Special thanks to @carlosfandango who told me that ‘amok’ comes from a Malay word for ‘frenzied’. Thanks to him, I had a lovely conversation with my colleague the other day. I’m so excited about this discovery that I wrote the following script for my students to present to the entire school during Spelling Bee.

Danish: Gppd morning, school. I’m Danish from 1S6.

Haziq: And I’m Haziq from 1S6.

Danish: Haziq, what does Mr Heng think of 1S6?

Haziq: Hmm, he said that we are an energetic class that likes to run amok.

Danish: Run amok? What does that mean?

Haziq: It means that we behave without control. Let’s watch a video to find out.

[A video depicting the mannequin challenge will be shown to the school.]

Haziq: I think we all know the meaning of “run amok”. By the way, did you know that “amok” comes from Malay?

Danish: Oh, really? Let’s have Mr Gan read aloud the Malay word “mengamok” for us.

Rifa’ie: Good try, Mr Gan. Maybe you can try this. Take the Chinese surname Ng and just pronounce that and open your mouth wide. Put your tongue on top with your mouth wide open.

Rifa’ie: Thank you, Mr Gan, for being a good sport. How do we use ‘mengamok’ in a sentence? What does it mean?

Qaid: When students say, “Ms Nurul me-nga-mok”, they mean that she is going crazy scolding people!

Rifa’ie: That’s right! It is a useful expression when you think someone is throwing tantrums.

Qaid: it’s interesting how some English words come from Malay, isn’t it? I hope that all of you learnt something today!