A phrase that perplexed me for a while was mengambil bahagian, until I translated it back into English and realised that it means "to take part". An example of the use of this phrase is found in Media Permata (16 March, p. 2), where it is explained that holders of social visit passes to Brunei are not allowed to ....
mengambil bahagian dalam sebarang bentuk pekerja bergajiConfirmation that this usage is not just something found in the Brunei media is obtained by doing a Google search on "mengambil bahagian", which yields 320,000 hits. (OK, I'll admit I didn't check them all!) And many of them are to Malaysian sites, including the first one which is a link to an on-line form entitled Permohonan Oleh Pegawai-Pegawai Awam Untuk Mengambil Bahagian Aktiviti Politik (click here) ("application form for public officers to take part in political activities").take part in any shape work paid"take part in any kind of paid work"
On a slightly different note, how should calque be pronounced? Theauthoritative Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, by John Wells, gives [kælk] with the vowel in TRAP, but I say it as [kʌlk], with the vowel in STRUT. This is the same idiosyncrasy in my pronunciation that I have discussed earlier (15 Feb 2009). In fact, John Wells has also discussed this unusual pronunciation in his own blog of 1 Nov 2007 (JW Blog Nov 2007) and found no evidence of anyone else having it.
So I guess my pronunciation of some words is a bit non-standard. However, it doesn't seem to create any misunderstandings, and most people don't even notice it, so I have no intention of changing.
We all have an idiolect, our own idiosyncratic way of speaking that marks us as different from everyone else. I hope you can also discover the unique features of your idiolect.
