Morphemes in the Development of Manglish

 

Language is probably the most fascinating part of human intelligence. The endless possibilities of sounds that can be put together to form meaning and enable people to communicate with such extreme precision is difficult to comprehend. Despite the fact that specific structures and characteristics put individual languages within certain boundaries, languages are not static and are still developing, sometimes even going beyond the boundaries to create new or sublanguages. One such sublanguage is what a people group from the country of Malaysia has fondly dubbed Manglish, which is a combination of predominantly English, bits and pieces of Malay, and also parts of multiple dialects of Chinese.

 

In the development of sublanguages, the structure of the main language is adopted or maintained. A major basic element in a language is morphology. A morpheme, according to Analyzing English Grammar by Thomas P. Klammer, Muriel R. Schulz, and Angela Fella Vope, is “the smallest unit of a meaning in a language” (38). Morphemes consist of inflectional and derivational morphemes. Klammer, Schulz, and Vope state that inflectional morphemes are used to “show grammatical relationships between words in a sentence” (43). Derivational morphemes, on the other hand, change the meaning of words. Although many factors constitute to the existence of Manglish, both inflectional and derivational morphemes play big roles in giving Manglish a unique blend of three main languages in Malaysia.

 

Even though inflectional morphemes play a dominant role in the English language since its usage is entirely necessary in indicating tense and aspect, possession, plurality, as well as comparatives and superlatives, they are not as noticed as derivational morphemes simply because they are more clearly defined and set in stone. Because the rules for inflectional morphemes are easy to adhere to, it is uncommon that people would attempt to use them in ways apart from their correct grammatical guidelines. Inflectional morphemes lack flexibility. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. There is no going about their fixed formulae.

 

Derivational morphemes on the other hand, change the form of words, and are necessary for conveying meaning. For example, the adjective-making morpheme {-ish} causes the noun boy, to become the adjective boyish, and the adverb-making morpheme {-ly}, if added to the adjective boyish, would result in the adverb boyishly. However, in the everyday usage of conversational English, derivational morphemes tend to get thrown around and are sometimes used quite carelessly. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as new words are often birthed in this manner.

 

People often add derivational morphemes to words which technically do not support the usage of that morpheme. The most observably exploited derivational morpheme in today’s American context is the morpheme {-ish}. While {-ish} is grammatically understood to be a bound morpheme, which means that it cannot stand alone, many people now use it freely as an afterthought or even a word, in addition to combining it with words that do not usually support it. {-ish} is probably most commonly used when indicating indecision, that something shows resemblance, is approximate, tentative, or slight. For example, “I will be there around three-ish,” indicates that the speaker hopes to be at a certain place at three o’clock, but is not entirely sure, while “I’m not really hungry; just hungry-ish,” can express that the speaker is just a little hungry, not quite hungry yet, or is simply undecided.

 

Children’s author, Peter Reynolds takes full advantage of this morpheme in his book, Ish. In this short story, a little boy, Ramon, who loves to draw, gets discouraged when none of his artwork turns out the way it should. Everything changes for him when he one day finds out that his little sister, Marisol, had been keeping all his discarded drawings (n.pag.). The key conversation in the story is when Ramon says, “That was supposed to be a vase of flowers… but it doesn’t look like one,” to which Marisol responds, “Well, it looks vase-ish!” Ramon then “began to see things in a whole new way” and, awestruck, replies that “[t]hey do look…ish” (n.pag.). He begins “thinking ish-ly” (n.pag.), and his life becomes happy and carefree once again. Reynolds ends the book with the line, “And Ramon lived ishfully ever after” (n.pag.).  As can be seen from this book, not only does Reynolds use {-ish} to show resemblance, he also uses it as a word, and even adds other derivational morphemes to it, as in “ish-ly” and “ishfully.”

 

 The dynamics of a language depend on many things, but the main influence on a language is its cultural context. Although the main stem of a language may be standardized, the differing accents and quirkiness of a particular culture adds even more character to the language, and is often only relevant to the people within that culture or sub-culture. Just as {-ish} is understood widely throughout America but may not be as easily interpreted in another English speaking culture, there are words within sub-cultures of America which would not be understood by the general American population.

           

Sub-cultural languages can be observed anywhere, for instance, on a college campus. Freshmen usually find themselves at a loss upon first arriving on a campus because of the cultural lingo, but they eventually catch on and fit right in. At Liberty University, one word that is commonly heard among the students is, the “C-lab,” which refers to the Integrated Learning Resource Center, where many students go to do their homework, or sometimes even just to socialize. However, as if the word “C-lab” is not abridged enough, students have gone on to drop the verbalized “C,” and have fused it into a monosyllabic word, “clab.” “Clab” has since then been given a verb form, in which students will ask one another, “Are you clabbing tonight?”

