Having a foundation in Malay, it isn’t difficult to learn to pronounce Japanese and probably Italian and Spanish words. I realised that I have no problems pronouncing Sharifah or Muhammad or Yutaka Takenouchi compared to someone from Hong Kong or someone whose only spoken language is the English Language, where they are normally hesitant with the pronunciation. But the pronunciation of a French word can be very different from the written word.
for example, je ne comprends pas is pronounced…
using cards to help memorise some useful phrases
like most Chinese Malaysian, I grew up with the ability to speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay, English, Hokkien and a little bit of Teochew, and I am proud of it. I remember when I was working part time in a Malaysian restaurant years ago, a group of Chinese Malaysian customers were placing their orders in a mixture of Cantonese and English. And they had an older lady with them who asked, in Hokkien, if one of the dish is spicy. One of the middle-aged customer was about to translate her question for me when I replied, in Hokkien “It isn’t spicy at all”. It is a loss for those who feel ashamed of speaking languages other than English. They don’t see that it is an advantage to be able to converse in several languages. To be armed.
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