Asian Englishes

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English(es) in Malaysia

Stefanie Pillai & Lok Tik Ong

To cite this article: Stefanie Pillai & Lok Tik Ong (2018) English(es) in Malaysia, Asian Englishes,
20:2, 147-157, DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2018.1459073

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Asian Englishes, 2018
VOL. 20, NO. 2, 147–157
https://doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2018.1459073

English(es) in Malaysia
Stefanie Pillai  and Lok Tik Ong 
Department of English Language, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article provides a brief historical overview of the advent of Received 10 February 2018
English in Malaysia and the education policies that impact on English Accepted 21 March 2018
language education. We then discuss the concept of Malaysian KEYWORDS
English. We show that rather than being seen as an umbrella term Malaysian English; colloquial
for all varieties of English used in Malaysia, the term ‘Malaysian English’ Malaysia English; Manglish;
tends to be associated with the more colloquial spoken one and thus education policies; model of
viewed negatively. In view of the expanded use of English in Malaysia, Malaysian English varieties
we propose a revised model for understanding the different varieties
and uses of English in Malaysia.

Background
The use of English in Malaysia can be traced to the British presence in the Malay Peninsula
in the eighteenth century, and in Sabah and Sarawak in the nineteenth century. English-
medium schools, missionary work and the use of English in the administrative and com-
mercial sectors in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Singapore and Melaka, and the rest of
the Malay states in the Peninsula, as well as what are now the states of Sabah and Sarawak,
gave rise to the influence of English (Omar, 1992; Talbot, 1989). English-medium schools
were considered prestigious (Gaudart, 1987), but because they were set up in urban areas
they were mainly attended by those of Chinese and Indian heritage (Hirschman, 1972).
At the point of independence of Malaya in 1957, there were schools with different lan-
guages used as a medium of instruction: English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil, each with its
own curriculum. Upon independence, Malay was made the national language (Article 152 of
the Federal Constitution Malaysia 1963/1967) and thereafter an official language (National
Language Act 1963/1967), and began to replace English in government administration
and public education. Chinese and Tamil-medium schools were allowed to continue at the
primary level. However, a common syllabus was used for all public schools (Report of the
Education Committee, 1956, also known as the Razak Report).
Malay-medium secondary schools were established, and English-medium schools con-
tinued to exist up to the secondary level (Report of the Educational Review Committee,
1960, also known as the Rahman Talib Report). However, by the 1970s, the phasing out of
English-medium schools and tertiary education began in earnest. English today remains

CONTACT  Stefanie Pillai  stefanie@um.edu.my

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
148   S. PILLAI AND O. LOK TIK

as a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools. It is also still widely used in
the private sector, business, the media and private education. There are now an increasing
number of international schools and private colleges and universities where English is the
medium of instruction. This increase does open up the question of how Malaysia seems to
have gone back to its pre-independent and early post-independent state of things where
education is concerned. The policy then was to implement a national curriculum with the
national language as the medium of instruction. However, at present, more than half of
the students in international schools in Malaysia, where English is the main medium of
instruction, are Malaysians (Nasa & Pilay, 2017). These schools are located in urban areas,
and the high school fees mean that only those who are economically well-off can afford to
enrol their children in them. We can assume that products of these schools will be generally
more proficient in English having been educated in English, and further, coming from more
privileged families, are also more likely to already come from English-speaking homes and
social circles. The implication of this is that, just as in the past, there is a growing privileged
group of English-speaking Malaysians who will have more of an advantage when it comes
to job opportunities.
In a bid to improve the level of English and to make knowledge in the area of science
and technology more accessible, a policy to teach science and mathematics in English
was introduced in stages at the primary and secondary levels in 2002. There was general
opposition from, for example, Malay non-governmental organisations and Chinese edu-
cationists to this policy, and due to a reported decline in the percentage of ‘passes’ in these
subjects this policy was scrapped in 2009. Two new programmes were introduced in 2016:
the Highly Immersive Programme and the Dual Language Programme (DLP). Both of
these programmes are initiatives under the ‘Uphold Bahasa Melayu (Malay Language) and
Strengthen the English Language’ policy in the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013–2025
(Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2013). The Highly Immersive Programme is meant to
provide more opportunities for students to use English beyond the English classroom both
in the school and in outreach activities. The DLP allows the use of English or Malay for the
teaching of science, mathematics, information technology and communication, and design
and technology. As of 2017, a total of 1214 primary and secondary schools were part of
this initiative, with 67% of the schools being in urban areas (Chin & Rajaendram, 2017).
Although schools are not forced to implement the DLP, there has been opposition from
Malay, Chinese and Tamil groups. Among their concerns are the effect of this policy on
the status of these other languages, and the ability of children to learn these subject matters
in another language. Their concern about the latter is understandable given the evidence
from research about the merits of conducting education, especially primary education, in
children’s first languages (L1) (e.g. Cummins, 1981; DeGraff, 2017; Walter & Dekker, 2011).
However, as in many other multilingual contexts, students in Malaysia have a variety of
L1s (e.g. Malay dialects, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Punjabi and indigenous languages)
and thus it is not possible to educate them in all their respective L1s. Proponents of the
DLP claim that teaching some subjects in English helps to improve students’ proficiency in
English, and that in the long run this will make them more employable. Surveys continue to
cite the lack of English proficiency as among the top reasons for graduate unemployability
(e.g. JobStreet.com, 2015; Malaysian Employers Federation, 2016; Singh, 2018).
This link between English language proficiency and employability is a main push factor
in recent policies aimed at improving the English language proficiency of students, such
 ASIAN ENGLISHES   149