 

While any student at Liberty would instantly understand what this means, even if it is his or her first time hearing it, others in the surrounding community, or even some faculty members who are not well versed with these terms would be completely clueless. This form of language evolution not only allows speakers to communicate more succinctly with each other, it also builds a sense of community, familiarity, and identity within a sub-culture, giving people something to call their own and to be proud of. 

           

As demonstrated in the usage of {-ish} and “clabbing,” English is constantly being built upon, according to the various cultural contexts. However, these two examples are only within the context of an English speaking country. Being the most widely travelled language, English not only thrived wherever it went, it also adopted many of the local languages it encountered, grew, left its stamp on the society, and moved on to experience yet another culture. While some new inventions of words remained within that culture and never became known to the rest of the world (just as “clabbing” is quite likely never going to be used by other universities in America), others gained recognition and were included to become part of the official English vocabulary.

 

In his book The Adventures of English, Melvyn Bragg gives an example of how “isukrimu” now means “ice-cream” in Japanese, and Japanese words like “kamikaze” and “tsunami” have become accepted as English words (288). By taking into account the huge influences that languages like Latin, and French, as well as Germanic and Celtic dialects had on English in its early stages, it is quite obvious that English is very flexible when it comes to incorporating foreign tongues. As a matter of fact, this flexibility is possibly the main reason why English is the most widely used language all over the globe today. 

           

The consideration of the usage of inflectional morphemes, derivational morphemes being used beyond their conventional rules, how cultures manipulate words to most efficiently fit their context, and how other languages have contributed to the expansion of English, all come together when looking at a sublanguage like Manglish. Manglish typically formulates sentences in such a way that a message is most quickly and expressively conveyed. One common way of doing so, in addition to stripping down words to its very minimal sounds (for example, “already” which is reduced to “dee”), is through morphemes. Apart from the “normal” way of “misusing” derivational morphemes, for instance, using {-ish} or {-ing} on words they should not be used on, Malaysians have three ways of farther stretching the limits of morphology and English.

 

The first is the usage of English morphemes on Malay words. This is especially interesting because both inflectional and derivational morphemes are used in this context. Even though nothing can be done with inflectional morphemes outside of the specific rules of thumb in English, there is no rule that says they cannot be applied to another language. The English language has eight inflectional morphemes. However, only four of these are commonly applied to Malay words, namely, the past and present tense morphemes, and the past and present participle morphemes. Possessive and plural markers are seldom ever used, and comparative and superlative morphemes are almost never inflected upon Malay words. Because the Malay language lacks tenses and aspects, Manglish speakers have the tendency of adding on English inflectional morphemes onto Malay words when using Malay words in a predominantly English sentence. If, for instance, the past tense form of a verb is replaced with a Malay verb to more accurately describe an event, the Malay word would simply take on the {-ed} morpheme of the word it replaces.

 

One such example is with the word “kembang,” which means “to expand,” “to swell,” or “to bloat up.” While an English speaker would say, “The leech expanded so much that I thought it would burst,” a Manglish speaker would agree that the word “kembang” better describes the swelling up of a leech and say, “The leech “kembanged” so big until I tot (thought) it’ll burst!” This concept can similarly be applied to the present tense morpheme {-s}, as well as the past and present participle morphemes {-ing} and {-en}, as in, “His head “kembangs” every time I compliment him,” “The air in the balloon is “kembanging” because of the heat,” and “My little hometown had “kembanged” so much that I felt like a stranger.” However, it is very important to note that in Manglish, context is very important, and much emphasis is placed on which word expresses a sentence best. Most Manglish speakers would agree that while the past tense form of “kembanged” perfectly fits the first sentence, the present tense and present participle forms of the word can be considered acceptable, but the past participle form of “kembanged” in the last sentence sounds forced and unnecessary. In that context, the usage of the English word “grown” or “developed” would have sufficed.

 

The application of derivational morphemes on Malay words is slightly more complex to explain to a non-Manglish speaker, simply because, as with derivational morphemes in English, the rules are not as stringent as inflectional morphemes, rather the usage of it is more intuitive. For example, the word “cacat,” if directly translated into English, means “retarded.” However, it is often understood to mean “strange,” or “somewhat defected,” in a much less offensive way than it sounds in English. In making a mild criticism of something inanimate like a painting, to say that “it looks so retarded” is highly insulting and degrading to the artist, whereas if the word “cacat” were to be used, Malaysians would generally understand that the speaker is trying to be constructive rather than rude.

