06/10/09 THE MALAY LANGUAGE....

The Malays might not realize that they are numbered five in term of numbers in the world population statistic. The Malays occupies the South East Asian region, and geo-politically being classified into various ethnic groups: Javanese, Sunda, Banjar, Malays, Minang, Pattani, Cham, Bugis, Dayak, Kadazan, Batak, Semang, Senoi, Penan, and all sort. Despite differences in religious believe: Islam, Christian, Buddish, and Hindus, the Malays are in fact united in some tradition and genetic traits that are unique to this race. If politically they are united, they probably would form the fifth world political and economical supper power! Unfortunately, the Indian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, German, English, French, Chinese, Viet, Siam, American, and the Japanese (Australia lately) had never left them at peace!

(2) My concern all this while has been the ‘unintentional’ down grading of the Malay language particularly in Malaysia. The process, though seem unintentional, and since it has been ‘ignored and accepted’, thus it is now a norm for anybody official and unofficial to resort to ‘malanized English’ as the source and root of the Malaysian National Language: Bahasa Malaysia (BM) development. Everybody seem to be comfortable with this to the extend that the Malay language which suppose to be the root of the BM had been eroded to such level that the BM is no more of Malay sounding but more of English-Malay dominated.

(3) See how the Betawi dialect had perished among even the Betawi (olden days Jakarta original population) themselves and probably had been buried six feet under the ground with the death of Benjamin S. If we, the Malays continue to take the infiltration of English-Malay into our language lightly, one day, not too far into the future probably, we would be just of the same fate! Or we might be joining the PNGs to develop Pigin English, which is neither here nor there!

(4) I was happy in fact, when Muhhydin Yasin announced that Math and Science should be taught in BM. Before his announcement, A Samad Said (whom I called Ho Chii Minh) and Hassan Nordin (fomer DBP DG) did used PAS platform to view their unhappiness over the erosion of the Malay language in the National Education System (only then UMNO begin to listen to them!). Lately, Rais Yatim, whose root is a Minangkabau person, spoke a lot about making the Malay Culture, Tradition and Language as the fundamental element in the National Unity development, I would believe the present Najib’s Cabinet line up is just perfect in the Malaysian search for Nation-self Identity, especially with the presence of Muhhydin-Rais partnership.

(5) It is shameful that the University of Nanyang in China do honor the status of the Malay language as an international language, and yet we the Malays in particular, and Malaysian as a whole don’t master our own mother tongue (Malay). I just want to say that without the Malay, there will be no Malaysia! Without the Malay, that left is SIA which is USELESS! Thus, the Malay must fight hard to make sure the Malay Language continue to exist as the Malay: pure and respectful.

(6) The Chinese, the Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, all the others who came to this land later then the Malays, they must and must be made to respect the Malay language. It is just a fact of life, the guest must respect the host, the guest can't just shit around at the host home! Greater respect must be honor ontothe host, when the host is willing to accept and made the guest as a family member. As family member, the rule of the home must be honored! That is a simple neighborhood principle. Nothing hard to understand about that!

(7) The so called inferior Malay language as compared to the English is not really true. The truth is the Malay themselves do not master the Malay language. Equally important, among the Malays, they don’t have a true Malay spirit, whereby, due to the prolong divide and rule syndrome, the Kelantanese Malay would not feel comfortable to accept the Gobelt (and or Sambas) Malay word being introduced into the BM. Same goes with the initiatives to use Iban, Kadazan, Bugis, Javanese, Cham, Pattani, Tagoloq terms to enrich the BM. We preferred to use eg. motivasi rather meransang, menggalak, mangaruh, menyokong, membangkit, etc as the word to be used to reflect the meaning of eg. motivation. We preferred Malanised-English rather really searching for the actual Malay term for it! As I said all these because either we are not the master to our own language, or due to we are so stingy to accept other Malay dialect (eg. How broadly do we use the word cedong (Kelantanese), randau (Iban)), and or we are too lazy to research and think. The most, I would believe, because we are too lazy to research and think. We just love to take the short circuit though one day all these make us to loose our identity!

(8) We must remember, in the era of Mukmin, the Khalifah who governed the Old Islamic State of Iraq, at the Islamic Golden Era, he ordered his people to translate all those books and document of knowledge form all corner of his Empire into Arabic to enable for his people to learn and developed from thereon. Thus, Baghdad site the world largest ancient civilization documentation, of which all world power thereon (including the late American evasion) want to have their hands on those documents. It must be remembered, all those documents were in Arabic, not kept as Roman, Persian, Hebrew, etc, all in Arabic. What it means here is, the understanding of foreign language is just a mean to acquire the knowledge, but placing all those knowledge into our own mother tongue would make the knowledge better known and adapted by our nation!

(9) I hope Rais really work hard to memartabatkan BM (M for Melayu and Malaysia). It must be realised, that the Malays begin to hate UMNO because, UMNO has made too much trade-off, in such the Malays (in all sense) begin to be sideline badly.

Kuching, Sarawak
19 Oct., 2009