Table 1. Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) levels for English for each level of education
in Malaysia.
Education level CEFR level User
Pre-school A1 Basic
Primary school A2
Secondary school B1/B2 Independent
Post-secondary B2
Tertiary B2/C1 Proficient
Teacher education C1
Source: English Language Standards and Quality Council (2015, pp. 26 and 57).

as the English language Roadmap 2015–2025 (English Language Standards and Quality
Council, 2015). This Roadmap cuts across all levels of education and uses the Common
European Framework of Reference as a common framework to align the English language
curricula for preschool, primary, secondary, tertiary and teacher education. The English
language Roadmap has set targets for each level of education, which are to be achieved by
2025 as presented in Table 1.

The Malaysian variety of English

Because English is taught in schools, many Malaysians can speak English, with varying
degrees of fluency. It is also the L1 of a minority of Malaysians. These include Malaysian
Portuguese (Pillai & Khan, 2011) and other Eurasian families, bicultural or multiracial
families, and even mono-ethnic families who have shifted to English (e.g. David & Mohd.
Noor, 1999; David, Naji, & Kaur, 2003). However, due to, among others, differences in edu-
cational backgrounds and level of exposure to and use of English, the level of English among
Malaysians differs widely. Malaysians who are proficient users of English are generally able
to switch from a colloquial to a more standard spoken variety, but others are simply not
proficient in English. The low proficiency of English among students was reported in the
Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013–2025 (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2013, pp. 4–11),
where only 28% of the students achieved a minimum credit or grade C for English in the
Form Five public examination equivalent to O-level standard. Similarly, this worrying trend
also emerged in the November 2013 Malaysian University English Test results, where almost
67% of the candidates were placed in Band 1 (very limited user) and Band 2 (limited user)
(English Language Standards and Quality Council, 2015, pp. 234–235)
Schneider (2003, p. 262) places Malaysia in the third phase of his Dynamic Model of
the evolution of New Englishes based on its use in numerous domains and its distinctive
linguistic features. There have been various descriptions of the features of Malaysian English
(MalE), although most of them focus on the colloquial and learner variety. It should be
noted that the features of colloquial English are not homogeneous (Pillai, 2012). The term
‘Malaysian English’ is generally equated with the colloquial variety, popularly known, per-
haps rather derogatorily as with Konglish (Korean English) and Japlish (Japanese English),
as Manglish, rather than all the varieties of English used by Malaysians (Gaudart, 2000;
Pillai, 2008). Thus, MalE is seen as being appropriate for the night market and other local
purposes but not for international communication (Mohd. Don, 2016). This type of what
Wee (2018, p. 42) calls ‘linguistic conservatism’ can also be found in neighbouring Singapore,
where, despite more acceptance and support of the colloquial variety, Singlish, there is still
a reluctance to officially accept its use.
150   S. PILLAI AND O. LOK TIK

In the case of Malaysia, there is a lack of a formal description of what this entity looks
and, more importantly, sounds like. This is also because of the association with the collo-
quial variety of Malaysian English (CMalE), which is viewed as being somewhat deficient.
In the Malaysian context, Standard English is generally equated to Standard British English
(e.g. Baskaran, 1987; Morais, 2000), and while this may work for the written variety, how
features of the spoken form, especially pronunciation, is to be dealt with remains unresolved.

