Even before I had children, one of my favorite souvenirs when visiting a foreign country was children's books written in the local language. Now that I'm a parent, I put these books to use by reading them to my four year old, since this is the best age to expose him to different languages. Since these books are all written for the local population and not necessarily for language learners, there is very little information (if any) in English about these books. As such, I felt it would be appropriate to occasionally review one for anyone who wants to learn the language. This time around, I'll be reviewing a series of Malaysian books, though mostly focusing on one title in particular, "Apabila Saya Sakit" (When I am Sick).
First, a Word About Malaysian
As an English teacher, I am grateful for the fact that I won the linguistic lottery and that the most important language that people all over the world are desperately trying to learn happens to be the one my parents taught me as a child. I say this because English is really hard. Sure, it's probably not the most difficult language in the world, but it's far from the easiest. If I had to pick one that was the easiest, I might go with Malaysian. The language is part of the Austronesian language family, which consists of languages spoken around the Pacific Ocean, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Malay Peninsula. Taking into account that Malaysian is basically the same language as Indonesian, then the language has roughly 180 million speakers--making it the 8th most commonly spoken language in the world (according to Wikipedia at least).
As I already mentioned, the language is incredibly easy. There is no grammatical gender to be bothered with, no cases, and no verb conjugations. Its writing system is completely phonetic. Want to make a word plural? Just repeat yourself. One book is buku, more than one book is buku-buku. While in English we have words that mean the exact same thing but have different grammatical functions (think about the difference between "I" and "me"), Malay just uses the same word in a different position:
Malay: Saya guru
English: I teacher (I am a teacher)
Malay: Guru saya
English: teacher my (My teacher)
From this example, you should have learned the first person singular pronoun "saya", which also appears in the title of the book I'm going to review:
Malay: Apabila saya sakit
English: When I sick (When I am sick)
I picked this book up (along with two others from the same series) while visiting Malaysia two weeks ago at the Kinokuniya bookstore at KLCC Suria in Kuala Lumpur for about 5.90 ringgit each (just around $2 US). In preparing to write this review, I was doing some research online and found that the publisher, Pelangi, has screenshots of this and their other books on the Indonesian version of Google Books (so I'm pretty sure it's okay if I reproduce some of those same screenshots here). After looking through some more of their titles, I feel like if I had had more time at the bookstore, I kind of wish I had found this particular one, Di Mana Beruang Teddy? (Where is the Teddy Bear?) because just look at how sad that little girl is. I hope she finds her teddy!
Anyway, back to "When I am Sick." The version I bought is actually a later edition with a slightly different cover. It also contains a second story (in this case Main Buih, or "Playing with Bubbles"). At any rate, most of these stories seem to follow a similar formula (I don't think anyone is reading these stories intended for 2-6 year olds expecting any great plot developments, and I think it's safe to say that I can spoil the ending and tell you that the little boy gets better at the end of the story). The formula seems to go like this: put the kid in some kind of situation (e.g., he's sick in bed, or he's having a bath), and see how many different things will happen in that situation. Since it's a sort of "theme and variations" approach, there is a lot of good repetition, which is what I think makes this series excellent for language learning.
This page illustrates the formula pretty well. The kid is sick in bed, so a lot of the story involves his mother (emak in Malay, but note that the "k" at the end is silent) giving him different things in bed to make him feel better. So many of the pages involve the formula "Emak beri ____________", or "Mom gives ____________." After which, the kid sometimes reacts to what he got. In this case, he thinks the food is "sedapnya", which means "delicious" or "yummy." By the way, all the food in Malaysia is sedapnya.
Repetition is important for language learning, and the repetition in this book together with the pictures makes it incredibly easy to understand what is going on, especially when reading it to a four year old. Once you know the basic formula, the new vocabulary that fits in the blank can be picked up from the picture. For example, on a later page, the caption reads "Emak beli alat mainan" and has a picture of the kid opening a box full of toys. I let my son know that "beli" means "to buy", so "Emak beli" means "Mom buys", but my son can easily figure out that "alat mainan" means "toys" on his own simply from the picture.
I think the second story, about playing with bubbles in the bath, is the one my son enjoys even more. In this case, the formula is that the kid is playing in the bath with bubbles and gets the bubbles on different parts of his body. This is a great opportunity to use TPR (Total Physical Response), which is a language teaching method wherein language is coordinated with physical movement.
Malay: Ada buih pada hidung
English: There is bubble on nose (There is a bubble on my nose)
So in this case, I read the sentence, then ask my son to touch his "hidung", which he does with no problems since it's where the bubbles are in the picture. On the next pages the bubbles are on his kepala (head), telinga (ears), and lastly di mana-mana (everywhere). The next section, though, is the part my son absolutely loves wherein a new formula is introduced:
Malay: Saya sentuh buih dengan __________. Pop!
English: I touch bubbles with __________. Pop!
So in each one of these next pictures, the kid touches a bubble, first with his jari (finger) and pops it. I tell my son to the do the same, touching one of the bubbles on the page with his finger, to which I loudly say "Pop!", then he laughs hysterically. On the next page the kid pops the bubble with his kaki (feet), so I tell my son to get his feet up on the page and pop the bubbles. This one makes him laugh even harder.
