In Reply to: Just wondering posted by Colleen on Saturday, 2. September 2006 at 01:57 Bali Time:
my lady friend Emiko is Japanese. She knows a number of people from Malaysia from working in the restaurant trade in Perth. We also know some Chinese Malaysians from ballroom dancing. They all speak English and Chinese [Mandarin or Cantonese, I don't know, maybe both]. I sometimes try to show how knowledgeable I am LOL by using some of my very limited Bahasa Indonesia when we see them. Usually it works OK, sometimes it doesn't. So much of what we say, maybe in all languages, is in the form of colloquialisms and maybe some of this is regional, rather than standard.