Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Introducing Yourself In Other Languages - simplified Chinese, Malay and Indonesian

You may need to introduce yourself in these situations:
Calling to book or change an airline ticket or reservation.
Checking into a hotel.
Checking in at the airport.
Claiming your table at a restaurant.
Meeting a colleague at an office.
Meeting the family of the bride and groom at a wedding.
Meeting the mourners at a funeral.
Claiming lost luggage.
Searching for your lost children, spouse, friend, group.


English
Hello. (Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening.) My name is ... (Angela Lansbury). How do you do?
(Informal Americanism: Pleased to meet you.)
(First name then surname.)


American English
Hi. My name is ... Pleased to meet you.

CHINESE
ni how (How are you; literally yu good?
how (Literally good. Equivalent of very well, thank you. Thank you would be shay shay.)


MALAY (Bahasa Malaysia meaning language Malaysia)
My name is - nama saya (name I/me)



Indonesian flag, like the Singapore flag wbut without the added crescent and stars.
INDONESIAN
Malay and Indonesian are almost interchangeable. The language grammar is very simple and so is the spelling. Indonesia adds some Dutch words or words derived from Dutch words.

I shall shortly add in my next post:
Bulgarian
Romanian
Chinese
Russian
Hebrew
Arabic
Tamil

Call to Action
Walk around saying them to yourself until you can speak fast without hesitation nor stammering.

Write those you need in your diary. Write them on the front page. And/or the back page or inside cover. Write them on the diary page before your next trip.
Add more as you learn them. Copy them.

Useful Books and Websites
Instant Malay for Tourist in 30 minutes
Mohd Mustafa Koah Soon Yuan
(You can tell by the authors names they are Malay and Chinese and in the title the English is not 100% - I would have said for a tourist or the tourist, but a handy tiny book for your pocket to read on the train or MRT in Singapore and add vocabulary.)

duolingo.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Standard_Malay_and_Indonesian

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, Teacher of English and other languages. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

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