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- #thefutureisfemale
Every two weeks, somewhere in the world, a language falls silent. And when it does, we lose more than words. We lose histories, identities, and entire ways of seeing the world. To mark the United Nations International Mother Language Day on 21st February, this episode of #TheFutureIsFemale Melisa Idris speaks with Professor Dr Stefanie Shamila Pillai, Professor at Universiti Malaya’s Faculty of Languages & Linguistics, and one of Malaysia’s leading scholars on Malaysian-English and endangered languages. Her pioneering work documenting Melaka Portuguese has helped preserve a language at risk of being lost, and earned her the UM Academic Icon award, which is its highest individual honour. She was also recently named one of the top research scientists in the country by Akedami Sains Negara.
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00:10Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to The Future is Female. This is the
00:15show where we find the extraordinary in every woman. Every two weeks, somewhere in the world,
00:22a language falls silent. And when it does, we lose more than words. We lose histories,
00:27identities and entire ways of seeing the world. February 21st marks the United Nations
00:34International Mother Language Day, which is why I'm delighted to introduce my guest today,
00:39who has dedicated her career to understanding how language shapes who we are and what is at stake
00:45when languages disappear. Professor Dr. Stephanie Shamila Pillay, who is a professor at University
00:51of Malaysia's Faculty of Languages and Linguistics. She is one of Malaysia's leading scholars on
00:57Malaysian English and endangered languages. Her pioneering work documenting Melaka Portuguese
01:03has helped preserve language at risk of being lost and that has earned her the UM Academic
01:09Icon Award, which is its highest individual honour. She was also named by Academic Science Negara as one
01:15of the top research scientists in the country. I'm so honoured and delighted to have you on the show.
01:22So welcome, Stephanie, to the future as female. I want to know how you began studying,
01:29well, what drew you to linguistics and I think what made you realise this was what you wanted
01:36to dedicate your career to? Thank you, Melissa. I actually, just a little bit of background,
01:41I started my career as an English language and literature teacher in school, in the secondary school,
01:47you know, but throughout my Bachelor of Education and my teaching, I've always been interested
01:52in the spoken word, you know, how languages are used and especially Malaysia when we have so many
01:56languages, like probably about 130 plus languages in Malaysia. Oh, do we have that many? Yes, we do.
02:02Yeah. Wow. And, you know, as I joined UM, as also as an English language teacher, I had the opportunity
02:09to do my Master's and my PhD and then I really veered into sounds. So I was really interested into
02:15sounds,
02:15right? And that's how I ventured into Malacca Portuguese. I was interested in the sounds and
02:21because it's kind of my maternal heritage language as well. So, you know, double interest. But then as
02:27I was doing the sounds, I realised, hang on, this language is in danger, right? And then I started
02:32looking at endangered languages in Malaysia and then I realised, oh, I have to maybe do something
02:37about it because researchers, unfortunately, we tend to grab and go, right? We do the research and,
02:44you know, whether you're a postgrad student or a researcher, you go in, you do your research
02:48and then you go back, you publish, you do your dissertation and then what goes back to
02:53the community, right? Right. What's the impact? Yes. So I started feeling this guilt, right?
02:57Researcher guilt and said, okay, I got to do something. So I applied for a grant that teaches
03:04you and also archives your documentation. So that's how I got into documentation and documenting
03:10Malacca Portuguese. That's amazing. So first of all, what makes a language endangered? I'm
03:17curious to know, how do you know if a language is at risk of being lost? Okay. So mainly, I
03:24mean, of course, it's number of speakers as well. But what happens is when the language
03:28is not passed on to the next generation, then how is the next generation going to learn it,
03:34especially if it's not being taught formally or even informally, for example, in schools
03:39or by community centers. So then that new generation will either switch to a majority language, be
03:45it Malay or Mandarin, yeah? Or even English, actually, as in the case of many of the Malacca
03:53Portuguese Eurasians. Oh, they've substituted it for English. Yes. Particularly those who live
03:58outside Malacca and the Portuguese settlement. Yeah. But even in the Portuguese settlement,
04:04the number of young speakers who are fluent in the language is really dwindling. And this
04:09has been the case from, say, the seventies onwards. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Actually, maybe we can rewind back.
