And here is the translation that is offered in the book.
There are two things of note here. First, the Malay 'saya dan isteri saya' becomes inverted in the English, so that I comes second in 'my wife and I'.And second, I think the translation is not quite right. In English we do not say 'we can't go'. Instead, we say 'we can't come'. My interpretation of this is that we transfer the focus to the listener, so we use come rather than go because we are thinking in terms of the perspective of the listener.
These two differences between Malay and English suggest that English may be less egocentric than Malay: we place ourselves second, and we transfer the perspective to the listener.
Is this really true? One problem is many speakers do not naturally say 'my friend and I' ― it seems more natural for most people to say 'me and my friend', and it is only through the intervention of teachers that 'my friend and I' becomes the norm (and many speakers in fact resist this correction from their teachers).
And the use of come rather than go is quite an obscure aspect of English grammar, something that second language users of English rarely adopt. Indeed, I suspect that go will become the norm in situations like that in the dialogue for International English. Maybe it already is the norm.
So perhaps English is not less egocentric after all.
