Words With Different Meaning in Malaysian English
Some words and phrases used in Malaysia have different meanings than in British or American English.
Word / Phrase | Malaysian meaning | American / British meaning |
---|---|---|
parking lot | parking space | parking garage (US) |
photostat | a photocopier; also used as a verb meaning "to photocopy" | a historical copying machine using a camera and photographic paper, which was superseded by the photocopier. See Photostat machine. |
flat | low-cost apartment or flat | apartment (US) |
apartment | medium-cost apartment or flat | flat (UK) |
condominium | high-cost apartment or flat | commonhold (UK) |
to follow | to accompany, e.g. "Can I follow you?" meaning "Can I come with you?" or, "I will follow you." meaning "I will come with you." | to go after or behind, e.g. "The police car was following me." |
to revert | to come back (reply) to someone, e.g. "I had sent our clients an email this morning, but they have yet to revert." | to return to a previous state, e.g. "We reverted to our initial plan of hosting the party in a restaurant." |
to send | to take someone somewhere, e.g. "Can you send me to the airport?" | to cause something to go somewhere without accompanying it, e.g. "I sent this letter to my grandma." |
blur | condition of a person who is dazed, confused, appears mentally slow, e.g. "You look very blur right now, take a break." | vague, visually indistinct, e.g. "Everything is just a blur when I take my spectacles off." |
Read more about this topic: Malaysian English
Famous quotes containing the words words, meaning and/or english:
“The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“Chaucers remarkably trustful and affectionate character appears in his familiar, yet innocent and reverent, manner of speaking of his God. He comes into his thought without any false reverence, and with no more parade than the zephyr to his ear.... There is less love and simple, practical trust in Shakespeare and Milton. How rarely in our English tongue do we find expressed any affection for God! Herbert almost alone expresses it, Ah, my dear God!”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)