04:16What exactly is Malacca Portuguese? Forgive my ignorance, but I don't think I've ever heard it.
04:21How did it come to be in Malaysia? Yeah. So that's a really interesting story. And here's a history lesson.
04:28Yeah. So not a historian. So historians don't get at me. Okay. But essentially, it traces back its
04:35roots from the arrival of the Portuguese, right, who were coming from Goa, right, from India. And so,
04:41of course, they also brought along people, other people, right, people from India, for example,
04:46along with the Portuguese who came. So once they established themselves in Malacca, or rather they
04:51conquered Malacca, um, and then there was, there were a lot of unions with locals, right? So with
04:58that, uh, there were, and of course, Malay was the main lingua franca of the time. Um, probably bizarre,
05:04a bizarre version of Malay. So, like, basa-basa, right? Oh, okay. Bizar Malay. Um, but as the Portuguese
05:09came, and they were speaking a different language, um, some people say it's like ancient Portuguese. It's not.
05:14It's whatever Portuguese that came, and probably already a mixed kind of Portuguese, because they
05:19were coming from, from India. Is it, is it very different from Portuguese spoken in, in Brazil,
05:27for instance, or in Portuguese? Is it very different? Yeah, yeah. So it's different now, and it's been,
05:30what, 500 plus years now. The evolution. Yes, the evolution with, so going back to Malay is the lingua franca.
05:35So obviously it was, you know, it had a lot of influence from Malay, uh, and whatever languages were in
05:40Melaka. Melaka was so cosmopolitan, right? At that time, so international. Right. I guess the
05:44New York of the, of the east, perhaps, right? So, so many languages are being spoken. So if you look
05:49at Melaka Portuguese, although even now, probably it gets less year by year, but say now maybe 80%
05:55of the vocabulary is Latin-based, or, you know, you can trace it back to Portuguese, but the pronunciation
06:01has changed tremendously. So, so what's the current state of it now? Uh, where is it spoken in Malaysia?
06:08Who still speaks it? You mentioned dwindling number of speakers. Yes, yes, exactly. That's the sad thing with
06:13many of our, um, heritage languages, right? So in, um, Malaysia, the exact number of speakers is hard
06:20to discern because we don't have statistics, but let me kind of zoom into Melaka, where about,
06:26if you look at, uh, department statistics, um, you know, their, their numbers, there are about 6,000
06:31people in Melaka who, uh, go under the line line, the others category. So we would assume that they
06:37include those of Portuguese descent. Um, but you, we know that because people are mixed, you know,
06:43it's hard, right? So going back to that in the Portuguese settlement itself, there are probably
06:47about 1,005 to 2,000 people there. And about, I would say that maybe less than half of the
06:54population
06:54would speak it fluently. Uh, reason being because mainly it's the older generation. So people like me
07:01who are over a certain age. So those above 60 probably, or maybe in their fifties and above,
07:08the younger generation tend to be more dominant in English, especially the very youngest, uh, generation.
07:13So having to study, uh, an endangered language and, uh, with the objective of preserving it,
07:22do you have to become fluent in the language yourself? Okay. So as a linguist, not necessary.
07:26It helps. Um, my problem is I, because I'm not in contact in Melaka and unfortunately, as I said,
07:33most people have moved like to Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, speak English more than, um, Kristang, right?
07:40Kristang, Papaya Kristang. Kristang is the, okay.
07:42Yeah. So Papaya Kristang, sometimes we refer it to, refer to the language as Kristang among ourselves.
