Malaysian Instagram slang bank creates a graphic archive of the country’s unique urban language
- Slang can come and go quickly, and a group of Malaysians decided to preserve uniquely Malaysian examples for posterity
- They started an Instagram MySlangBank page, and so far there are 300 graphically illustrated slang terms
“Loading” according to the Cambridge dictionary is defined as putting goods onto a vehicle, or in finance it means a charge added to an investment. But to Malaysians, since the arrival of the internet, “loading” refers to someone slowly processing information. This is one of the 300 Malaysian slang terms posted so far on the on MySlangBank Instagram account, an archive of urban language made famous by social media and terms already woven into the country’s culture and identity.
“It started as a way to catalogue slang words because some come and go rather quickly. It’s like a bank of slang, which is how we got our name,” said Fazlee Sabbaruddin, a creative director of the TBWA agency, which launched MySlangBank.
“Some words we would never hear again and some have multiple meanings, so we wanted a place to house it all.”
MySlangBank started as a list of words on an Excel sheet and grew into an Instagram page with the slang accompanied by in-your-face graphics that give a visual and literal meaning to uniquely Malaysian slang terms such as “fefeeling”. This term – which expresses a mood or feeling of indulgence – received a psychedelic illustration by designer Olivia Ariferiani.
But when does a word or phrase become slang? “We think it’s only when a word is used informally or not accepted as a real word, but used commonly by a group of people, a race, region or subculture,” Sabbaruddin said.
Sabbaruddin said the MySlangBank team felt a responsibility to ensure the definitions of the slang terms were correct, and its writers researched the origin and proper usage of each term. Once the definitions and sample sentences had been prepared, designers started working on the illustrations and were free to use any style or media.
“Our Instagram followers have been great – they tell us how a word is used in their neck of the woods or suggest a completely different meaning,” Sabbaruddin said. “We’re not experts or anything like that, but with some research, we get things done – so these comments and suggestions help us learn and a little knowledge goes a long way.”
“There’s slang for everything now, which wasn’t the case 10 or 15 years ago. The drawback is that slang evolves so quickly, and we don’t get to see how the word develops and becomes ingrained in our culture. There’s nothing wrong with that – we just find it hard to keep up.”
The daring visuals and witty anecdotes on MySlangBank’s Instagram page would make for a collectible coffee-table book and Sabbaruddin said the team was considering publishing a volume. “We’re just not sure when or what the design process would look like. Does the current Instagram format work in the printed medium? What slang should we include? Will anyone even care if we make one?”
To the final question, many Malaysians would reply: “Of course-lah.”
