Minah days.

Thanks to an old friend, I recently discovered Minahspeak, a blog written by a Malay girl (ie. a minah) who very cleverly and funnily explains common phrases, slang and colloquialisms used by Malay youths in Singapore. You have to possess a working knowledge of Malay to truly enjoy this blog, but there are a couple of entries that are written mostly in English. This one, for instance, is easily understood, and hilarious to boot.

Reading Eli’s entries makes me nostalgic for high school days. There were many Malay students in my school, some of my best friends were minahs, and I took Malay as my second language. All in all I was very much immersed in Malay culture, which probably explains why I’ve maintained my fluency in the language even though I don’t have the opportunity to use it very much in daily life now. It was the lingua franca of my milieu. Nevertheless, I’d forgotten all about words and phrases such as “stim“, “sound steady” and “kecoh“. It’s all coming back to me now.

Apart from being a useful dictionary of sorts, Minahspeak is a wonderful example of how embracing your type is a good thing. In this post, Eli lists the five golden facts about being a Minah. I’ve reproduced the top three.

1) A Minah is only a Minah when she denies that she is one.
2) As long as you are a Malay girl, you’re automatically a Minah.
3) A Minah is a true Minah if she likes to call other people Minah.

In other words, whether you like it or not, you are who you are. What matters is whether or not you are confident enough to lay claim to your own culture, heritage and identity instead of trying to tamp it down in favour of something supposedly better. Being given a label like “minah” is not so important in the grander scheme of things. You should have bigger fish to fry than that.

November 13, 2009

Posted in Friends.