Muhyiddin: Bahasa Melayu is being marginalized

MalaysiaKini : Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today that many Malaysians appear to be ashamed of speaking Bahasa Melayu so much so that the national language seems to be marginalised in the country.

The Deputy Prime Minister said this was not the case in countries like China and Japan where people were proud of their own languages, using them at all levels.

"There's a worry that our national language may be sidelined as people prefer to use English.

"When I was in China, everybody there spoke Chinese. People in Japan also speak their own language. There will only resort to English when they want to speak to you personally.

"I think that it boils down to attitude. Perhaps using a language other than English is not that glamorous, as if Bahasa Melayu is a low-class language," he said in response to a question from Senator Datuk Dr Firdaus Abdullah on the declining usage of the national language, at the Dewan Negara sitting here today.

Muhyiddin, who is Education Minister, said people seemed to miss the fact that the Malay language continued to be among the more prominent languages in the world, and spoken by more people globally than certain other languages.

He observed that English seemed to be the preferred language at many public and private sector events, including government functions, despite the fact that the grasp of the language among Malays and non-Malays had improved.

The deputy prime minister also took a swipe at event organisers who chose English over Bahasa Melayu at functions where "only two or three Westerners" were present.

He wondered aloud whether the use of Bahasa Melayu would translate into less customers and dwindling profits for companies.

Muhyiddin said that a special committee had been set up to look at how to restore the national language to its proper place.

He pointed out that legislation to promote the use of Bahasa Melayu had been put in place, but people may accuse the government of being inconsiderate if action was taken against those who flouted such laws.

A new circular stressing on the importance of using the national language at all levels would be issued to all government departments, he said.

Muhyiddin added that awareness campaigns focusing on the need to use Bahasa Melayu would continue -BERNAMA

Labels: Malays 1 comments:

tukangkata said...

There is indeed evidence that BM is being sidelined and being at the wrong end of urbanites' attitudes. Many localized websites for Malaysians are only in English without a BM option. And I hear people scoffing BM as an unoriginal language that borrowed too heavily from other languages. If that is so, neither is English (borrowed heavily from Latin, Greek and French) nor Japanese (borrowed heavily from Chinese)!



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