by Isidore Dyen
Published by the U.S. Armed Forces (listed as the "War Department" on the copyright page) and the Linguistic Society of America; July 1, 1945. (Units 1 through 30 in two volumes.)

Of all the Malay language manuals I've gotten my hands on in the last three months, this two-volume course is the best, at least for what I need. It is set up very much like other language courses I've taken, with a short basic text/topic or dialog followed by practice and review and a vocabulary list at the end. The study texts are more mundane (that is, they lack the war references seen in the other two manuals reviewed here). I can personally identify with many of the scenarios and vocabulary sets having to do with shopping, eating, family life, and so forth.

Interesting to me as well is the introduction which states that the course is "based on the principle that you must hear a language if you are to understand it when spoken, and that you must practice speaking in order to master its sounds and its forms" (iii). After going on to discuss regional dialect differences, it goes on to say, "A Native Speaker is the only good source of first-hand knowledge of teh pronunciation and usage of any language" (iv) and "The Native Speaker is always right...in cases of differences between speaker and book" (xiii).  In fact, the authors do not recommend using the manual alone but to enlist the help of a Native Speaker as a language guide.

Military and Vocational Requirements)
South Pasadena, CA: P.D. and Ione Perkins, 1944
by Eduard F. Winckel

This is another book from Ohio University Library/OhioLink. Like the R.A.A.F. publication previously reviewed, this book was written for the Allied forces in WWII.  However, the tone and approach could not be more different. 

The author’s dedication reads as a heartfelt plea for the liberation of a beloved country:

       'Dedicated to Indonesia, my native land. May this book help in the early liberation from the  usurpers. Salam dan Behagia!

Before the Japanese occupation of southeast asia, Malaya was a British colony and Indonesia a Dutch colony.  I suspect the author is Dutch-Indonesian.

While the opening lessons are fairly conventional (covering pronunciation, numbers, time, months, days of the week, money, weights and measures, lists of common nouns and verbs and so forth), the next section, “Practices in Conversation” is fascinating. Titles for the conversations include, “In a Hotel,” “Troops Lost in The Jungle,” “Foraging in A Native Village,” “Arrest of Native Traitors,” and “Rehabilitaion of Oil Fields.”  The book also contains an excellent review of Malay grammar, idiomatic words and a fairly extensive English-Malay dictionary.

The scenario in the “Arrest Native Traitors” conversation is interesting because it assumes that the villagers can and want to be helpful, and that it is important to treat the locals with respect by not ordering them around. (Were that the colonial powers were so civilized!) The largest portion of the lesson covers polite requests of the village chief, such as, “If Chief can give me some sarongs and turbans, the enemy can not recognize us and we can hide our weapons under the sarongs” and “Captain perhaps has one flashlight,” which is the way I remember Malays asking for assistance—to suggest rather than to order someone to do something. At the end of the little scenario, though, the Brits surround the terrorists with the help of the villagers and bark orders:  Get out! (Kaloe’war!)  Stick your hands up! (Ang’kat tang’an!) Higher! (Lebih’ ting’gi!)  The story then turns to the maintenance of the prisoners (5 Malays and 6 Japanese): “Do not mistreat them” (Djang’an di menja’kiti); “They will be tried and sentenced”…how to assess wounds…how to interrogate... how to thank and reward the villagers. 

I think I’ll copy and use the “conversation practice” pieces as much for my amusement as for drill on word order, etc.

For several projects I've doing involving my childhood in Kuala Lumpur, I'm on the lookout for Malay language instructional texts and dictionaries that pre-date the spelling reform.  (Here's a good site in English about the Malay/Indonesian: www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j11/malay.php ) I don't know which is more amazing:  a) that I can find such books in Ohio or that b) the ones I find are so uneven in quality.

Borrowed Elementary Malay (R.A.A.F. Publication #513) from Ohio University Library/OhioLink.  No publication date is listed, but there are clues in the introductory chapter, “Notes on Some of the Habits and Customs of Malays, Chinese, Southern Indians and Eurasians,” which plainly place this book in the time of the Japanese occupation of the Malay peninsula during WWII.  This early chapter is blatantly bigoted and ethnocentric.  Shockly, actually.  Malays are described as “an easy-going and rather lazy race,” yet the paragraphs above and below this statement detail Malay agricultural methods and products--rice, rubber, fruit trees—their entrepreneurial spirit, and their devotion to their religion. Lazy indeed!  The section on Malays praises the British and the Dutch for doing various things to “protect Malay interests” and the ends with the baldly racist and impossibly naïve conclusion: “There is no doubt that the great majority of the Malays will welcome the return of the white man.”   

Numbers, time, money, lists of nouns, the simplest of phrases, and occasional, bizarre instructions about how to “order” Malays to do something for you comprise the short lessons in this short book.  I rate this book USELESS for my purposes but an interesting view into the minds of British Colonial overlords near the midpoint of the 20th century.