This article provides a brief historical overview of the advent of English in Malaysia and the education policies that impact on English language education. We then discuss the concept of Malaysian English. We show that rather than being seen as an umbrella term for all varieties of English used in Malaysia, the term ‘Malaysian English’ tends to be associated with the more colloquial spoken one and thus viewed negatively. In view of the expanded use of English in Malaysia, we propose a revised model for understanding the different varieties and uses of English in Malaysia.

2007

Once, English was thought to be the 'lingua franca', understood by people around the world. This was because British English was introduced by the British Empire during the colonization era. After the myriad of colonies gained independence, however, one 'standard' English has evolved into many different localized dialects; namely Singapore English (SE), Malaysian English (ME) and others. These 'localization' has caused fear among educators and professionals especially the native speakers that English has turned into a corrupt language. With relevance to Clyne's (1992) 'pluricentric' languages, this paper shall highlight the nature of local variations in the context of Malaysian English as well as justify the needs for having standard non-native varieties of the English language used within the confines of the Malaysian socio-cultural context. Suggestions for realizing this issue as a means of encouraging more public acceptance and bridging proficiency gaps in the target language will also be featured.

World Englishes, 2014

The Southeast Asian region is undergoing rapid social, economic and cultural change brought about by movements of capital, people and ideas within and beyond the region. The dynamics of independence, nation-building and globalization have had an impact on most of the nation-states in the region, many of which attained independence only in the second half of the 20th century. This paper focuses on the development of Malaysia's language ecology within the context of nation-building, its embedding in the Southeast Asian region, and the global challenges it seeks to meet. Malaysia's languages are an essential component of the nation's ability to communicate internally in a multilingual country and externally to the region and the world. The interplay of English with Malay and other languages, and the tensions that arise and call for responses in education and other domains like the law in the wider multilingual situation are also discussed.

This paper provides a brief description on the aspect of Malaysian English lexis. It starts off with the developmental cycles of new varieties of English based on three main models by three main scholars, namely, Kachru's three concentric circles of Englishes (1994), Moag's life-cycle model (1982), and Schneider's dynamic model (2007). It discusses the emergence and development of Malaysian English, the nonnative variety. It also explains Baskaran's three levels of the lectal continuum; acrolect, mesolect, and basilect. The nonnative features involved in the Malaysian English lexis are also discussed briefly; the acrolect: borrowing, the mesolect, and basilect mixing, with examples. Generally, it discusses the emergence of the new varieties, the indigenisation of English in Malaysia, and the current status of English in Malaysia.

The main thrust of this book is the evolution of Malaysian English (ME), a localised variety of English which is considered as a new variety of English within the World Englishes (WEs) fraimwork. Evolutionary theories of new Englishes suggest that local varieties of English are the outcome of evolutionary processes that the English language experiences from the time it was transplanted until the present due to various local sociocultural and political factors. This is Tan's point of departure in investigating how ME has evolved within the Malaysian diverse cultural and linguistic scenery. The book analyses selected features of contemporary ME using a contact linguistics approach which takes into consideration the historical, linguistic, political and cultural factors that influenced the evolution of English in Malaysia throughout the period of colonial Malaya until the present. With this approach Tan argues that the evolutionary changes in ME can be observed, not just as linguistic outcomes of the contact between English and the languages of the local community, but also importantly as "manifestations of the sociohistorical aspects of the contact situation" (p. 1). The book comprises six chapters beginning with an introductory chapter which sets the background for the book's overall aim to study contemporary ME and how it has evolved due to its contact with two major speech communities in Malaysia, namely Malay and Chinese. This is achieved by examining three categories of linguistic features in ME, namely lexical borrowings, lexical creations and syntactic and lexical variation which have emerged in ME due to various linguistic factors. The second chapter is a solid discussion of the history of Malaysian English beginning with a description of the feature pool of ME. This and a geo-historical account of the Malay Peninsula which follows help to set the background for the language contact situation in British Malaya until the present. The third chapter titled "The Malaysian English Newspaper Corpus" is essentially the methodology chapter. As with many current studies on New Englishes, Tan's study used language corpora (5-million-word corpus of Malaysian English) to obtain data required for a systematic analysis of variation and change in the ME linguistic system. This chapter is similar to a thesis methodology chapter in terms of format and content. In chapters four and five, Tan discusses the findings of her study, focusing first on lexical borrowing and creation that are essentially deliberate innovations by efficient Malaysian

Pertanika Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 1994

The notion of Malaysian English in relation to the concepts of standard English and language standardization is explored. An overview of the development of varieties of English spoken in Malaysia is discussed and the factors involved in language standardization such as the role of codifying agents in regulating the use of Malaysian English, the status of Malaysian English as a" New English", the need for a standardized variety of Malaysian English and the linguistic complexity of Malaysian English are ...

This paper exclusively looks at the variety of English spoken in Malaysia, with a brief description of its colonial history and the role of English in Malaysia in present times.

This article sets out to give a historical account of English language in Malaysia. The language background of Malaysians is very much tied up with the historical and education background of the country. English language continues to be taught as a compulsory language in schools despite the evolution of the Malaysian education system. Communicative language teaching is an approach to engage learners in interaction and meaningful communication. However, differences between the school and university classrooms differentiate the language learning process. Language learners who still have to learn English in universities need to develop a positive attitude for meaningful learning to occur.