07:47Okay. Yeah. So, um, so it's only when I go to the settlement or when I was doing my work
07:51that
07:51I'm surrounded by speakers, my many friends, my lovely friends who are there, uh, and relatives who, um,
07:57who don't speak the language very fluently. So unfortunately, if you look at my documentation,
08:01many of the oldest speakers have actually passed on. So probably I have the only archive, like actually
08:07archived and accessible, um, you know, in data of them, speaking the language, videos of them
08:12speaking the language, singing in the language, um, showing you how to cook certain dishes in the
08:17language. So I think it's, that it's essential because if we want to go back to it, if we want
08:22to like produce materials, um, where are the records, right? Especially as we get less and less fluent in
08:28the language. So we do need records. And that's why archives, uh, documentation is important. It's
08:34not just keeping it there, you know, but it's something that, uh, we can, we can revisit, reuse,
08:40relearn. Yeah. But that is actually a really good point. What, what do we stand to lose if languages
08:46disappear from our culture? If, um, you know, it disappears and it wasn't recorded, it wasn't documented.
08:54What do we lose from that? I think we lose the sense in, in a way we lose the sense
08:58of ourselves. So the caveat is of course, you know, I can speak English. If English is my first
09:03language, it doesn't mean I lose my culture, but I might lose nuances of the culture, things that I
09:08can't express myself in, in another language, right? Certain feelings. And we know like in Malay,
09:13there's so many words that we really cannot translate, right? If you say, sebab, you know,
09:17what, what is it in English? It's very hard to, to really have that emotion, right? Uh, so there,
09:23are, we lose that. Um, of course we can substitute it, but in languages there are,
09:28there's so much of information, right? Information that's passed on from generation to generation.
09:33Like how do you practice something in indigenous communities? It could be healing, healing, uh,
09:39powers that are in the language, right? Uh, songs, you know, that, that help to heal ourselves.
09:45So those things could be lost as we lose our language. Plus, uh, many communities also have,
09:50you know, if they are in, in the environment, they have names for things like you can use this for,
09:56uh, when you're sick or if you, you know, certain, certain things in the end, like plants or even,
10:02um, I don't know, fruits, plants, um, flowers that you can use. So once you lose that name,
10:08it just becomes, you know, something there. Yeah. There's a, there's memory, there's,
10:13memory. There's, um, I guess indigenous knowledge that's being passed down through, through language.
10:20And actually all of us have, even if you look at Malay and Malay dialects, right? There are certain
10:24things in, um, in the Northern, Northern Malay, Northern varieties of Malay, for example, that you,
10:30first you cannot translate to, to even standard Malay. And I'm sure there are things in there,
10:35uh, that you can't really know if you're not part of that group. Absolutely. Absolutely. So when you said you
10:42helped digitally archive this, talk to me about this because, uh, if I, if I have this correct,
10:48you are the first Malaysian researcher to digitally archive, um, such an indigenous language in the
10:55internationally recognized endangered language archive. Tell me about that. Yes. Okay. So there were
10:59other, it's usually, uh, international researchers that are willing to go, you know, into, into the depths of
11:05the jungle or, you know, into indigenous communities. Um, somehow now we are getting more Malaysians
11:11involved. So that's a group, that's great for me. Yeah. Like my colleagues who are doing things in Sabah. Um,
11:16so in terms of a Malaysian actually doing one of our Malaysian languages, it was, uh, yes, I started it.
11:23So, um,
11:23I archive Melaka Portuguese. Um, and so I had to learn. And at that time, the grant was based in
11:30SOAS in the UK. Okay. It, the archive has now moved to Berlin. Right. What does that mean to archive
11:35it?
