alamak

Alamak, according to this website I was reading, was originally pronounced as alamar and was first used by the people in malacca under the portuguese occupation.
It meant "mother of God", a malay equivalence of a common christian inspired swear.

According to this comic book about Singapore, it says the word is a combination of "allah", which means God and "mak" which means mother.

So what really bothered me was when someone tried to point out to me that alamak can't possibly be "mother of God" because it is "allah" that is "God", not "ala". So apparently, the spelling meant that it cannot have that meaning.

Upon showing him my source, he went on to say that the writer obviously didn't know his arabic enough, if he did, he'd known that there's no way the "ala-" meant God. How exactly the arabic informs such a conclusion he did not elaborate. What was worse is when I told him that his argument is poor, he did not persist. Instead, he moved to another line of argument, stoking my suspicions that he didn't know his arabic either.

Now he says that it is impossible because malays will never associate allah with a mother. To them, such association is sacrilegious. To me, such an objection is irrelevant because as a linguist, "allah" is simply a lingual equivalent of the word "God", not to be constrained to any particular referent at all. Whoever said that when anyone says "alamak" they think of the god of Islam? Since the god of Islam is no necessary referent, it seems like the "disrespect" argument doesn't really work.

Then comes to ultimate move. He says, "but people are likely to misinterpret". Okay, how can I argue with that? I already stumbled upon a misinterpreter by then, the man himself.

But you know, sometimes I really wish people read more before they start shooting their mouths off. The website that I was talking about, or the comic book which actually made it to publication, do these have no credibility whatsoever that they should be so candidly discarded in the argument?

Alamak sia, meet this sort of people.