Well, so what if Ah Beng is a multi-millionaire. His English is still ‘funny’, hence the English-speaking middle class in Malaysia can nonetheless consider him a linguistic inferior.

Two Chinese businessmen from transnational organizations met in a Kowloon bar for drinks after a workshop in Hong Kong. As the local man spoke only Cantonese and English while the Malaysian spoke Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, Malay, English and even a few handy (mainly swear) words in Tamil but alas, no Cantonese, both soon realized to their mutual embarrassment that their only common language was English.

After several copious dosages of the happy brew had passed their lips, and the conversation grew friendlier, the Hong-Kongite felt comfortable enough to inform the other person in his sing-song Canto accent, “Your English is very funny???, smirking as he did so.

The Malaysian guffawed and replied, “If you say so??? by imitating the other’s Cantonese tonal rise and falls. Imagine ‘say so’ being uttered respectively in the first and third tone common in most Chinese dialects.

Now, we all know the general English-speaking Hong-Kongites have a delightful Canto lilt in their spoken English though we have to admit they would, for some strange reasons, pronounced ‘don’t’ as a disconcerting ‘doe-nk’. But then just how well does a typical English-speaking Malaysian speak English, bearing in mind that not everyone is a Patrick Teoh or Robert Lam.

But it did say something for those two Chinese businessmen to be teasing each other on their spoken English. Obviously both men felt he was superior to the other in his oral English proficiency.

Educated as an elite

There’s a frightful snobbery in a person’s command of a non-native language. In the past, the snobs in the English-speaking world would frequently resort to Latin phrases in their conversation or even written word.

Imagine using verbum sapienti satis est (a word to the wise is enough) when one could easily resort instead to ‘enough said’. But the occasional judicious use of Latin would allude to the speaker’s or author’s elite education, as it was intended to do.

The allure of Pax Romana and its attendant powers was a glorious association, as if the use of the dead language’s phraseology would in some indirect ways confer on the user a patina of the old magnificent grandeur of Rome. Perhaps in the subconscious of those language snobs, they became citizens of Great Rome, then the centre of the known world, when they uttered at political rallies, say, vox populi, vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God).

Today some English speaking people might have abandoned Pax Romana but that doesn’t stop them from mingling their English with what they believe to be continental sophistication, as in ‘There is a certain je ne sais quoi in Ms Molek. She excites me.’

And all I need to say in place of that French phrase would have been the mademoiselle having ‘a quality or attribute that is difficult to describe or express’. But then, how dull, how unsophisticated that would be for snobbish me!

Well, for some Malaysians and Hong-Kongites, Pax Britannia is just as attractive as Pax Romana. The way we non-natives speak English – especially if we believe we speak good English – would be as something to flaunt, especially among our linguistic ‘inferiors’.

Snobs, snobbish, oh, the snobbery of the English-speaking middle class in Malaysia.

Scatterings of sophistication

There was a time when some Malaysians would smile condescendingly at those who spelt ‘programme’ or ‘colour’ in its American versions, dismissing the authors as lower class creatures. They nodded patronisingly when one of the ‘lower creatures’ pronounced ‘vase’ as ‘vaist’ (as in ‘waist’) and sometimes would even feint their inability to comprehend what had been said.

And not unlike our Hong-Kongite businessman, they would smirk when the local Ah Bengs spoke in English.

So what if Ah Beng is a multi-millionaire. That’s not the point – “Look old boy, that dear old chap can hardly speak a decent word of English. But hardly cricket to expect him to keep up with us, wouldn’t you say????

Even our Indonesian neighbours feel it chic to toss the odd English word into a conversation or presentation – “Ruang lingkup yang akan kami meng-exposé, as a team, adalah …..??? The presenter would then smile at the startled foreigner and jokingly gloss over his attempt at multi-lingual sophistication as “Itulah Bahasa Java.???

Snobbish accent and social climbing

According to the dictionary, a snob is a person who imitates, cultivates, or slavishly admires social superiors and is condescending or overbearing to others.

Our English speaking middle-class man – and he has to be a man, wouldn’t he, old top, as women are such delightful creatures – obviously cultivates, at least in spoken English, his Anglo-Saxon ‘superiors’ whom he greatly admires though he would publicly and vehemently deny that, particularly today when it is no longer vogue to admit reverence for the ways of a former colonial master.

In some cases, he not only endeavours to speak pukka English but would perhaps even be as fastidious in his dressing, mannerisms, social etiquette, etc as a pompous English popinjay, though our Malaysian would be more subtle in his punctilious imitation of his cultural and linguistic idol.

The occasional trips to London, his cultural Mecca, and even the Sussex and Cotswold countrysides, would be obligatory, and events to joyfully share with his peers.

Then to complete the character of a snob, he would of course need to sneer, or at best smile condescendingly at his own countrymen who cannot speak with the fluency and the BBC accent he has painstakingly cultivated.

Don’t blame him as after all Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of an English grocer, learnt to speak like one to the manner born. See what good spoken and snobbish accented English has conferred unto Margaret Thatcher … nothing less than a prime ministership and a Barony.

Our English speaking Malaysian snob surely must receive no less.

And among the various ethnic middle class in Malaysia, especially the non-Malays, each would smile condescendingly at the masses not fluent in English. Alas, very few seek to strive for excellence in his spoken Bahasa, the national language of his country.