCY EXIT. But which word in Malay was which English word.

By reading several signs and extracting a common word, I could see that door in several signs in English was Pintu.

How could I remember it. It's a bit like the words port and portal. But the middle letter is i and the last letter is you.

I can, by constantly reading the sign for emergency exit on a train, learn to recognize the Malay. Pintu. But how would I remind myself how to find the Malay in my brain from the English word?

I have used the system of making up a sentence for first the consonants and then the elusive vowels: May I PoINT oUt to yoU that the Malay for Door is Pintu. A e I o U. I owe it to U to point out the door. PINTU. A pint for you if you can point out the door. PIN This notice on yoUr door. Emergency exit. PINTU - Door.

Bahasa Malay - English Language

(Note that in Malay the adjective may often come after the noun.)

Pintu - door

keluar - exit (I think of the cellar door is the exit when the intruder or spider wants to kill you, kill the problem by hiding in the cellar and taking the exit 'keluar' and you are All Right)

kecemasan - anxiety / emergency / worry

pintu - door

I can easily see that Pintu is door. But Keluar and Kecemasan both start with KE. Which is which?

This is enough for me to look at the three words and work out that Keluar is exit and Kecemasan is emergency.

Another way to remember is that the word exit is shorter than emergency and the word Kecemasan is longer than keluar.

The initials KE in Keluare remind me of EX in Exit.

Kecemasan reminds me of an alarmed person rubbing their hands, masan as in manual.

Now I can keep re-reading the signs on a bus or a train and if I see KELUAR I know it means exit. If I see kecemasan I know it means emergency and if I see KELUAR KECEMASAN I know it means emergency exit.

Now I can stop reading the sign and just note where on the bus or train I can find the emergency exit, the sloping window at the back of the train, like the lift up window on the back of a five-door car (as the brochures say) or as we say conversationally in England, a hatchback.  On the bus I noticed that the emergency exit sign was on a window alongside the door, so if the door is jammed, you go for the nearby window.

English  Language - Bahasa Malay 

anxiety - kecemasan

emergency - kecemasan

exit - keluar

language - bahasa

worry - kecemasan

Bahasa Malay - English

kecemasan - anxiety, emergency, worry

keluar - exit

pintu - door

Once you have grasped the principles of translating and memorising, you can start learning any language just from the bus or train. Start by reading the words. Even if you do not yet understand them, first you get familiar with repeated words. 

When it comes to remembering, you will later know the words in the column of foreign words. You simply have to look them up later and find a way of attaching to English words those foreign words you can quickly identify.

You may not yet be able to speak any Malay or Indonesian, but you can recognize the word for exit, or emergency exit on a bus or train.

PINTU KELUAR KECEMASAN 

Emergency Exit

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and teacher of English and other languages.