Word: malay
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...harmful substance that might corrupt our youth, like heroin or pornography. But it's one of Singapore's best-loved quirks, used daily by everyone from cabbies to CEOs. Singlish is simply Singaporean slang, whereby English follows Chinese grammar and is liberally sprinkled with words from the local Chinese, Malay and Indian dialects. Take jiat gentang, which combines the Hokkien word for "eat" (jiat), with the Malay word for "potato" (gentang). Jiat gentang describes someone who speaks with a pretentious Western accent (since potatoes are considered a European food), as in "He went to Oxford to study, now he come...
...because he feels he has accomplished enough and that it's time for younger leaders to take over?as Lee Kuan Yew believed. Mahathir modernized the economy, enabled Malaysia to gain international respect, and gave Asia a voice in the global arena. But after decades of championing the indigenous Malay cause at home, Mahathir has become disillusioned. The Malays, he said during the UMNO assembly, "are lazy and like to find the easy...
...Today, despite years of preferential treatment, Malays account for no more than one-fifth of corporate ownership, even though they make up more than half the population. Mahathir's attempts to reintroduce English as the medium of instruction and to roll back education and possibly business quotas for Malays have met stiff resistance from ordinary Malays. And his patronage of key Malay businessmen has also been less than successful; many wound up bankrupt, forcing the government to bail them out. "He's fed up," says Azim Zabidi, a former member of UMNO's Supreme Council...
...Party... And I'll Cry If I Want To: The prospect of sitting through the annual convention of the United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, could make anyone weepy. But Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad is supposed to be made of sterner stuff, and anyway, he's UMNO's president. Nonetheless, at the convention's closing ceremony last Saturday, the normally steely Mahathir burst into tears, announced he was quitting all his posts and was escorted offstage. The 76-year-old had spent the convention bemoaning the laziness of the country's Malay population, which he's tried to bootstrap into...
...thinks that the headstrong Mahathir?who thumbed his nose at the world during the Asian crisis by imposing currency controls, a move even his critics now grudgingly concede probably shielded the country from the social dislocation seen in some Asian neighbors?has abandoned his cherished head start program for Malays. "He definitely wants the emergence of the Malay capitalist," says Megat Najmuddin Khas, who heads the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance. "There is nothing wrong with the policy," Megat argues?as long as the right people are chosen. And Mokhtar has "better credentials" than most, says Megat...