This Malaysian Wants To Know “Why Indians Always On The Phone” – Racist Observation Or Learning Moment For All?
A Threads user’s curious question ended with a short lesson about the different languages in Malaysia.
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Why are they always on the phone? A Threads user Nat (@sillynat31) asked this curious question after observing that many Malaysian Indian people are always on the phone.
They shared they even witnessed a man slide his phone between his motorcycle helmet and continue talking while riding the motorcycle. Nat added their colleagues also made phone calls at a set time.
While this question may seem racist to some, it was genuinely asked out of curiosity, with other people sharing they witnessed similar behaviours among their friends.
Netizens explained that talking on the phone might be easier than texting because the Tamil script on phones isn’t accurate or complete.
To put things into context, another Threads user explained that our Romanised English and Malay system has 26 letters in the alphabet.
However, the Tamil language has 247 letters, including 12 vowels, 18 consonants, and 216 vowel and consonant combinations. See what we can all learn if we just listen first?!
In other words, it’s far easier to communicate verbally than texting. Remember KISS? Keep it short and sweet.
If you’re dissatisfied with the answer, we can chalk it up to super close family ties. 😉
The conversation also led to other interesting observations such as most Chinese people preferring to send voice notes while the Malays prefer texting with their unique short forms.
While there are Chinese traditional and simplified characters in most phone keyboards, some of us are banana lah.
Nat’s observation, which just so happens to be their very first post on Threads, ended up collecting over 420 comments as well as 1,600 Likes.
While some provided insights into why calling was easier, there were those who labelled the post as racist, asking the user to widen her circle.
Another sound reply came from user @mayasulaiman who said people’s habits would make more sense to us if we look beyond culture or race.
“People’s habits make sense when you look at their ‘life context’ not just their culture or race. This mindset helps you connect with others more deeply and avoid oversimplifying who they are.”
Meanwhile, @memeibubu who said she was married to an Indian man, agreed with Nat.
She said she asked her husband what he talked about when he was constantly on the phone and he told her it was much easier to call than to type.
From our observation, a majority of the responses Nat collected were that when it comes to Tamil, communicating verbally is much more convenient than typing.
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