11:36Well, first to digitally document it and then to archive it. What does that mean? It preserves the
11:41language for all, everyone to. So what happens is they will, you know, teach you protocols of recording,
11:47you know, recording, uh, on site, um, what kind of things do you need to put in? So, um, as
11:53many cultural,
11:54um, elements is what I went for. So, you know, singers in the community, uh, um, people who knew about
12:02recipes, about culture, cultural events. So to get them to talk about that so that we then not only
12:08have, can hear and see the language being spoken, but we then have also information about cultural
12:13practices. Right. Right. Or songs that they, they had, um, they had written and, and, and so, so many,
12:21so much information that's there. It's not just the language. So what happens when you archive it
12:25is you don't just like, you record something and then you just put it there. Yeah. Like a video,
12:29right. You have to also have the transcript. Right. So they, and we do what we call time-aligned
12:34transcripts. So as you say, that's how we transcribe. So that's quite challenging, especially when you're not
12:39very fluent with the language. So you have to work really closely with the community because honestly,
12:43they are the custodians of the language. And, um, I have one foot in and one foot in academia,
12:49right. In, in the language and in academia. So I really relied on a lot of my language consultants
12:54from the community ever so grateful for all their help in helping to translate and then to do it in
13:00English. And then it can be used for a lot of things, right? Like for analysis, like if, if people
13:06want to go in and do dictionaries, then they can go in and say, oh, let's look at the vocabulary
13:10that's
13:11there. Or they want to do and they want to see, oh, how similar is the, the grammar to Malay,
13:17for example.
13:17So, so many, so people can go in to look, people want to do cultural analysis can also look at
13:23it.
13:23It's accessible. If you register, you can access whatever the researcher allows you to access or
13:28the community, because some communities may have certain, you know, like, oh, only women can hear
13:33this. Yeah. Not, not the Malayka Portuguese, but some, yeah, some communities have.
13:37So, but you went one step further. So you didn't just digitally archive this, you created
13:42an app. Yeah.
13:44Tell me more about how you went one step further in preserving the language.
13:49So after archiving, you know, that guilt I talked about, so I was like, that's not enough, right? I mean,
13:55what do you do with that? People might watch it, like the community at least now can watch that.
13:59Yeah. But okay. Knowing that, you know, it was not being transmitted to the younger generation,
14:05so we needed materials. So I worked at that time, it was the Malayka Portuguese Eurasian
14:10Association with Michael Singho, Philomena Singho, Sarah Santamaria and many others who really came
14:17forward and worked very closely with me. And I'm very grateful to University of Malaya because they have
14:24community engagement grants, which allowed me to work and workshop materials and then to produce,
14:31if I may. So the first one, actually, the first one that we produced was actually prayers,
14:37Catholic prayers in Kristang. And that was a CD, which, you know, in this day and age, obviously,
14:44so you know how long ago that was, but you know, because it's digitally available,
14:47we can actually share the songs and the prayers. And that was quite challenging as well,
14:53because, you know, to get people to remember, how was this said? And what's the hymn that was sung?
14:59So we put together that one with the MPAA, the Malayka Portuguese Eurasian Association.
15:05And then there was this book, if I could show. So this book, and this is Come Let's Learn Malayka
15:15Portuguese, right? So this is like, I guess, kind of like a course book. And again, worked with UM and
15:23also my UM colleagues and also people from the community like Michael, Sarah and Philo. And
15:30basically, what we did is like, for example, you know, you could learn about like, oh, how to say,
15:35what's my name? How are you? Like, Tingbong.
15:37Who is this for? Is this for the younger generation who wants to connect with your heritage?
15:42Actually, for everyone.
15:43For everyone?
15:43Yeah. At first, we thought, you know, this would be used for like children. So like,
15:47you know, for example, Sarah teaches children, right? And then the pandemic changed a lot of
15:52things because the pandemic meant that we had to go online. So people went online on social media
15:58and also using Google or whatever platforms to teach. And, you know, the book can be bought,
16:06it was published by UM Press, so easily available. It's very, it's not expensive. So who started to
16:12learn it? People even from the diaspora, like Australia and so on, who are now like saying, hey,
16:17now we can learn, right? We can come online and talk to fellow, you know, fellow Malayka Portuguese
16:23speakers and we can learn and even non, people not from the community. So that's still ongoing,
16:27actually the classes. And now they're a WhatsApp group where, you know, it's connected. It's
16:32connected people. Yes. Which is what language is supposed to do. Yes. And that was an unexpected
16:37thing. That's a wonderful impact from your research. I love that. I do wonder, so now,
16:45how do we prevent languages from becoming endangered in the first place? I mean, you've done wonderful work,
16:51but there are so many other, I think, languages that are at risk. When we think about the role of,
16:59I guess, institutions and not just institutions, but policy even maybe, how do we think about that?
