Grammar
Much of Manglish grammatical structure is taken from Chinese dialects. Many also claim the structures have also been borrowed from the Malay language, but the amount of borrowing from Malay dwarves in comparison to the borrowing from Chinese. For example, the phrase "Why you so like that one?" means "Why are you behaving in that way" in standard English. In Cantonese, a similar phrase would be rendered as "Dímgáai néih gám ge?" or literally "Why you like that?" The "one" in the sample phrase does not literally mean the numeral one, instead it is used more as a suffix device. It is also sometimes rendered as "wan." The use of Manglish is discouraged at schools, where only Malaysian Standard English is taught.
Other common characteristics are anastrophe and omission of certain prepositions and articles. For example "I haven't seen you in a long time" becomes "Long time never seen you already." Or, in Singlish (used in Singapore), natives will usually say "Long time no see".
Read more about this topic: British And Malaysian English Differences
Famous quotes containing the word grammar:
“Grammar is a tricky, inconsistent thing. Being the backbone of speech and writing, it should, we think, be eminently logical, make perfect sense, like the human skeleton. But, of course, the skeleton is arbitrary, too. Why twelve pairs of ribs rather than eleven or thirteen? Why thirty-two teeth? It has something to do with evolution and functionalism—but only sometimes, not always. So there are aspects of grammar that make good, logical sense, and others that do not.”
—John Simon (b. 1925)
“I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)
“The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)