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Russian YouTuber complains about bilingual Malaysian tweets, gets roasted by Twitterjaya

Russian YouTuber complains about bilingual Malaysian tweets, gets roasted by Twitterjaya

In Malaysia, the English language is taught all the way from primary school right up until university. In fact, Malaysia is the top third country with the highest English proficiency in Southeast Asia.

Many Malaysians, especially those living in urban areas, can speak English really well. In fact, more often than not, we are bilingual (if not trilingual or quadrilingual considering many of us are also proficient in either Mandarin, Cantonese, or Tamil, too.)

So, it’s absolutely normal to hear us switch between any of these languages during conversations and when writing online.

However, it appears that our practice of bahasa rojak has left quite a number of foreigners completely confused when reading our tweets and comments online.

Russian YouTuber and Twitter user, @roman_nfkrz recently expressed this frustration in a funny little tweet.

Obviously, Twitterjaya didn’t miss a beat.

“Yo, I feel attacked. Please delete. But why do you care Roman? HAHAHAHA I did not expect you to mention my country. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TedTalk.”

“I know right? I have a tough time deciphering what they are saying as well. One minute they’re speaking in with the Northern dialects then they switch to the Kelantanese dialect. That’s not counting the Sarawak language. It makes…(?????????)”

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“Code mixing and code switching are sexy! Monolinguals can never. It is so satisfying to mix languages while speaking. Want to scold someone? Use your mother tongue. Want to converse? Use mixed language. Hotel? Trivago.”

“That’s the standard, Roman. It’s not Malaysian Twitter without it. How we type is kinda how we speak really.”

Twitterjaya also pointed out that we relate to this confusion when reading tweets by Indonesians and Filipinos too.

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Meanwhile, Twitter users from Indonesia replied by flexing their ability to speak in multiple languages (Although, we have to admit that we have no idea what they’re saying)

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And then Twitter users from other countries chimed in with their own experiences with people mixing languages.

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Is it just us or does it seem like most countries with an official language other than English are more likely able to mix their mother tongue with the widely spoken language?

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