In February 2026, Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng, aka Uncle Roger, took a minute out of a video to talk about something serious.
Normally Ng roasts cooking influencers for their “creative” ways of making fried rice, but this time he responded to a comment by J. Kenji López-Alt. The renowned American chef and New York Times columnist had admonished commenters on his own channel for mentioning Uncle Roger, saying he is uncomfortable that the character’s “schtick seems to give a free pass to people to imitate stereotypical Asian speech patterns and pronunciation”.
That “schtick”, of course, is the point. Uncle Roger speaks English with a heavily accented Chinese-Malaysian inflection, peppering sentences with “fuiyoh” and “haiyaa”, and bending grammar into phrases like, “No need pretty, just taste good is enough”.
In his response, Ng defends the way his character speaks, arguing that an accent is not a stereotype, but that it “is just how we talk and how we live”. He ends with: “Sorry I don’t sound white like you, Nephew Kenji. Haiyaa.”
While the exchange is about accents, what I saw was a broader discussion about code-switching, and how appropriate or not it is in different contexts.
Code-switching is when speakers alternate between two or more languages within a single conversation, sometimes within a single sentence. It can be as simple as inserting a word (“Do you have any mancis?”, ie, asking for matches) or tagging on a particle like our ubiquitous “lah” or “ma”, or even importing grammar from one language into another: “Please ah, don’t take ruler I.”
Linguists describe this in terms of a “matrix language”, or a dominant grammatical frame, into which elements of another language are embedded. In Malaysia, that matrix is often either Bahasa Melayu or English.
Conveniently, both languages share the same basic subject- verb-object word order, and that structural similarity makes switching relatively seamless. For example, as Zee Avi sings: “Semalam I call you, you tak answer.” (And we all understand her!)
This isn’t necessarily because the speakers don’t know what the “correct” words and grammar are. It is, in fact, patterned behaviour, where we take advantage of the typological similarity to create something familiar to both parties that identifies a shared heritage.
Perhaps the roots begin in childhood. Many Malaysian families are bi- or trilingual, and children grow up hearing and using multiple languages at home. And while officially Bahasa Melayu is the primary medium of instruction in national schools and universities, in practice, the truth is more fluid.
A sociolinguistic study of secondary school students in the Klang Valley found that code- switching frequently occurs in peer conversations, with the matrix language shifting depending on context.
Other research into English-medium science classrooms found that strategic code-switching helped teachers manage classrooms and improve comprehension of complex concepts. And a study in a public university observed that code-switching occurred in roughly 25% to 53% of classroom interactions, depending on the faculty.
It is unsurprising that students raised in this environment continue to code-switch upon entering the workforce. Indeed, this happens not only in the private sector but occasionally within the government as well, to the extent that national language institute Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka has found the need to chide agencies for using “bahasa rojak” at official functions.
Even Parliament is not immune. A corpus analysis of Malaysian Hansard records between 2013 and 2016 found that approximately 0.2% of all words used in parliamentary proceedings were English (roughly one in 500). On the surface, that seems negligible. Bahasa Melayu remains the official language of Parliament, and members may use English only with the Speaker’s permission, which explains the ritualistic “dengan izin” before or after an English phrase.
However, when examined at the sentence level rather than by raw word count, between 20% and 24% of parliamentary lines contained some element of code-switching. Many instances were minor, using function words like “the”, “of”, or “I”. Others were more substantive, such as “government” instead of “kerajaan” or “interest” instead of “minat”.
Rather than signalling a linguistic collapse, code-switching suggests how integrated the various languages, and by extension, races, in Malaysia are. One of the studies quoted earlier noted that in Western societies, code- switching is a stigmatised form of language behaviour, where some feel they have to hide their cultural background when in professional settings or when confronted by authority.
Meanwhile, code-switching is “life as normal” in this country. To quote the research paper, code-switching “... is so entrenched in Malaysia that it appears to have become a code in its own right”, and the authors go on to say that it permeates all levels of society, from schools to social media, the courts, official organisational e-mail, and newspapers.
Which brings us back to accents. An accent is not merely phonetics; it is identity carried in sound. In interviews conducted in his natural speaking voice (English with a trace of Malaysian), Ng has said that Uncle Roger’s accent closely resembles how he spoke growing up before moving abroad when he was 20. He says, “I view uncle Roger as a way to lift our culture up”.
Indeed, if our daily conversation is an effortless blend of languages that enhances rather than diminishes our culture, if our Parliament can debate national policy without worrying about the occasional non-Malay word, and if our classrooms strategically switch to clarify rather than confuse, then perhaps multilingualism is not a threat to dignity but evidence of the strength of integration.
I hope ours is a culture that does not demean someone for sounding “too Malaysian”, and that it treats multilingualism as an asset rather than a flaw. And in a country where you can say “Go stand there, I nak gostan now” with perfect legibility, that is not something to apologise for. Haiyaa.
