A New Way To Learn Malay With Pictures And Speech

In Singapore the undersground railway (MRT) station, Botanic Gardens, is Kebun Bunga in Malay. Kebun is garden; flower (the adjective) comes second. My memory aid, bunga like bulb. The initial letter b of botanic and the initial letter b of bunga are similar. The G of garden and the k or kebun sound similar. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Emergency exit advice in Singapore on train. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Put the words  individually into Translate and this is what they mean.

Pintu - door

keluar - exit

kecemasan - worry

di - in

sebelah - next

hadapan - presence

dan - and

belakang - back

kereta - train

api - fire

However, run the words consecutively and you get the result:

The exit of anxiety before the front and rear of the train

Building works warning sign in English and Malay. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Translation of sign on building works in Singapore  Malay - English
bahaya - danger
jangan - do not
dekat - close (adjective not verb)
Jangan dekat - Do not get close (in other words keep away)

Problem
I am learning to recognize Malay words from signs in Singapore, but not how to hear them.

Answer
I signed up for the free introductory lessons in Malay. The first lesson shows you pictures of man, woman, boy girl, bicycle and ship.

I noticed something I had read earlier on Duolingo, that nouns start with a pre-fix SE. Malay is logical, easy, although sometimes longer.

For example, plurals: two or more boys, instead of remembering the plural, which in English often adds an 's', but could be 'es' as in wishes, or a total change as in wolf and wolves, child, children, in Malay you simply double the word, so anak for child, for children becomes anak-anak.

The modifiers (words which modify or change or add to the information in the noun) go first in English, but second in Malay. (French also has adjectives after nouns. Moulin rouge is red windmill.)

If you translate word by word as you think into another language, the structure come out wrongly. This applies with a translation from a translation device and when you are thinking.

That is why it is good to learn phrases instead of individual words. You get the phrase right. Your brain gets a feeling of where the adjectives and nouns and verbs should be positioned in a sentence in another language.

Malay
Malay can be simple, at other times it looks long and complicated. For boy, you have three words" person (orang), male, small/young. The same for girl, person (orang). Orang as in orang utan. Before you even start learning Malay, you know one word.

Cross the bridge to the border from Singapore to Johor Bahru and you will see more Malay language signs. Or go up to the towers featured in the film.

Malay is one of the four languages in Singapore.

Useful Website
https://l-lingo.com/webapp/#/onboarding?product=mly&referer=https:%2F%2Fl-lingo.com%2Fen%2Flearn-malay

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtogapher, author and speaker. If you want a an entertaining and infomative and encouraging talk or workshop on learning Malay and other languages, please contact me. Share links to this post with your friends and colleagues.