If we’re already speaking Bahasa Malaysia, sorry, English …

I meant to post this earlier but the past few days have just been so busy, with Urbanscapes (which I will blog about soon!), the Standard Chartered KL Marathon and the Michael Jackson Tribute Event (and another one I went earlier tonight at Urbanattic).

This article, a comment piece, was published last Thursday in the NST and headlined:

How the pretentious filch English to sex up their Malay

If you read my previous post about the word “sex”, you’d understand why this article caught my attention. I jest of course. I had previous blogged here about my thoughts on the English language and the Government’s policies on using it in schools through Maths and Science, and the latest debate, making it a compulsory subject to pass for SPM.

In the article by Azmi Anshar, he says:

Here’s the paradox: English was lofted to national obsession when Malay-based TV stations and Malay newspapers, magazines, periodicals, even websites and blogs began (mis) appropriating English words, terms, mindset and philosophy into their communicative artillery. Hear that loud slurping noise: it’s the Malay media, or to be more precise, the Malay intelligentsia, sucking English into the Malay realm.

An exaggeration, you think? No need to go far: most Malay media publications have liberally “adapted” scores if not hundreds of English nouns and verbs.

It’s true. I often have foreign friends who come visit crack really lame jokes about how they can speak Bahasa Malaysia: they only have to use words like Polis (Police), Ambulans (Ambulance) or Restoran (Restaurant). In the article, Azmi quotes many more including cif (chief – this was new to me!), apresiasi (appreciation) and prestij (prestige).

The best I read is probably the Bahasa Malaysia subtitles for an episode of FRIENDS, which translated “I just lost my erection” to “Saya baru hilang ereksi saya”. I blogged about it too.

Strangely enough, many of these words already have existing Bahasa Malaysia alternatives. Even Azmi alluded to this fact:

However, the farcical irony of these transgressions is that each misappropriated word has a perfectly functional and practical Malay equivalent.

Granted, a lot of this has been made popular by its use in the Malay media. But Azmi is quick to also credit Dewan Bahsa dan Pustaka (our national language guardians).

Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, the guardian of Malay language’s inviolability, is as guilty as the language’s corruptors. As we understand it, before an English word is embraced, an equivalent has to be found in the Malay lexicon of every regional dialect. If that fails, look to Mandarin, Cantonese or Hokkien, and if that too fails, follow up with Tamil, and if that fails, search the languages of the indigenous and go as far as Sabah and Sarawak.

If all attempts fail, only then would the English word finally be admitted.

I didn’t know this fact, but it is interesting. Because it begs another question (than Azmi’s about how English is only used to “sex” up Bahasa Malaysia – to make it more appealing) as far as I am concerned and that is, if we are so comfortable stealing using words from English, then why are we so afraid to embrace it?

Why do we have people – including a national laureate like A Samad Said (shocking, if you ask me; you’d think a man who understands, celebrates and appreciates language and literature would know the value of learning different languages – like English) – who are so adamant that English should not have a bigger role in our education system?

Yes, I understand many worries about implementation – how it is unfair to current students who might not already do well in English to have to pass it next year – but the biggest opposition, from the way I see it, is not in the way it will work but rather in the introduction of the language itself. And that it might be detrimental to Bahasa Malaysia.

Don’t get me wrong, I do really like Bahasa Malaysia, as I’ve said before. But I think it has to go in tandem with such a widely-used language as English.

But I think Azmi summarised it all best when he said:

While they inflict themselves with cultural schizophrenia, the militants will tolerate English, just as long there is a Malay rendering. At the rate English is crudely bud-grafted into Bahasa Melayu, Malaysians will one day be enlightened that they don’t need to learn English to write and speak it. All they need is to be able to understand Bahasa Melayu in all its anglicised disfigurement.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so concerned then.

1.09am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

Tags: a samad said, azmi anshar, Bahasa Malaysia, dewan bahasa dan pustaka, education, English, Language, national laureate, new straits times