 

The relativity of derivational morphemes now comes into play. While the adjective “retarded” is formed by using the derivational adjective-making morpheme {-ed}, which modifies the noun “retard” thus causing it to mean “the state of being a retard,” “cacat” is by itself already an adjective, and technically no longer needs an adjective-making morpheme. However, because Manglish speakers associate the word “cacat” with the English translation “retarded,” they are more inclined to say that “it looks so cacated,” rather than “it looks so cacat,” which sounds strange and incomplete. Therefore, although “cacated” is actually redundant, Manglish speakers use it anyway because it sounds better, and the meaning is more effectively presented.

 

The second type of morphology that is unique to Manglish is the incorporation of the Malay morphemes and English words. According to the “Sukatan Pelajaran Bahasa Melayu STPM: Tatabahasa (Morfologi dan Sintaksis),” which is an official website for Malaysian A-Levels students, a morpheme is the smallest unit which makes up the elements of words (n.pag.). In other words, in terms of definition, morphemes in Malay are no different from morphemes in English. However, one major difference between the morphemes in these two languages is that inflectional morphemes are non-existent in Malay. In addition to that, the morphemes themselves are entirely different.

 

Even though a variety of Malay morphemes can be tagged on to English words, they are extremely rare, with the exception of the prefix {ter-}. Unlike English derivational morphemes and some other Malay morphemes which change the forms and meanings of words, {ter-} is a unique case in which it simply means “accidentally.” Since there is no word that actually means “accidentally” in Malay, {ter-} is the only way of expressing that a deed done is not deliberate, as demonstrated in “terpotong,” which means “accidentally cut.” As previously mentioned, Manglish speakers are very fond of shortcuts. For this reason, {ter-} is especially loved, as it has the ability to denote the tiresome syllables in “accidentally” with a single syllable. Instead of having to say “I accidentally stepped on her toe,” Manglish speakers would just say, “I terstepped on her toe.” The amazing thing about this morpheme is that it can be used on almost any verb, as long as it logically makes sense. For example, to say that “the man terrobbed the bank” is completely absurd, but sayings like “he terburned his finger,” “I terwalked into the wall,” or “she terspilled her water,” make perfect sense.

 

The third and final usage of morphology in Manglish is the usage of Malay morphemes on Chinese words. The word “mempersiasuehkan” is a perfect example of this coalition in which {memper-} is a Malay morpheme, “sia sueh” is a Hokkien word, and {-kan} is yet another Malay morpheme. {memper-} is a verb-making morpheme meaning “to cause.” For instance, with the word “baik,” which means “good,” “memperbaik” is “to make good.” “Sia sueh” means “embarrassing,” and {-kan}, also a verb-making morpheme, indicates a kind of causal effect on the noun following that verb. For instance, “biar” means “to leave” and “dia” could mean “him” or “her.” Therefore, “biarkan dia” is an imperative command to “leave him (or her) be.” Similarly in the case of “mempersiasuehkan,” “mempersiasueh” is “to make embarrass,” and “mempersiasuehkan us,” is “to make us embarrassed.”  However, the morphemes make it understood that an object follows the verb and can therefore be negated.  Subsequently, while an English speaker might say “He is such an embarrassment to us!” the Manglish speaker would simply exclaim, “Mempersiasuehkan!”

 

The fascinating quality that Manglish speakers instinctively possess is the ability to distinguish and switch between written, academic, Queen’s English from Manglish; which, contrary to popular belief, is not void of structure. Manglish speakers are naturally inclined to speak within the unwritten rules of Manglish grammar, yet write within the rules of standardized English grammar. Nevertheless, if asked, any Manglish speaker would confirm that although English is a complete language, many words which are supposedly direct translations of Chinese or Malay words are still not fully expressed in pure English. With the usage of Manglish, Malaysians are able to convey a precise idea in a way which is authentically Malay or Chinese, but yet remain within the framework of English.

 

Manglish is a true representation of one among thousands of, as Bragg puts it, new “Englishes” (291). No matter how much criticism it has received and no matter how many people label it broken English and look down on it, the fact of the matter is that Manglish runs in the veins of English educated Malaysians. Kate Burridge, author of Blooming English, states that “our love for language is also reflected in the time we spend worrying about usage… what is striking is the intensity of emotion that accompanies these worries” (1). This passion for language is more than evident among Manglish users in Malaysia. The countless articles in newspapers that have gone back and forth, arguing for and against Manglish in Malaysia can vouch for the reality that Manglish is very close to the hearts of those who speak it.

 

 

Works Cited

 

Bragg, Melvin. The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language. NY: Arcade Publishing, 2003. Print.

 

Burridge, Kate. Blooming English. NY: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.

 

Klammer, Thomas P., Muriel R. Schultz, and Angela Della Volpe. Analyzing English Grammar. 6th ed. NY: Longman, 2009. Print.

 

Reynolds, Peter H. Ish. Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2004. Print.

 

“Sukatan Pelajaran Bahasa Melayu STPM: Tatabahasa (Morfologi dan Sintaksis).” Portal Pendidikan. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.