If there’s a unique gift that most Malaysians possess, it would be the ability to speak more than one language seamlessly.
A viral TikTok video recently showed a mat salleh (foreigner) expressing awe at Malaysians’ ability to fluently speak multiple languages, even going as far as to say that they speak better English than British people.
Mat salleh praises M’sians for their English proficiency
In the clip posted by @greggetseverywhere, he said that he was often asked by many back in the UK about whether Malaysians speak English or not.
He then went on to say that the answer to the question was often a “yes” and added that many Malaysians actually speak English “probably better than a lot of English people.”
The OP then highlighted how rare multilingualism is in the UK, where switching between different languages such as Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin, and Tamil was part of everyday life in Malaysia.
He added that the main reason why British people don’t speak multiple languages was due to the education system, where learning multiple languages isn’t widely encouraged.
“We obviously have a sort of lazy advantage because English is so widely spoken. And when we travel, there is unfortunately a thing where we don’t learn languages to go to other countries,” he said.
Netizens agree
In the comment section, netizens wholeheartedly agreed with the OP’s observations and expressed pride over Malaysians’ ability to speak more than one language.
‘Most Malaysians speak more than 2 languages.’
‘Most Malaysians understand English even though they are not fluent in English.’
Watch the video here:
@greggetseverywhere The most common question I get from people in the UK: can Malaysians speak English? I’ll always give them the obvious answer, before going on to tell them just how much more advanced Malaysians are in general when it comes to language #malaysiatiktok #learninglanguages #speakingenglish #questionsigetasked #languages
♬ original sound – Greg Larcombe
READ ALSO:
