Like most things in Malaysia, politics play a significant part in the making and implementation of policies.
As such, policy implementation is not consistent but changes according to the prevailing political climate. This is the case regarding the perennial issue of Bahasa Melayu and the English language, which usually crops up when Malay politicians need issues to champion their sectarian agenda to influence Malay voters during an election campaign, or for personal grandstanding.
These politicians want to impress that they are the custodians of Malay culture, language, and religion, as markers of Malay identity.
Since independence, both Bahasa Melayu and English have been widely used. English was the language of commerce, education, and administration, while Bahasa Melayu was the lingua franca for trading and as a medium of instruction in Malay and Arabic schools.
We spoke the Queen’s English then and our formal Bahasa Melayu was embellished with pantun, peribahasa and kiasan.
Now it has deteriorated into a crude language, foul, even, if you like, when you consider the Bahasa Melayu used by our MPs.
The old rhythmic inflections and wordplay are gone. The Malay language has been pared down to its bare construction structure, unlike those of Bangsawan, Makyong and Sandiwara. The linguistic finesse is no more.
The move to make Bahasa Melayu as the main medium of instruction in primary, secondary, and tertiary educational institutions began in the late 60s and gained momentum from the 70s onwards.
There was a flurry of efforts to translate major textbooks from English into Bahasa Melayu. Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka could only meet the needs of school textbooks, and could not cope with the tertiary requirements of reference books and periodicals. More so, thousands of books in English were added yearly to the spectrum of knowledge.
Malay medium students who gained access to university education could only use a limited number of texts and reference books in Bahasa Melayu as they could not access the enormous corpus of knowledge in English, which constitutes almost 95 per cent of the books and periodicals in the university’s libraries.
The teaching of science and mathematics in schools using Bahasa Melayu and English as their medium of instruction has been subjected to political yo-yoing. Both the proponents and detractors have tried to justify their stand, between the need to foster and enhance the national pride and the esteem of the Malay language, and using English to expand the vistas of knowledge.
In this case, politics takes precedence over pragmatism.
The dominant language of communication depends on the cultural dominion and the context of its usage. In Malaysia, Bahasa Melayu is the national language, although English, Chinese, and Tamil are widely used in education, commerce and trading.
Nevertheless, English is still the major language in both public and private sector commerce. It is also the language of diplomacy and technology.
Each country has its own dominant language that is used in all aspects of life, work, and play. Countries like Britain and the United States use English, while others have two languages, such as in the Philippines, which uses Tagalog and English, while India has Hindi and Tamil.
You have monolingual, and bilingual, or even trilingual, nations.
Normally, the national language is used for deliberations and engagements within the country on most matters involving mainly local citizens. But when it comes to conferences or meetings with participants from various other nationalities, a common language, which may be different from the language of the host country, is often used.
In these cases, English has been the preferred language for international conferences and engagements, even for France, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Spain.
Sometimes, French, German or Spanish is added as a second, or even a third conference language to attract a larger number of participants.
In Malaysia, Bahasa Melayu and English are used for local conferences and meetings, but English is used when it involves international participants. For example, most Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) conferences and meetings are conducted in English.
In the quest for university rankings, lecturers in Malaysia are required to publish articles in indexed journals, which are mainly in English.
For those not proficient in English, they could always write in Bahasa Melayu and get someone else to translate their work into English, but some concepts and nuances may be lost in translation. There are only a few indexed Malaysian journals, which are mostly in the sciences. The top tiers of international journals are all in English and based in the US, Britain, and Europe.
Thus, the prime minister’s recent directive to his Cabinet members that Bahasa Melayu be used in international engagements and deliberations, and as the language of diplomacy, must be weighed against the pragmatism of such a call.
In fact, this is part of a perennial move to push Bahasa Melayu as a regional and international language of diplomacy, commerce, and education. These efforts periodically surface, consonant with the sentiments to emphasise Malay cultural, ethnic, and religious identity, to serve the political agenda of Malay politicians in wooing the gullible Malay polity.
But the undeniable fact is that even after over 60 years of independence, there is a huge segment of the population that is not conversant in Bahasa Melayu. This is compounded by the existence of vernacular schools, which emphasise on the mother tongue, instead of the national language.
We cannot simply alter Malaysia’s language landscape for political expediency. We need to be pragmatic, instead of chauvinistic.
Let’s not allow personal preferences to shape policies that could undermine the structure of communication and adversely affect the transfer of knowledge in the sciences, humanities, literary arts, the advancement of technology, and commerce and industry in the quest for a literate and informed populace.
This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Twentytwo13.