Colloquial Malaysian English

CMalE is the variety that is used ‘for intranational communication, between Malaysians of
varying ethnicity, as a medium of local communication’ (Gill, 2002, p. 52), and hence serves
as ‘a carrier of a distinctly Malaysian identity’ (Schneider, 2007, p. 150).
Most varieties of English that emerge in multilingual communities show language inno-
vations as speakers transfer the cultural conventions and linguistic patterns of their L1 and
the local social, environmental and cultural context into their variety of English (Morais,
2000). These variations show that they are innovators who have claimed ownership of
the language they are using by injecting their own identity into this variety. For example,
Nair-Venugopal (2000) found that, despite organisational directives to adhere to Standard
English usage during training sessions at a well-established local business organisation,
a more localised variety of English was used to ensure effective delivery of the message.
Her findings correspond with those by Morais (1994) and Atan (1998). The local variety
of English is seen as a versatile variety that is viable for effective communication and not
as a distortion of the English language. It is used to mark identity and solidarity among
Malaysians. An increasing number of studies have shown the widespread use of CMalE at
all levels of English-speaking society in Malaysia, dispelling the notion that CMalE is only
the result of a lack of proficiency in English. In fact, CMalE is a fluid entity and more pro-
ficient speakers of English are able to weave in and out of CMalE and Standard Malaysian
English (SME) (Govindan & Pillai, 2009). For example, in a formal meeting at work they
may use the more standard form of English; but with friends and family members, they
may switch to CMalE. For example:
‘Had your lunch already ah?’ instead of ‘Have you had your lunch?’
The use of the more colloquial form of English can also be found in text messages or
Facebook posts. For instance:
‘What time you leaving?’ instead of texting ‘What time are you leaving?’
An example from a Facebook reply to someone who has achieved something might be:
Wa terror lah u! [Wow, you are really great!]
Among the more salient syntactic features of CMalE are the following:
(1) Not marking tense and aspect, where the past tense form of the word is used instead
of the present perfect form, usually with the words ‘already’, ‘before’ and ‘last time’.
Examples include:
• I went there before. [I have been there.]
• We began practice already. [We have begun practice.]
(2) Deletion of the continuous form of the verb ‘be’, such as in:
• We baking cookies tonight. [We are baking cookies tonight.]
 ASIAN ENGLISHES   151

(3) ‘Got’ is used to indicate possession or used in place of have:

