How It Should Be Said

There has been a lot of tussle over how our country's name should be pronounced. Until quite very recently everybody pronounced Malaysia as Malay(sh)ia. All of a sudden people start saying that's not the correct way to say it, and Malay(s)ia is the actual pronunciation. Let me enlighten you on why it should always be Malay(sh)ia, and by the end of this post you shall never again question it's validity.

1. Malaysia is a combination of Malay, our country's majority race, and Sia as in Part of Asia.
Malay is an English word, and in English Asia is pronounced as A(sh)ia. Put them together, you get Malay(sh)ia

2. Lets say you wanna argue the word Sia is pronounced (s)ia in Bahasa Malaysia, and since we're Malaysians we should pronounce it using the tone of Bahasa Malaysia. In that case we should not use Malay as it is an English equivalent of Melayu. So our argument will no longer be between Malay(s)ia and Malay(sh)ia, rather the latter and Melayusia.

3. If you insist on maintaining Malay instead of Melayu, you'd then have to adhere to the requirements of Bahasa Baku. This will mean you will have to start calling our country mAlAysiA.

It has always been Malay(sh)ia until very recently, maybe because some smart-ass realised that if Alicia Silverstone has to be pronounced as Ali(s)ia Silverstone Malaysia should also be called different. Let's not complicate things by claiming we know better and revert to the original.