BacaMalay actually began because of my husband.
He had picked up an interest in learning Malay again, and that got me thinking about what was available for someone who wanted to learn the language. At around the same time, I had also been thinking about starting some kind of project of my own.
And there was another feeling mixed into it: nostalgia.
I missed reading Malay.
Not necessarily studying it or analysing grammar. I missed simply reading things written in Malay — stories, expressions, conversations and the kind of writing that had once been an ordinary part of my life.
The idea of graded reading wasn’t something I invented.
I already knew it from learning Mandarin. I had used sites such as Mandarin Bean, HSK Online and Du Chinese. Mandarin Bean and HSK Online offer lessons as well, while Du Chinese is much more focused on reading, but all of them had introduced me to the idea of reading material organised according to language level.
So I started wondering what existed for Malay.
There are certainly Malay learning resources. There are books, lessons, folktales, school materials and stories scattered around the internet.
But I wanted something quite specific.
What if someone simply wanted to read Malay?
Not another grammar lesson.
Not a page of comprehension questions.
Just something interesting to read.
And preferably something chosen according to how much Malay they could already understand.
Then, one weekend in early August, more or less on a whim, I paid for a domain and started building it.
That domain became BacaMalay.
And just in case you have been reading that as BakaMalay in your head: baca is pronounced roughly bah-cha. In Malay, the letter c has a “ch” sound. Baca means “read”, so BacaMalay is quite literally an invitation to read Malay.
I had an idea, inspiration from the Mandarin resources I had used myself, a free weekend and enough curiosity to see what I could make.
The structure gradually became Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced readings.
But while I was thinking about what stories should actually go into this library, something happened that I hadn’t really expected.
I started remembering things.
Lebai Malang — the unfortunate religious teacher.Pak Pandir — the foolish but memorable character of Malay folktales.Badang — the legendary strongman.
Sang Kancil. Hang Tuah. Hang Jebat.
Stories and characters that had once been familiar suddenly began resurfacing in my memory. Some I remembered clearly. Others I realised I had almost completely forgotten.
And I was happy to become acquainted with them again.
That made me even more excited about BacaMalay.
It was no longer only about producing reading material for someone learning Malay. I was also rediscovering something myself.
I began looking again at stories I had not thought about for years and remembering just how rich the collection of Malay folktales, legends and comic characters actually is.
I wanted BacaMalay to have room for all of that.
There could be ordinary contemporary stories — waiting for a bus, buying food on the way home, drinking coffee, going to work.
But there could also be Sang Kancil tricking his way out of trouble, Pak Pandir making another terrible decision, stories about Badang and his extraordinary strength, and eventually many more of the stories that Malaysians have passed down for generations.
I wanted the site to feel recognisably Malaysian rather than like a collection of generic language-learning dialogues that happened to be written in Malay.
Building it has also made me notice things about my own language that I would normally never stop to explain.
What exactly are we communicating when we call someone Bang?
Why does bungkus immediately make sense when ordering food to take away?
What picture comes into a Malaysian person’s head when someone says kurus macam lidi — skinny like the thin rib of a coconut-palm leaf?
These are tiny things. But when you are writing for someone who didn’t grow up knowing them automatically, you suddenly have to think about what they mean and why we say them.
And yes, I use AI quite a lot while building BacaMalay.
There isn’t much point pretending otherwise.
I use it for brainstorming, research, organising ideas, developing stories and solving the technical problems that inevitably appear when I decide I want the website to do something new.
But I also write. I edit. I change things. I reject suggestions. I argue over words and expressions. Sometimes I rewrite a sentence several times because it doesn’t sound quite right to me.
The technology makes it possible for me to build much more than I could have built alone, particularly in such a short time. But the choices about what BacaMalay should become are still mine.
Where will it lead?
I genuinely don’t know.
Perhaps people will find it and use it. Perhaps it will eventually make some money. Perhaps it will remain a rather obscure little corner of the internet.
For now, though, it keeps me occupied, and I enjoy building it.
There is always another story I suddenly remember, another one I discover again, another expression worth explaining, or another part of the site I want to improve.
And sometimes I think much further ahead.
If I keep adding to it over the years, BacaMalay could eventually become quite a substantial collection of Malay stories, legends, everyday language and bits of culture.
Maybe one day my grandchildren will come across it.
I have no idea whether they will need BacaMalay to learn the language. I don’t even know what the internet will look like by then.
But there is something rather nice about the possibility that they might one day be able to look through all those stories and know:
Their grandmother made this. Ha ha
Not bad for something that started with my husband learning Malay, a bit of nostalgia, and me impulsively buying a domain one weekend in August.