And that brings me to my ultimate point about why I think these books are great: my son has lots of fun reading them. He isn't being bogged down with grammar and vocabulary, so he doesn't even realize that he's picking up bits and pieces of another language while we're reading them together. This is a book he actually brings to me and asks me to read, which is absolutely the best a parent can hope for when trying to teach their child to read in any language, let alone a foreign one.
First, a Word About Malaysian
As an English teacher, I am grateful for the fact that I won the linguistic lottery and that the most important language that people all over the world are desperately trying to learn happens to be the one my parents taught me as a child. I say this because English is really hard. Sure, it's probably not the most difficult language in the world, but it's far from the easiest. If I had to pick one that was the easiest, I might go with Malaysian. The language is part of the Austronesian language family, which consists of languages spoken around the Pacific Ocean, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Malay Peninsula. Taking into account that Malaysian is basically the same language as Indonesian, then the language has roughly 180 million speakers--making it the 8th most commonly spoken language in the world (according to Wikipedia at least).
As I already mentioned, the language is incredibly easy. There is no grammatical gender to be bothered with, no cases, and no verb conjugations. Its writing system is completely phonetic. Want to make a word plural? Just repeat yourself. One book is buku, more than one book is buku-buku. While in English we have words that mean the exact same thing but have different grammatical functions (think about the difference between "I" and "me"), Malay just uses the same word in a different position:
Malay: Saya guru
English: I teacher (I am a teacher)
Malay: Guru saya
English: teacher my (My teacher)
From this example, you should have learned the first person singular pronoun "saya", which also appears in the title of the book I'm going to review:
Malay: Apabila saya sakit
English: When I sick (When I am sick)
I picked this book up (along with two others from the same series) while visiting Malaysia two weeks ago at the Kinokuniya bookstore at KLCC Suria in Kuala Lumpur for about 5.90 ringgit each (just around $2 US). In preparing to write this review, I was doing some research online and found that the publisher, Pelangi, has screenshots of this and their other books on the Indonesian version of Google Books (so I'm pretty sure it's okay if I reproduce some of those same screenshots here). After looking through some more of their titles, I feel like if I had had more time at the bookstore, I kind of wish I had found this particular one, Di Mana Beruang Teddy? (Where is the Teddy Bear?) because just look at how sad that little girl is. I hope she finds her teddy!
Anyway, back to "When I am Sick." The version I bought is actually a later edition with a slightly different cover. It also contains a second story (in this case Main Buih, or "Playing with Bubbles"). At any rate, most of these stories seem to follow a similar formula (I don't think anyone is reading these stories intended for 2-6 year olds expecting any great plot developments, and I think it's safe to say that I can spoil the ending and tell you that the little boy gets better at the end of the story). The formula seems to go like this: put the kid in some kind of situation (e.g., he's sick in bed, or he's having a bath), and see how many different things will happen in that situation. Since it's a sort of "theme and variations" approach, there is a lot of good repetition, which is what I think makes this series excellent for language learning.
Repetition is important for language learning, and the repetition in this book together with the pictures makes it incredibly easy to understand what is going on, especially when reading it to a four year old. Once you know the basic formula, the new vocabulary that fits in the blank can be picked up from the picture. For example, on a later page, the caption reads "Emak beli alat mainan" and has a picture of the kid opening a box full of toys. I let my son know that "beli" means "to buy", so "Emak beli" means "Mom buys", but my son can easily figure out that "alat mainan" means "toys" on his own simply from the picture.
I think the second story, about playing with bubbles in the bath, is the one my son enjoys even more. In this case, the formula is that the kid is playing in the bath with bubbles and gets the bubbles on different parts of his body. This is a great opportunity to use TPR (Total Physical Response), which is a language teaching method wherein language is coordinated with physical movement.
English: There is bubble on nose (There is a bubble on my nose)
So in this case, I read the sentence, then ask my son to touch his "hidung", which he does with no problems since it's where the bubbles are in the picture. On the next pages the bubbles are on his kepala (head), telinga (ears), and lastly di mana-mana (everywhere). The next section, though, is the part my son absolutely loves wherein a new formula is introduced:
Malay: Saya sentuh buih dengan __________. Pop!
English: I touch bubbles with __________. Pop!
So in each one of these next pictures, the kid touches a bubble, first with his jari (finger) and pops it. I tell my son to the do the same, touching one of the bubbles on the page with his finger, to which I loudly say "Pop!", then he laughs hysterically. On the next page the kid pops the bubble with his kaki (feet), so I tell my son to get his feet up on the page and pop the bubbles. This one makes him laugh even harder.
And that brings me to my ultimate point about why I think these books are great: my son has lots of fun reading them. He isn't being bogged down with grammar and vocabulary, so he doesn't even realize that he's picking up bits and pieces of another language while we're reading them together. This is a book he actually brings to me and asks me to read, which is absolutely the best a parent can hope for when trying to teach their child to read in any language, let alone a foreign one.
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