Malay words which look and sound similar to English or are easy to remember

 

Flag of Malaysia - looks like the flag of the USA.

 

Flag of Indonesia. The language is almost the same with some different vocabulary, like American English and British English.

The Singapore flag (with a predominantly ethnic Chinese and Mandarin speaking population) has a similar flag but the symbolic crescent is a hark back to the days when Singapore was part of muslim Malaysia.

In the mailboxes of households in Singapore is notice of the distribution of oxygen meters. One per household.

As usual in Singapore, leaflets are printed in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.

This provides me with a chance to see the English alongside the Chinese and Malay. The Chinese is harder for me to identify. the Malay uses the same alphabet. Some of the sentence structure is similar.

.Malay (alphabetically)-English

anda you/your

atau or (i think of the English word alternative with the letter a and t at the start, another letter a in the middle and U or V at the end) 

baharu new (as in the city of Johor Bahru across the straits from Singapore) 

boleh able (I think of able-bodied, able is boleh, boleh is able)

cara how

dan and (The same three letters in a different order)

doktor  doctor

farmasi - pharmacy/ pharmacies

kedua shop

klip - clip

lokasi location

mesti must

Ogos - August

oksigen oxygen

orang person/people (as in orang utang)

pasar market

pasar raya supermarket

raya (think of raja) king, queen , super

symtom - symptom

English (alphabetically)-Malay

clip - klip

free percuma

how  cara

market pasar

must mesti

new - bahru/baharu

or atau

oxygen - oksigen

oxymeter oksimeter

please sila

supermarket pasar raya

symptom - symtom

why mengapa

you/your anda

Useful Websites

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2021/06/malay-and-indonesian-food-menu-words.html

About the author

Angela Lansbury is Vice President Public Relations of Braddell Heights Advanced, and Tampines Changkat Advanced,  speakers training club which are part of Toastmasters International. The USA has several Spanish speaking as well as the English speaking clubs. You can pick up Spanish from buying or reading online their Spanish clubs welcome pages and manuals. 

In The USA, UK, Singapore and worldwide, there are many clubs which are English speaking, as well as Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Tamil, Malay.

The inauguration of Tampines Changkat Advanced was Tuesday 29 2021, online on  zoom. Their meetings are on the fourth Tuesday evening of the month. They hope to hold meetings with a few people meeting physically, the others online, as soon as the Covid-19 conditions allow.

You can find the club through their facebook page as well as through Toastmasters International find a club. 

https://www.facebook.com/tampineschangkatadvTMC

The meetings are free for visitors. Visitors can watch, and join in speaking by introducing themselves and volunteering to do a 2 minutes impromptu  speech in table topics.

If you wish to join for a year, it costs about 190 US dollars, to have monthly meetings online, a mentor, a magazine, and one of the 11  Pathways, consisting of 14 projects. Each project starts with 3 speeches of your choice of subject, lasting 4 to 6 minutes, then 5 to 7 minutes. The Pathways include the most popular Presentation Mastery. I chose  humorous speaking as my second Pathway, costing 20 dollars. Then my third was a leadership course. Come and see for free.

The club also has meetings in person in Singapore

You can also contact my other club, smaller Braddell Heights Advanced, which is a cosy little club with more chances to speak.

Login through bha.learncool.sg/meet/bha 

That will link you through to Zoom or googlemeet. 2 pm to 5 pm.

BHA meets the first Wednesday evening each month, starting at 7 pm Singapore time. 

Then an extra meeting on the 3rd Saturday afternoon, starting at 2 pm Singapore time.

To check your time zone,  

https://24timezones.com/difference/singapore/ 

Meetings will be on Wed July 7th and  Saturday July 17th.

Contact either of these or other clubs through Toastmasters International Find a Club.

more later