• I got two dogs and a cat. [I have two dogs and a cat.]
• I got headache [I have a headache.]
(4) The ‘isn’t it’ tag is used for all tag questions:
• You know her, isn’t it? [You know her, don’t you?]
• You took my keys by mistake, isn’t it? [You took my keys by mistake, didn’t you?]
(5) For yes/no questions, Malaysian speakers tend not to use the question form, and
instead use tags like ‘ah’, ‘or not’, ‘can or not’ and ‘is it’:
• You want lunch or not? [Do you want lunch?]
• You going to work tomorrow ah? [Are you going to work tomorrow?]
• You don’t like durians, is it? [You don’t like durians, do you?]
(6) ‘Wh’ questions generally do not have verbs like is, are, was, were, do, did, have
and had:
• When you coming back to visit me? [When are you coming back to visit me?]
• Where you went? [Where did you go?]
• Why you so sad? [Why are you so sad?]
(7) Dropping of utterance initial pronouns occurs in CME. Examples are as follows:
• Can start now lah. (Pronoun + can start now.)
• Need to exercise every day one. (Pronoun + need to exercise every day.)
Like other varieties of English which emerged as a result of language contact, MalE con-
tains features that form its uniqueness. These include code-switching, code-mixing, lexical
shifts, localised cultural expressions and simplification, which are most distinguishable in
oral communication such as those used in the workplace (Morais, 1994; Nair-Venugopal,
2003), in informal situations, in home communication (Pillai, 2008; Pillai & Khan, 2011)
and sometimes in the classroom (Rajadurai, 2004). These features have specific functions
or roles in multicultural communication. For example, Morais’ (2000) examination of the
use of language in the workplace reveals that code-switching in colloquial English and
Malay is used as a close-gap strategy or to display solidarity when the management and
the workers interact. Similarly, code-switching and code-mixing in multilingual exchanges
are communication strategies used for establishing solidarity and rapport among speakers,
and for elucidating and interpreting meaning.
Even in advertising, features of CMalE are used – for example in local radio advertise-
ments (Pillai & Kamaruddin, 2006; Rajadurai, 2004). CMalE is used in radio advertisements
mainly for comic effect as well as to give a sense of ‘Malaysianness’ (Pillai & Kamaruddin,
2006). It also seeks to build solidarity with Malaysian listeners by creating a Malaysian mood
and environment through use of such features. These socio-linguistic tools are, therefore, a
linguistic advantage employed to show affiliation to a particular social group and to express
solidarity. Furthermore, these features are used to express different attitudes, moods and
connotation which monolingual speakers do by varying levels of formality, thus increasing
the impact of their speech and enabling the users to use their speech in an effective manner
(Crystal, 2010).

Malaysian English pronunciation

In this section we will look at some of the salient features of pronunciation in MalE. We
focus on pronunciation, as this is one of the distinguishing features of speakers regardless
152   S. PILLAI AND O. LOK TIK

of the perspective we adopt, such as World Englishes, English as an international language

or English as a lingua franca. Because of their different ethnic, linguistic and regional
backgrounds, there is not one homogeneous Malaysian accent. Yet there are some defining
features of pronunciation that set, for example, Malaysian Malay speakers of English apart
from Indonesian English speakers, or Malaysian Chinese speakers from Hong Kong or
mainland Chinese speakers of English. Some of these phonological features may be more
prominent in the colloquial form of English, as there tends to be more ethnic and even
geographical marking in non-standard speech’s lack of vowel contrast. A case in point
would be Malaysian newsreaders on national television, where it is not always possible to
pinpoint their ethnic origin. Similarly, Pillai, Mohd. Don, Knowles, and Tang (2010) found
that Malaysian listeners found it hard to guess the ethnic background of fluent Malaysian
speakers because their speech is not strongly marked for ethnicity.

Vowels
Malaysian speakers generally do not contrast between typical English vowel pairs, such as
in the following examples, where both words in the pair tend to be homonyms (Pillai et al.,
2010; Tan & Low, 2014):
‘bit’ and ‘beat’ [bit]
‘bet’ and ‘bat’ [bɛt]
‘cut’ and ‘cart’ [cʌt]
‘sort’ and ‘sought’ [sɔt]
‘pull’ and ‘pool’ [pul]
More fluent speakers, however, have been found to contrast for length (Pillai et al., 2010).
Another common feature is the monophthongisation of particular diphthongs (Pillai,
2014), such as in the following examples:
bear [bɛ]
boat [bot]
The /ɪə/ diphthong tends to have a [j] insertion, such as in the following examples:
hear [ˈhɪjə]
tear [ˈtɪjə]
Similarly, the triphthongs in words like hour, power and sour tend to be produced with a
[w], resulting in two-syllable rather than one-syllable words:
hour [ˈawə]
sour [ˈsawə]
power [ˈpawə]

Consonants
For consonants, among the most perceivable difference is the realisation of ‘th’ sounds.
In general, an initial ‘th’ sound in words like the and there, and those in the middle of
words like brother and father, tend to be realised similar to a voiced alveolar (Phoon &
Maclagan, 2009) or dental stop, especially in colloquial speech. Thus, ‘the brother’ would
be realised as [d̪ə ˈbɹʌd̪ə]. This is especially common in colloquial speech. Some
Malaysians realise initial voiceless dental fricative sound in words like three and thin as
 ASIAN ENGLISHES   153

