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Mat Dan: 'I became an accidental celebrity 6,000 miles from home'
- theriddlr 7y agoMalaysian and Bristolian here. A 'gap yah' Brit who his tourist visa several times working cash-in-hand and food and board jobs.
- telesilla 7y agoLearning the local's language is THE way to become in good favour of those who live there. When I'm travelling for more than a few days I learn "hello" and "Sorry, I don't speak x language" which usually gets a smile and I can then politely ask if they speak english. I used to learn enough to read a menu but these days I get lazy with Google translate (which is incredible, when you use it in real-life. Hands down, digital translation is one of my favourite technologies)
- sersi 7y agoIt's super obvious in Hong Kong, speak English and you get the world class indifferent service HK is famous for. Speak Mandarin and you get even worse. Speak a bit of Cantonese as a foreigner and everyone is all smiles and you get better service than locals :)
- nerdponx 7y agoIt's also in my opinion basic courtesy. You are a guest in their country, at least try to learn how to say hello and thank you.
- karl_schlagenfu 7y agoI disagree, English is fast becoming (already is?) the global language. It makes sense to standardise on English instead of learning hundreds of different languages (which is no easy task).
- Infinitesimus 7y agoEnglish is woefully inadequate to capture cultural nuances of a lot of places in this blue-green spinny ball though I grew up multi lingual before moving to the US and there are still several things that i have to say "well, there's no word for that in English but it's kind of xyz". There are so many ideas, thoughts and feelings that cannot be captured with the English language presently. Of course every language has that issue across borders so I'm not convinced standardizing in english as a global language will bring enough benefit to be worth the cost
- celticninja 7y agoI think that's unfair, just because there is no direct or succinct translation doesn't mean the same thought cannot be expressed, it's just that it needs to be more verbose perhaps. It is also incredibly open to new ideas and words, best put by James Nicoll >The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
- AYBABTME 7y agoEither you haven't gone many places, or you did so with a special kind of insensitivity. People all over the place have cultures and languages that is part of their identity. When you bulldoze over that and just use english without any further bother, these people feel that you rob them of who they are, that you attempt to commoditize them as an interchangeable people that just happens to be present in these lands.
- celticninja 7y agoThat's my excuse, but I know it's an excuse (and not a reason) for not learning a different language. I do however learn and use the pleasantries of any local language because that's just good manners.
- tamizhar 7y agoFrom the article. "'What's the difference between Mat Dan and a Bangladeshi worker who can speak Malay?'" Mat is white whereas Bangladeshi people are black. Malay people worship white skin and thus they even give money to beg-packing white people who exploit this to travel South East Asia for free. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEGFARCfQUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEGFARCfQUU In fact, Mat himself was one of those. "Rather than just spending his time travelling with Western backpackers".
- mantap 7y agoThis is true and all, but he doesn't just speak standard Malaysian, he speaks Terengganu Malay. Having white skin is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fame.
- tamizhar 7y ago> standard Malaysian, he speaks Terengganu Malay. I have visited Terengganu. The Malay spoken in Terengganu is the same as the Malay spoken elsewhere. It would the equivalent of saying Arkansas English versus American English.
- chingjun 7y agoI am from Terengganu. And yes people in Terengganu can speak standard Malay, but among themselves they speak a different dialect, which is very different. People from other parts of Malaysia often have difficulty understanding it. It’s more like Scottish to English I would say.
- jzwinck 7y agoI too have visited Terengganu. Your impression of the language vs standard Bahasa is far off the mark. Wikipedia says: > Terengganu Malay is one of the most aberrant from all the Malay varieties in the Peninsular along with Kelantan-Pattani Malay and developed a distinct phonetic, syntactic and lexical distinctions which makes it mutually unintelligible for speakers from outside the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. People from areas quite far away are aware of this, such as the KL shopkeeper mentioned in the article who could not understand its protagonist.
- haunter 7y agoFunny how cultural appropriation works sometimes
- rhn_mk1 7y agoThat's why I don't understand why it's used as a negative term. It's entirely up to the subject culture how it reacts.
- lawlessone 7y agoThere are differences though. A person learning a Cree language to use it is going to get a different reaction than a person wearing an faux Indian headdress at a party.
- rhn_mk1 7y agoIt's still up to the culture how they treat different ways of honoring it. As an example I've seen personally: someone learning German to use it is going to be treated very similarly to someone wearing a dirndl for fun.
- wbl 7y agoTakeo Ishi is one of the big yodelers. Rest assured he is not an ethnic German. As someone who has learnt German to use it, I have never encountered what you describe, except that one never tries German outside of Germany.
