English - Standard and Malaysian

You know, sometimes I'm so confused.

I love English, and I love writing. And I could come up with an essay that fulfills the standards of Queen's English. And I love the language to bits. Being able to feel the fine polish of the words, to sense the different meanings of each word and feel them being used in an accurate and pristine manner, so that the each letter strikes deep into the soul of a person.

But sometimes, I lapse back into Malaysian English. It's weird, really. It's English, but somehow it's not. It's a type of slang, and yet it isn't. Bits and pieces of other languages chopped up and blended together to form a strange yet familiar new language. I don't really know how to describe it. I guess it's got to be felt and lived through. It's something instinctual, almost chaotic.

I don't really know what to do with this dichotomy though. On the one hand, I need to be precise, expressing myself in the formal Standard English, and on the other hand, I need to be able to feel proud of the unique flavour of Malaysian English.

So with this tension, my thoughts get confused, my tongue gets muddled, and sometimes I feel the words I want to say get choked back in my throat, or restrained in my pen.

But despite the trouble articulating myself, the unstable vacillation between Standard English and its Malaysian counterpart, I love both Englishes; I will embrace both the shine and polish of the Standard and the wild chaos of the Malaysian one.