Got linked to this mainly because berdiskusi over how Singaporeans spell out Malay words and it’s essentially because they’re localized into teochew and then modern generation use it in romanized spelling instead of restoring the Malay spelling the way Malaysians would tend to do it. Still looking for an explanation for tombalek tho.
then modern generation use it in romanized spelling instead of restoring the Malay spelling the way Malaysians would tend to do it.
Tbf, most people do not have Malay formal education to keep proper spelling in check. Cf Malaysia whereby you will literally have your marks cut off in BM for misspelling sth for at least 11 years lol.
Well sure, that’s definitely the same anywhere when it comes to formal education. And it’s challenging because spelling reforms happened in under a 50-year timespan. What I mean is less the classroom stuff, but more about speakers not having a reference point (in general) that causes a major drift. It’s a fascinating thing that happens anywhere language groups mingle but for whatever reason fluency in both isn’t there. Similar thing happened in English with the (old) french words coming in during the Norman times, the Napoleonic Era etc. Famously “toodaloo” (very old-fashioned British; I don’t think Americans say it) for goodbye. It’s basically tout à l’heure. You see how terbabas gila? 😂 Even “loo” for toilet - is basically “l’eau”.
(Consequently for this one, certain teocheow words still seem to obviously retain lexical integrity if the syllables can be more straightforwardly reproduced (e.g mata, even agar for agak - IF the r isn’t too aspirated). But the ones that’s a challenge clearly (eg liu-liang for durian), if subsequent speakers don’t have enough Malay to do their own spelling validation for sure the drift becomes more and more (and maybe even agar-agar sounds less aga’-aga’ and more like asking for jelly). ETA: to use English again as an example, speakers continue to spell “croissant” or “new Orleans” but certainly don’t pronounce them like the french even if then this spelling makes no sense to the anglo tongue.
