In a recent television commentary, the head of Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, the government agency tasked with promoting and safeguarding the Malay language, had some rather spicy – and perhaps sour – comments about the use of Malay in Malaysia.
As reported, he bemoaned the “reluctance” to use it, blaming it on our “peculiarity” of insisting on the use of a “colonial language” instead of our own. He further wondered whether there were any other nations as misguided as we are in insisting on using a coloniser’s language instead of their own.
Hmmm, that’s a tough challenge – but I’ll have a go.
Here’s where the language of the former coloniser is now either an official language or the de facto lingua franca among the people: Singapore, India, the Philippines, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, many countries in northern Europe, pretty much every country in the non-Sahara Africa, all of Central and South America, much of Central Asia, the Caribbean, and South Asia.
Many of these countries have their own national language or languages – Tagalog, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, the various Celtic languages of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, the many Central Asian languages, the original languages of the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs; Swahili, as well as a whole slew of other native languages in Africa.
India even has 23 official languages (including English) but no national language. In Pakistan, Urdu is the national language, but English is also an official language. In the Emirates, English is the de facto language of education and business.
Some of these formerly colonised countries actually fought and shed blood to gain independence from their colonisers, whereas we in Malaysia didn’t. That those countries opted to continue using their former colonisers’ languages – whether English or French or Spanish or Portuguese or whatever, is worth pondering about.
These examples are from recent centuries.
In large swathes of the Middle East and North Africa, the national and official language is Arabic – a foreign language brought by Arab colonisers and conquerors from a much earlier time.
In the far east, Standard Chinese (or Mandarin Chinese) was forced upon many non-Mandarin Chinese people as the common, official language. Japan, France, Germany etc have a long history of civilisation and empire, and made advances in science, technology, commerce and literature before English became dominant.
English itself has an interesting beginning, before it became the world’s most widely-spoken second language and most widely-learned foreign language.
According to Wikipedia, “English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family”. In other words, being imported by migrants and colonisers – including the Romans and French – is a huge part of its legacy.
Today, English as the dominant global language in commerce, technology and popular culture, is naturally the language that has the most impact on other languages.
Had the Dutch not been kicked out of the Malay Peninsula by the British, Malaysians would be speaking as if we have a sore throat. This wouldn’t have been as helpful to our progress.
If Malay had been strategically “marketed” and “sold” to Malaysians, it would’ve risen to the same level of importance as English by now. But this didn’t happen because its boosters didn’t understand, or care, about the challenges they faced, and relied purely on the power that politics had given them.
Malay is either being given lip service by the political elites who send their kids away to study in English-speaking countries, or is being pushed down people’s throats by the same elites.
It has become a useful tool in our race-based politics, especially for Umno and its many noxious progeny.
I’ve never met a single well-educated Malay – whether in politics, business or academia – who doesn’t speak English well. It’s inevitable that if you want to compete and excel on the global stage, you must be good in a world language. And Malay isn’t there yet.
But Malay can be a world language. In its various forms, it’s understood by over 300 million people in the region, with the Indonesian version already the predominant language.
Indonesia is already the economic and political powerhouse in the region. This means we must continue to work with Indonesia, as decided over 50 years ago, to harmonise Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia, to create a common Malay language that both countries can promote.
If Malaysia were to insist on boosting its own version of the language, however, it’s a foregone conclusion that we’ll lose to Indonesia
Ironically, English is highly valued by all our Asean neighbours, many of whom look upon us with some envy. Given Malaysia’s relatively small size, our achievement in economic development is partly due to our strong command of English in business and education.
Keeping that advantage requires us to balance our priorities and promote English and Malay as part of our strategy to be a highly multilingual nation. We’re already highly multilingual, so we know what needs to be done, if we can keep politics out of the picture.
If not, then many Malaysians will just make more effort to ensure their children are well educated in English regardless of what politicians say. Some of those children will leave Malaysia, while those who remain will exacerbate the divide between the well-educated and those who aren’t. This won’t be good for our common future together.
Malay politicians must also understand the need to respect the many other native tongues found in Malaysia. None of these languages – whether Chinese or Tamil or the various native languages of East Malaysia – are being pushed to supplant Malay.
They’re not a threat to Malay – they just want to coexist.
As for English, not much work is required to promote the language – it pretty much promotes itself. But a smarter approach is required for Malay than the current strategy of hapless efforts by “heroes” trying to force it down everybody’s throats.
That strategy has failed so far – a sure sign is that we’re still talking about this today after decades of effort. However, if we don’t start doing things differently, one day soon, we will regret our lost opportunities.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
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