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Apa khabar, Malay? I’m picking up a language from my childhood

It comes with new ways of seeing the world and finding fresh meaning in familiar road names.

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By learning Malay, the writer is discovering new ways of seeing the world and finding fresh meanings in familiar road names.

By learning Malay, the writer is discovering new ways of seeing the world and finding fresh meanings in familiar road names.

ST ILLUSTRATION: LIM YONG

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“Good afternoon, may I speak to Cik Siti please?”

After weeks of Malay language classes, where I repeated dialogue, sometimes for dated scenarios such as the one above – who calls a landline nowadays? –  two words lit up in my brain one day.

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