Malay language
Loan Words
by
Yeong Ah Lok
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Malay language
Loan Words by Yeong Ah Lok
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Hokkien in Malay WHEN TWO LANGUAGES or two cultures come into contact, linguistic borrowing is far from being always a necessity. Words or phrases are used spontaneously or habitually. The Malay language through the long contact in history with foreigners borrowed from Sanskrit, Arabic, English, Chinese, Portuguese and others. There are many Chinese dialects spoken in Malaysia: Hokkien (Amoy ), Teochew, Cantonese, Hainanese, Hakka, Foochow, Henghua, Shanghai, and Mandarin. Mandarin was made the official language of the China in 1949. However, the majority of the overseas Chinese are Hokkien ( Amoy ) speakers. Loan-words can be found in daily-use words, in the sphere of home tool/equipment, food/drinks, medicine, custom, clothing, gambling, administration and commerce. There are about 350 words, some of them are as follows: angpau -red package containing of money bihun - vermicelli camca - tea-spoon capgome - the 25fh day of the 1St month of the Chinese calendar cawan - cup congsam - cheongsam duit - money gang - rice dumpling wrapped in bamboo leaves gincu - lipstick kongsi - partnership kuaci - dried melon seeds kuntau - fist laici - lychee locheng - clock, alarm clock loteng -upstairs ngam - to get on with another (from the Cantonese) pakau, capjiki - Chinese gambling games popia - a popular titbit made of vegetables wrapped in a thin sheet of dough. sampan - a small boat samseng - gangster, hooligan Taiping - Taiping, a town in Perak state tanglong - lantern tauge - bean sprouts tauhu - bean curd tauke - boss, employer taukua - bean cake teh - tea teko - kettle tim - stew tongkang - barge tukang - craftman, specialist in hand-work Angpau are given by adults to children during the Chinese New Year. The Malay community has adapted this custom by the use of green packets. But the word angpau is retained. Loan-words were assimilated in Malay and underwent changes phonologically, morphologically, and semantically. The loan word "beca" originally meant a horse cart. But nowadays it refers to the trishaw. #
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_____________________ The Penang File Issue 26 |