- rhn_mk1 7y agoI'm not sure what you've encountered, but I meant that Germans don't care, and wearing traditional dress to a party is not going to shock them much. If anything, it may provoke them to join the party. Therefore, there's nothing inherent about negative reactions from a person of an in-group when someone from the out-group is trying out some of their customs.
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- mark_l_watson 7y agoNice story! A good read to start off Monday morning. Off topic, but one of the really beautiful things about this planet we live in is the diverse cultures.
- propter_hoc 7y agoSee also the case of "Da Shan" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashan, who is supposedly the most famous Canadian in the world by dint of his mega-celebrity status in China. He wrote an amazing Quora note a while ago on his position: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-Chinese-learners-seem-to-hate-Dashan-Mark-Rowswell https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-Chinese-learners-seem-t... Well worth reading in its entirety.
- zaat 7y agoThe level of self criticism, self awareness and frankness is inspiring.
- kace91 7y agoDamn, he really sounds like a person worth getting a beer with.
- refurb 7y agoReminds me of the Canadian guy in Vietnam. My Vietnamese speaking friends say his pronunciation is better than many Vietnamese. https://learnvietnamesewithlinh.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/joe-ruelle-a-canadian-who-is-famous-in-vietnam/ https://learnvietnamesewithlinh.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/joe...
- wprapido 7y agoThere's Dustin Luke from the States in Argentina, too. Obviously, the cultural difference is much lower
- mogadsheu 7y agoA couple of personal anecdotes: When I took a VC internship in the Philippines during the summer, one of the big pop stars was an American Filipino. We had a convo at the bar he owned—turns out he was a SoCal boy like me, and got tired of going to school at Devry, so he moved to the motherland and got famous. When I visited Norway for the first time, I saw a girl whose presence really floored me. As she was leaving the club, I followed her out. Turns out she was a pop star as well, and liked me for my American-ness. I think with the right presence, it’s not as hard as one might think if you’re from an OECD country.
- bitcoinmoney 7y agoWhat’s the name of the first pop start who owned the bar?
- mogadsheu 7y agoI forget his name, but the bar was Rock Candy in Glorietta. His face was plastered on a billboard advertising cell service. Really kind guy.
- sdiq 7y agoAnd, do could you also have anything to do with a city in the Horn of Africa? Your username kind of sounds that.
- mogadsheu 7y agoIt’s an old nickname! Given to me by a very clever friend
- kamfc 7y agoIt's fascinating to see a white or black person make it big in an Asian country; in the startup sense, does this mean their ethnic and skin color became their USP and advantage? The same thing I've seen happen when a black or white person show up in talk shows in S. Korea, Japan, and China. Oh, let's not forget Jonny Olsen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNm7k2PUGzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNm7k2PUGzI =) The saying goes, you're only limited by your thinking 〰️ think big!
- tokai 7y agoA kind of generalized Asian version of 'big in Japan'.
- alephnan 7y ago> A lot of people say they know hundreds of foreign workers who come over here and speak Malay in two or three months and they don't turn into a celebrity Can you really speak a language sufficiently well in 3 months, especially when you are there to work on something potentially unrelated to language ?
- jamesrcole 7y agoMy mother's family are from Malaysia (from the Terengganu mention in the article) and I've been told by a couple of people there that Malay is a pretty easy language to pick up and that foreigners can learn it pretty quickly.
- klingonopera 7y agoYes, Bahasa can be learned very, very quickly, it uses the Latin alphabet, words are written how they are spoken and vice-versa, verbs are never conjugated nor do they have tenses and the grammar is simple (e.g. plurals are created by simply doubling the words, like rumah, house, becomes rumah-rumah, houses, which in written form is abbreviated to rumah²). My father used to joke you can learn Bahasa in three weeks, English in three months, and German in three years. I've no clue about the Terengganu dialect, though. It's my third language, and I've never needed it professionally, so I whatever I've said may not be 100% accurate... Source: Am half Malay, lived there for nine years, around the KL area.
- rudilee 7y agoPeople called any malay or Indonesian language "bahasa" really bother me, bahasa means language, so if you tell people "i speak in bahasa", literally translated to "i speak in language", sounds really weird to me
- klingonopera 7y agoI've often heard locals refer it to nothing more than "Bahasa", but yes, correctly you'd have to say "Bahasa Malaysia" or "Bahasa Indonesia", which can get umbrellad to "Bahasa Melayu", but that then sometimes offends the Indonesians, so I'm sticking to "Bahasa". My previous comment is valid for both. Since we're nitpicking: People calling any Malay or Indonesian language "Bahasa" really bothers me, Bahasa means language, so if you tell people "I speak Bahasa", literally translated to "I speak language", it/that sounds really weird to me. (Personally, I find that beautiful. If nothing else is specified, it "defaults" to itself, how awesome is that?)
- ptah 7y agoThis is awesome! I can't wait for the movie