Lesson 1 Nama (Name)
Apa nama anda? Nama saya John. Dia kawan saya. Apa namanya? Namanya Peter. Dia kawan saya. Apa namanya? Namanya Mary. What is your name? My name is John. He is my friend. What is his name? His name is Peter. He is my friend. What is her name? Her name is Mary.
Vocabulary Apa = What nama = name anda = you or your saya = I or my kawan = friend dia = he OR she mereka = they nama anda = your name namanya = his/her name nama saya = my name kawan anda= your friend kawannya = his/her friend
The rst thing you will notice is the absence of the verb "to be" in Malay in the above sentences. In fact the verb "to be" is simply not needed here.A sentence without a verb? Yes, it's possible in Malay. Those who had to struggle with the conjugations of the verb "to be" in French or Spanish will be greatly relieved to hear this! (Having said that, people who feel lost without putting in a verb in a sentence can note that the word adalah is sometimes used for the verb "is". Thus Dia guru saya and Dia adalah guru saya both mean "He/She is my teacher".)Another thing you will notice is that while in English we have the pronoun before the noun (eg. my name, your name) in Malay it is just the opposite ie. the noun comes rst then the pronoun (so in Malay we say "name my", "name your"). If you remember this it will serve you throughout this course as it is the same word order when it comes to adjectives and nouns (so "big car" becomes "car big" in Malay). The third important thing to remember is something that you'd better get right from the very beginning and that is the same pronoun "dia" is used for BOTH "he" and "she". Only the context will tell whether you're talking about a man or a woman. For those who want to know more: Please note that the colloquial forms (Apa nama anda? and Apa namanya? ) are used in this lesson. The formal forms would be Siapa ama anda? and Siapa namanya? The formal forms do not make much sense though because Siapa actually means "Who" as in Siapa dia? = "Who is he (or she)?" while Apa normally means "What" as in Apa ini? (What is this?) You will notice that the su x nya is tagged on to the noun coming after "his" or "her". But watch out, namanya can mean "his name" as well as "her name" (depending on the context). So far you have learnt the Malay pronouns for I, you, he and she. The Malay word for the pronoun "they" or "them" is mereka. To help you remember I am going to bring up three common names: Murphy, Raymond and Kazan, the famous Hollywood lm director. What is so special about these three people, you might ask. Well, if you remember them, they're not only going to help you remember the Malay word for "they" or "them" but also help you to pronounce the word correctly. How is this possible? Well just pronounce the FIRST syllable of each of the three names and you will get mereka as it should be pronounced (MurRay-Ka). I hope this little mnemonic will be of help to you. At least it will show you that the e vowel has got two di erent sounds in Malay (see Lesson 50), one the schwa sound as in Mur (the phonetic symbol for this sound being ) and the other the ay sound as in Ray (if you know French, it's the sound of ).