17:07Can things be done so we don't lose some of this precious heritage? That's a really good point. And
17:13something that we are kind of grappling with. Our current project is looking at youth engagement,
17:18you know, because one of the main things is that once the older generation passes, who's going to be
17:25who are the people who are going to be the custodians of the language and not just custodians,
17:29but who's going to innovate, who's going to, you know, say, oh, you know, we want to relearn or learn
17:35our language or at least use it in certain platforms, even if it's on the new digital platforms,
17:40right? So that's what we're trying to, and we are working closely with agencies like the Heritage
17:46Department, you know, not Heritage, but the Jabatan Kebudayaan, and I'm getting it all wrong,
17:52and Kebudayaan Warisan like Melaka, to see how, you know, we can engage youth in, yeah.
17:59You mentioned a bit earlier that there are instances where maybe, particularly in urban areas where
18:05you've opted for, the community has opted for English, as opposed to say some of the
18:10Malacca Portuguese. Talk to me about that tension of maybe, you know, choosing English for economic
18:19mobility, as opposed to maybe preserving some of our indigenous or heritage language.
18:25This tension is ongoing with all of us, actually, and I mean, unfortunately, unfortunately, when the
18:32British came and brought English education, that kind of set the trend that English is important,
18:37and that perception still persists until today. You can see this in the press and, you know,
18:43all letters to the editor. So that creates a tension, and unfortunately, that also makes young
18:49parents, who may themselves be speakers of their heritage languages, then say, oh, I don't want my
18:54child to be mixed, you know, to be confused. I'll only use Mandarin or English with them. And that's
19:00really a wrong perception, because we know that children are able to learn more than one language.
19:06It's just how you do it, right? So that's how to change perception, you know, among young parents
19:14in particular, or grandparents, because grandparents, if you are so lucky to have your grandparents around,
19:19and they still speak their heritage language. That is such a wonderful situation, but we don't
19:25make use of it, because we say, oh, don't. Let's not speak this dialect. Let's not speak kristang.
19:30Let's not speak, you know, yeah.
19:31I think I have, anecdotally, I have heard that before, and I think it is such a shame.
19:37One of the things that I learnt in an interview that I did was actually young children are the
19:42most equipped to learn languages, so they can handle multiple languages, and that's when you
19:48want to teach them as many languages as possible, because they can pick it up faster than as adults.
19:57Let me shift the conversation a little from not just our heritage language, but you also look at
20:03Malaysian English, which is also another thing that we have an insecurity about, I think,
20:09as a society. So we try to adopt British or American English, but we have a unique variety
20:16of English called Malaysian English. Tell me about your work in that area.
20:20So this is my bugbear, right? Firstly, do not like the term English, because when people use that,
20:26it's always very, in a way, it's putting down the English that we speak.
20:31To me, and based on our research, basically, when we say the Malaysian variety of English,
20:36there's not one, there are many. I mean, I'm sure you don't speak English like this all the time,
20:41Melissa. No, not at all. The ones the cameras are off, I'm completely different.
20:44Exactly. So I always ask my students, so how many Englishes do you speak, or how many Malayses do you
20:49speak? And they're like, huh? You know, what is she asking us? And really, we do. So when we look
20:54at
20:55Malaysian English, we have the standard variety that you are using, that we are using right now.
21:00But even within that, there are nuances that are different from British or American or any other
21:05Australian or whatever, Indian English, right? It's different. So mainly, it comes out in the way
21:10that we speak. So the pronunciation, some vocabulary items, or when I switch to Malay and I use the word
21:17about this now, right? Which I maybe wouldn't use in another context. But then, we have the standard
21:25variety in our repertoire. But not everybody has that, right? So some people only have the colloquial
21:31variety. And even the colloquial variety, there's like a whole range. We don't all use the same kind
21:36of colloquial variety. So I think it's a misnomer to say Malaysian English is bad English or incorrect.
