Reflections | Malay and Malaysian: why Hongkongers need to learn the difference

I visited Malaysia recently, a country I have great affection for, given its geographical proximity and cultural affinity to my own, Singapore. An increasing number of Hongkongers are inquiring about the Malaysia My Second Home scheme, which allows foreigners to reside in the country. This is not so much a lifestyle choice as one they feel compelled to make because they don’t see any future for themselves in Hong Kong.

Many Hongkongers view the Southeast Asian country with uncalled-for condescension. Perhaps they would do well to learn more about the place. They could start by learning the difference between “Malay” and “Malaysian”.

A Malay is a person who belongs to an ethnolinguistic group found across Southeast Asia, from Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, to parts of Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, even as far afield as Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Sri Lanka and South Africa. A Malaysian, however, is a citizen of Malaysia. He or she could be of Malay, Chinese or Indian heritage, or any one of the many ethnic groups that make up the multicultural country.

One of my pet peeves is many Hongkongers’ conflation of “Malay” and “Malaysian”. For instance, when they speak of “Malaysian food” when they are really talking about Malay cuisine, or when they refer to the country in Cantonese as Ma Laai (“Malay”).

The full Mandarin Chinese name of the country is ma lai xi ya, a phonetic rendition of “Malaysia”, but many media publications, for the sake of brevity, shorten the four-character name to ma guo (“the Ma country”) or da ma, where da means “great” or “big”. It is also common among some older Chinese Singaporeans to refer to Malaysia as lianbang (“the federation”), a fading echo of Singapore’s short-lived membership within the Malaysian federation more than half a century ago.