Extra: Haiwan maun, maging and maserba

During our class (which we have completed and sat for the exam last week, yay!!), a facilitator had brought up the issue of Malay spelling when a word is borrowed from English, adapted as a whole because there was no equivalent Malay word for them. Or rather, she told us the rule of converting those spellings.

So she gave us examples of herbivore, carnivore and of course omnivore when it comes to words that end with –ore. Simple, she said. Lose the ‘e’ at the end, and change the consonants to Malay equivalent like ‘c’ to ‘k’. OK, that is simple enough. So the Malay words would be herbivor, karnivor and omnivor.

Then I asked her, whatever happened to our haiwan maun, maging and maserba. She said, “Oh! No, no, no. Those are considered archaic. We don’t use that anymore.”

Archaic? It was only about 40 years ago that we were happily using and joking around with those adjectives, making pun and targeting some poor friends with them. Remember the primary school science textbook with pictures of a cow munching grass (representing haiwan maun) and a family of bear having a dinner of extremely fresh sushi, unprepared and unsalted and fresh vegetables (representing haiwan maserba)? It was now archaic? Like the pyramids? It prompted me to check with PRPM (DBP’s reference website), and thank God, they still have them, well preserved.

That may be the problem: ‘well-preserved’ instead of ‘frequently used’.

So, I have suspicions why the former is preferred. And I’d like to stress that this is strictly my opinion. No political parties or individuals paid me to express this, although blogs these days seem to be playing the role of the receiving party so often. I am not saying. Hey! Sue me if you have to.

But, I digress.

Yes, but sorry that we very rarely use those terms except in scientific journals and textbooks. But that should not be the reason we simplify it that way. More and more times I noticed, blatant absorption of English into Malay. Why bajet when we have belanjawan? Why glu when we have gam? The list is endless. Do we just watch and wait until rumah becomes haus or meja becomes tebel? If that ever happened, Hang Tuah (his wiki here) will be the saddest person if he ever lived to that day.

This is how Hang Tuah purportedly looks like. Of course, this is  an imagination
of a white woman commissioned by the museum then, similar to the Tugu Negara,
which is another imagination of another white person. I have no comment.

But I guess, as long as it is in the DBP’s reference portal, we ought to put a priority in using it first. When we have exhausted all resources, or when we want to differentiate the meaning (as in polisi and dasar, or opsyen and pilihan), then can we borrow and adapt from any language in this world.

Which reminds me of a joke from friends* from MRSM Muar long ago, when the story of whatevervore came up. It goes like this:

Student: Cikgu, how about haiwan maik or haiwan mahi?

Teacher: Yes, the answer is ‘penampar’? You want or not? Or you can become haiwan mahi yourself.


Aiyo...! So garang la this teacher. Cannot joke one.

At least it was funny to me then.

*Bataque, Cokeng, Man Batang, Argh, Malan Kechik and Madeng, thank you for making life fun then and don't sue me for using your jokes please.