21:41I've got broken English. Yes, absolutely no, because which English are you talking about is my question.
21:46When they say, oh, it's broken English. Plus, we now have terms like terror in the Oxford English
21:51Dictionary, which I help to, you know, consult on. Okay, so you were consultant for the English
21:56Oxford, Oxford English Dictionary, where you look at Malaysian English entries. Yes, so they were sent, yeah.
22:04What words are in there? So, yeah, terror is in there. So, you know, how we use terror, like, oh,
22:10I use so terror, Melissa.
22:11That's a wonderful example. Yes, yes. What other words are in there?
22:15There are like tapau and, yeah, rempet. That's amazing. What does that mean for a Malaysian English
22:26language or Malaysian English language words to be part or documented in this?
22:31Yes. So, there's an acknowledgement now that, you know, English is not just one kind of English,
22:37right? It doesn't belong to one nation or one race. It actually belongs to many speakers and there are more
22:44speakers who, for whom English is not their first language, who speak English. And we have our own
22:50varieties of English, right? And in that variety, we, and especially in a multilingual context like Malaysia,
22:56we have so many resources to take from Chinese, Malay. So, it is unique. And the fact that Oxford now
23:04includes these, I think it's a kind of acceptance of all these different varieties of English. Yeah.
23:12I love that. I really think we should change the mindset around it because sometimes I think
23:18the negative attitude towards Malaysian English really damages people's confidence and interest in
23:26wanting to learn more or use the language. Yes. And I think also because there's no distinction
23:31between like the colloquial variety that I definitely use off camera and, you know,
23:38and learner English, meaning that children who do not speak English at home, but they're coming to
23:44school to learn English, right? And it goes, maybe it goes wrong there for whatever reasons I won't go into.
23:51Then, then the perception is, oh, that's bad English because that's broken English. But that's learner
23:56English, like us learning French or German or Korean. We will all go through that phase, right?
24:02We all begin somewhere. Yeah. Or we will stop at that stage and then it will be a kind of
24:06learner Korean or learner.
24:07Can you help me? So, you mentioned something about the pronunciation. Yes, yes.
24:10I think of it as accents because sometimes we get called out from our accents. Of course, yeah.
24:15Why do you think accents carry such social meaning? Because we put them there, right? We,
24:25it's not something inherently in the language, but we prescribe that. I mean, it's everywhere,
24:31whether it's in America or England or Australia. We talk about majority English-speaking countries.
24:35They also have a lot of prejudice against certain accents, right? So, it's not just us. But for us,
24:41I mean, I want to maintain the way that I speak standard and colloquial English. I do change my
24:47accent when I, when I speak. Code switching, right? Yeah. Yeah. Even switching between different
24:51varieties, I don't sound the same. I do not want to put on an accent and, you know, speak in
24:57an accent
24:58that's not mine because then it's not me, right? Yeah. So, what does it mean for someone to be
25:04fully confident speaking in Malaysian English in the accent that we have without needing to sound
25:13like someone else, sound like a foreigner, essentially? Yeah. I think we have to do it.
25:18And those of us in positions that we can do it, we do it. So that, you know, we, the
25:22message we send
25:23is, hey, I'm fluent. I'm speaking fluent English. Don't judge me. And, you know, I can, I can use a
25:32standard variety in my own accent, right? And you can't judge me for it. So, the more of us
25:38that use this, I think that there will be more acceptance. People will not feel ashamed of
25:43sounding how they are. Yeah. I love that. I love that this is, from a linguist, that this is something
25:51we should be proud of and really embody, be authentic and also be proud of our heritage.
25:55Yeah. Hopefully, we can all keep our, our heritage languages alive. Correct. Thank you so much,
26:02Stephanie, for being on the show. Thank you. It's been such a joy to talk to you. Thank you so
26:05much,
26:05Melissa. That's all the time we have for you on this episode of The Future Is Female.
26:09I'm Melissa Idris signing off for the evening. Thank you so much for watching. Good night.
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