On language: English or Malay or both?

On language: English or Malay or both?



The prime minister recently lamented about how Malaysians, even the GLCs, use English rather than Malay for everything, even housing development names.

As I sit here in my house in Taman Sonnet Acapella Azure, I’d have to agree that he’s right, of course. Many people use English a lot in everyday life. I’m here writing to you in English, and I’m assuming, Google Translate aside, you’re also reading this in English.

I’m certainly not one of those elite people though. I was born in a kampung where nobody spoke English, and I learnt it through books, movies and TV.

I attended a Malay-medium primary school and after six years could count up to ten in English and … that’s pretty much it. I then attended an English-medium secondary school, but the students were mostly kampung boys just like me and we hardly spoke English outside of the classroom.

However, if you’re curious about the world, you can’t help but pick up English. It’s the easiest path to the riches of human knowledge, achievements and discoveries.

While not every great creation or discovery was in English, they’re all available in it, from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to the Greek classics and, closer to home, many of Usman Awang’s works too.

And this was even before the internet, or quite apart from the world of commerce and industry, where English is clearly the dominant language.

So the case for the importance of English is pretty strong. What about the case for Bahasa Malaysia or the Malay language?

It’s pretty strong too. It’s the lingua franca that allows Malaysians to live and work together. It requires minimal effort to learn because it’s all around us, and because it’s an easy language to pick up.

But still, there are many among us who barely speak it, living in their own sanitised moneyed bubbles. They might as well live in similar bubbles in Switzerland or New York, and maybe they should.

There are 33 million Malay speakers in Malaysia, and well over 300 million in the world who speak some variations of it (such as Bahasa Indonesia): the chances of it being a major world language are high.

But to the chauvinists pushing for it to be so, please remember – a language only becomes important if it serves a useful purpose, not just because a political congress or Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka resolves it must be so.

Look at Japan. Despite being one of the world’s biggest economic powers, hardly anybody outside Japan speaks Japanese. There just isn’t the drive for the world to do it, and the Japanese are OK with it.

There have been naïve arguments made that Japan, Germany or France are successful and powerful nations who are not pushing for the use of English.

This shows a lack of understanding of history. Those nations have been successful in science and industry for hundreds of years, even before English became ascendant.

If it wasn’t for a twist of fate, which was that America ended up being an English-speaking British colony, any of their languages could have become the dominant world language instead.

Given the hundreds of years of progress by Western Europeans, their need to push for English is less urgent. Einstein wrote his relativity theories in German. But even so, go to any western European country and you’ll find almost everybody speaks English well, because they accept its importance.

Don’t forget at one point all science, philosophy and literature in those countries were in a foreign language too – Latin. Isaac Newton wrote Principia Mathematica in it. Proud as these nations were, it didn’t stop them from doing what was necessary to advance their civilisations.

They’re not too proud now either. Rakuten, Nissan and Honda of Japan made English their official language, as did Airbus, Siemens and many other global giants. In a survey, 70% of parents in China want their children to learn English. Vietnam’s top companies test job applicants for English proficiency.

You can hardly find anybody more nationalistic and proud of their heritage than the French, Japanese, Chinese or Vietnamese, so this does say something.

Where should we be then?

The answer is clear, albeit politically difficult – Malaysia should have two official languages, Malay and English. Given that we all speak Malay already, effectively we’d just need to learn one language.

Malay needs time to catch up to where other major languages had taken hundreds of years to arrive at. The world wouldn’t care about Malay just because a bunch of ultra-nationalist politicians rant and rave about it. It has to succeed on its own merit, and through hard work and smart policies.

We must ensure those who can grow it – scientists, artists, writers, businesspeople and computer programmers etc, – aren’t pushed out of the country; apart from growing the country, they’ll help to grow Malay too.

Our choice of languages is about meeting critical national priorities, and not about racial polemics and spurious arguments about loyalty or national identity that hide insecurities at best, and at worst, distractions from the real issues facing us.

We must also find a way to work with our Indonesian neighbours to grow a common language. If anybody thinks Malay can be a world language, against the desires of the Indonesians pushing their own Bahasa Indonesia, they’re dreaming.

There was a recent debate about our politicians speaking in Malay at international forums. I actually don’t see anything wrong with it. Malay is a legitimate language and hearing it in world forums is quite nice.

But if they had delivered their speeches in clear, ringing English and without translation, it would’ve reached and impressed a lot of people. Oratory is not improved in translation – how well do Shakespeare’s soliloquies or the Gettysburg Address work in other languages? Not so well.

And could the reason that the politicians spoke in Malay was that they lack the command of or confidence in speaking in English? If this is so, and it’s very likely this is so, then we’re not well served by our leaders who are scared of standing on the world stage.

Being good in many languages is an asset. In my own family everybody speaks Malay and English. Two children completed their degrees in Japanese, and between the kids they have very good Russian, and some decent Spanish, Kazakh and French too.

Two nephews attend Chinese schools and one, at 15, already is in trade, with suppliers from China.

I’m the one stuck with only English and my very coarse Penang Malay. I’ve tried picking up other languages but just wasn’t good at it. Much as I tried, I ended up, as they say over in Penang “pi mai pi mai tang tu jugak”.

Here and there, hither and thither, and back where you started. See what I meant about translation? It can’t quite convey the essence of the original!

And with that, jumpa lagi, sayonara and auf Wiedersehen till next week, mes amis.