Manglish is an informal form of Malaysian English with features of an English-based creole principally used in Malaysia.
It is heavily influenced by the main languages of the country, Malay, Tamil, and varieties of Chinese.
Idioms, proverbs and phrases are also often translated directly to English from Malay, Chinese, and Tamil.
The accent and vocabulary used is highly dependent on the formality of the context and language dominance of the speaker.
Other colloquial portmanteau words for Manglish include (chronologically): Malish (1992), Malaylish (1992), Malenglish (1994), Malglish (1997), Malayglish (2005), and Malanglish (2013).
[2] Manglish shares substantial linguistic similarities with Singlish in Singapore, although distinctions can be made, particularly in vocabulary.
There is also a strong influence from Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Tamil, which are other major languages spoken in Malaysia.
[8] At the lexical level, limited lexis is used and consequently, a number of words serve a variety of functions, giving extended meanings not normally accepted in standard British English.
Speakers of Manglish from the country's different ethnic groups tend to intersperse varying amounts of expressions or interjections from their mother tongue – be it Malay, Chinese or one of the Indian languages – which, in some cases, qualifies as a form of code-switching.
The Chinese also tend to speak Manglish with staccato feel as it is syllable-timed, unlike English which is stress-timed.
Chinese, Malay and Tamil languages often duplicate words for different functions such as to show pluralisation, emphasis or repetition.
This means that Manglish sentences often begin with a topic (or a known reference of the conversation), followed by a comment (or new information).
[13][14][15] Compared to Standard English, the semantic relationship between topic and comment is not important; moreover, nouns, verbs, adverbs, and even entire subject-verb-object phrases can all serve as the topic: The above constructions can be translated analogously into Malay and Chinese, with little change to the word order.
This results in constructions that appear to be missing a subject to a speaker of Standard English, and so called PRO-drop utterances may be regarded as a diagnostic feature of Manglish.
[16] For example: The ubiquitous word lah ([lɑ́] or [lɑ̂]), used at the end of a sentence, can also be described as a particle that simultaneously asserts a position and entices solidarity.
In Cantonese, Lah (啦) is placed at the end of a sentence in imperatives making it sound more like a request than an order.
For example: The Chinese influence in Manglish, however, can be seen among other races in Malaysia, especially when conversing with Chinese-speaking people.
In fact, the questioner might have no idea beforehand about the rude reply that would be shot back to him/her, though it can be argued that the word 'lah' might deliver stronger emotions from the speaker.
For example, to show argumentative mood or making emphasis, one would say, "You lo (it's your fault), if it's not for you we wouldn't be in trouble now!"
In Cantonese or Hakka, "meh" is a final particle that transforms statements into questions that indicate doubt or surprise.
[42] Manglish has its unique set of features when spoken by native Malaysians that are distinct from the standard variety of English.
However, Manglish is markedly more influenced by the Malay language, with the majority population in Malaysia being the Ethnic Malays; while Singlish is more influenced by Hokkien dialect or Mandarin Chinese, with the majority population being the Ethnic Chinese.
For example, "kena" (a Malay word, somewhat of a prefix added for the sake of turning an action verb into passive form) might be more often used in Manglish; while Singlish more frequently uses words like "liao" (meaning "already" in Hokkien), "nia" (meaning "only" in Hokkien).