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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.
ST ILLUSTRATION: LIM YONG
“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.