[t] or, more likely, with a dentalised /t/ similar to Malay. Yamaguchi and Pḗtursson (2012)
and Yamaguchi (2014), however, claim that a new type of [t], different from aspirated /t/ in
words like teach is emerging. This new [t] is said to be replacing both syllable initial voiced
and voiceless dental fricatives (e.g. in three and mother). This new phenomenon requires
further investigation especially with regards to the dentalised [t] replacing [ð].
Another consonant feature which is emerging among younger urban speakers is the
realisation of coda [ɹ] in words like car and park. Thus far, no consistent realisation has
been found among Malaysian speakers (Pillai, 2015). This distinguishes MalE from the
English spoken in Brunei and the Philippines. In Singapore English, rhoticity appears to be
developing as a prestige norm (Tan, 2012; Tan & Gupta, 1992). Among Malaysia speakers,
rhoticity is more common among those who are dominant users of English and those who
attend private and international schools (Pillai, 2015), and thus may develop into a prestige
norm in the future.

Prosodic features
MalE is generally described as a syllable-timed variety of English (Tan & Low, 2014). The
lack of lexical stress and vowel reduction in MalE contributes to its syllable timing. In rela-
tion to intonation, MalE has been found to not mark new information in speech by way
of pitch change (Gut, Pillai, & Don, 2013; Gut & Pillai, 2014a). For question forms, rising
tones were generally used by Malaysian speakers for most question forms, including for
‘wh-’ questions, instead of a falling tone (Gut & Pillai, 2014b; Yap & Pillai, 2017). Similar
findings have been reported for Singapore English (Lim, 2000).

Embracing varieties of Malaysian English

After more than two decades, the description of Malaysian English from the Standard British
English point of view is outdated as there is more understanding of the influences that are
absorbed by the language and more acceptance of the differences which are now seen as
part of their heritage as English-speaking Malaysians. In other words, the influences from
other languages in their repertoire are no longer seen as a weakness in their proficiency of
English language, but rather as expanding the repertoire and enriching the English language.
With increased work opportunities for migrant workers adding to the diverse cultures in
Malaysia, more sub-varieties of MalE have emerged alongside the existing ones. Figure 1
(from Ong, 2016, p. 54) offers a more comprehensive model of the MalE varieties and their
speakers, capturing a more encompassing profile of MalE speakers today. The figure shows
that speakers of the acrolectal variety or Standard MalE are able to shift down to the collo-
quial and the more basilectal varieties when the need arises and up again to a more standard
variety; while speakers of the basilectal varieties who do not have the SME in their repertoire
are not able to shift up to CMalE and the standard variety because they do not have what
is required to execute such a shift. In Figure 1, the main varieties are differentiated by bold
italics in boxes with solid lines, while the boxes with broken lines to the left of the diagram
represent variants of the main varieties of MalE spoken by their respective speakers. As
discussed earlier, these variants are influenced by the languages spoken by different ethnic
groups from different geographical locations in Malaysia. The standard variety may not
 154 
 S. PILLAI AND O. LOK TIK

Figure 1. Model of Malaysian English varieties and Malaysian speakers of English. Source: Ong (2016, p. 54).
Note: L2, second language; L3, third language; CME, colloquial Malaysian English.
 ASIAN ENGLISHES   155

be as easily detectable through the written form but is more easily identifiable through
particular phonological features.

Conclusion
We have shown that the view of MalE users as speakers who lack proficiency in English is
an archaic one which should be replaced with a better understanding of how these users’
cultural heritage and geographical background has enriched the English language and will
further expand the repertoire of English language because of the fluid composition of the
people in Malaysia today. Concerted effort should be made by bodies such as the Ministries
of Education and Higher Education, scholars, researchers and even the users of MalE to
come together and officially document all aspects of the MalE variants and their features.
This will also allow these variants to be known not only among scholars in this area of study
but throughout the world and at the same time change the outdated negative perception
of MalE as only the colloquial variety. This would also reduce the pressure of Malaysian
students and teachers being unfairly judged against native speaker pronunciation norms.
In any case, the dependence on another nation’s standard spoken variety goes against the
reality of English (Pillai, Mohd. Don, & Knowles, 2012) even in international formal spoken
contexts, being spoken in a variety of accents across the globe.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Stefanie Pillai   http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1693-5022
Lok Tik Ong   http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7320-7537

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