Pointless rantings #39

My dear Malaysian Chinese friends,

Let me firstly congratulate you and express my admiration for you perseverance of learning our native language, the Malay language. Although some of you are able to converse with ease, others still struggle to make a proper sentence, but the effort that you put into it is highly commendable.

I personally believe that this should not be a one way struggle. We should also learn Mandarin, and Tamil for that matter.

Surely, as a non native speaker you prone to make mistakes. An unforgettable example from a personal experience would be when a friend was trying to incorporate idioms or peribahasa in his sentences. Although the end result was comical, I still respected his effort. I mean, who wouldn't laugh to "Buaya di tepi pantai" when he meant "Buaya darat", or even "memasukkan tangan ke dalam jeruk ikan" as opposed to the obvious "alang-alang menyeluk perkasam"?. We always have a laugh when you do make mistakes, but we forgive you.

However, I personally can't say that I am okay with one mistake that, seems to me, to be common among you. It's the confusion of "kita" and "kitaorang".

Please do note that Kita is used by someone as a plural first person plus the interlocutor. It is an inclusive pronoun.

Kitaorang, however, is the popular version of the standard Kami, which is used as a plural first person. It is an exclusive pronoun.

The popular conjugation from the standard Dia to Diaorang (equals to Mereka) and from Kau to Kauorang (equals to Kalian) should not be confused with the usage of Kitaorang.

So imagine the puzzlement of the Malay interlocutor in the following totally-fictitious dialogue when speaking to his Malaysian Chinese friend -

Malay: Haih, stressnya buat kerja.
Chinese: Rilekslah. Kan Sabtu ni kitaorang nak pergi family day dekat PD. (yes with the accent)
Malay:(What? am I no longer invited to the family day too?)

More than once, I have felt left out when conversing with a Malaysian Chinese friend (yes, I am THAT insecure). So please, please take note of this.