the most wanted word..

my visit to dinding jagung turned out to be very fruitful today, despite the nausea-dizzyhead-whatsoever sympstom I had to endured in our 1 hour plus journey to the school..kat Malaysia lagi byk cikgu2 yg kembara lagi lame nak gi sekolah kan? cekgu-cekgu are the best!! :)
We were asked to teach some of Malay words to our tutorial group today, great experience.. and after the session ended, I asked one of the girls, if there's anything else or any words they want to learn.

"What's LOVE in Malay?" (as expected...)
"LOVE is CINTA. CIN-TA" I said repeatedly. She frowned, and ask a rather unexpected question;
"Erm, is that a Chinese word? its sounds like Chinese word"
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"No, no its not. LOVE in Chinese language would be AI. Like I-LOVE-YOU, is WO-AI-NI" (hahaha..the love expert in de making!!)

"oh..ok. Erm, I wonder, why does Chinese has a very different letters,alphabet unlike other languages? They have line, and cross...and..I don't know"
Terer betol soklan budak ni. As a tesl student, I didn't learn linguistic features to that extend..not that deep.. so,
"Well, honestly, I also don't know. its a very old language..it was used and created ages ago..sorry..I really don't know"
"Ok.."
Maaflah dik, akak pun belajar lagi..tau 3 patah tu je (kredit to KRU and, MatLUTfi)
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"But actually,  we have another word which also means LOVE. SAYANG also means LOVE in Malay. SA-YANG. Perhaps its easier for you to learn"
"Yeah, thanks" -happy gila muka dier...

Sempat mendirikan sebuah masjid too!! (taj mahal, said one of the students)

If I were to learn other languages, especially the one used in a country that I want to visit, 2 things that I would want to learn; thank you and sorry....they seem to matter more to me. :)