By Azmi Anshar
The most telling pop culture obsession among Malaysians right now is English, the global language whom everybody perseveres to read, write and speak, but only a minority, mostly those who were raised in an English curriculum environment or those likely born before the 1970s, have a firm grasp of the language`s technical, artistic and aesthetic facility.
The rest will roil in pidgin English - Manglish, Singlish or “mongrelish” if you must - to get by in the aggressive climate of doing business, the marketing and advertising of every day goods and services. Not to be mistaken for accent, they call this patois “communications” English in all its glibness and shallowness, infested with mispronunciations, horror syntaxes, bizarre grammar, daft application blending ostentatiously in the English-speaking landscape of Malaysia.
Virtually everyone from this landscape is fixated in the desire to learn to speak and write English in the 21st century dictum, not to the glamoured excesses of Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, John Grisham and Enid Blyton, of course, but something more casual which could be decently or animatedly expressed to the visiting Briton or American without they chortling silly with patronising amusement.
But paradoxically, no one can agree to how English should be taught. The English taught in schools are shambolic while its role as the medium of instruction in universities and colleges cow under the pummelling brute force of the politically correct. All that is left is pop culture so pervasive that you`d think that English was a first language, not a language of neglect.
You suddenly realised that English has become a national obsession when Malay-based TV stations and Malay newspapers, magazines, periodicals, even websites and blogs have (mis) appropriated English words, terms, mindset and philosophy in their media communicative acumen and made it their own in the time it takes to type this sentence. It is that speedy.
This pretentious English ecosystem is so gruesome that it is the equivalent of a body snatching procedure; when aliens suck the life out of you - bones, brains, cells, blood, guts, meat - and into their being as you wither away into a lump of dishevelled, crinkly skin and hair. That`s the way the Malay language, or to be more precise, the Malay intelligentsia, are sucking English words into the Malay realm.
Yes, language should evolve over time to adapt to contemporary needs and demands, but at the rate English words are misappropriated by the Malay intelligentsia, Bahasa Melayu is not evolving, it is mutating into a Frankenstein-like beast, riddled all over with linguistic sores and lesions.
You think this is an exaggeration? No need to go far: most Malay media publications have “adapted” scores if not hundreds of English nouns and verbs. Try this for conservative size: chief is now `cif`, trophy is `trofi`, and appreciation is `apresiasi`. One time, one sports editor felt skill is best expressed as “skel” in Malay. The national TV station has no scruples pounding on us that information is `informasi` while that favourite buzzword vision is `visi`. Prestige is suddenly `prestij`, final is, well, `final, and package is `pekej`. That great guerrilla writer Salleh Ben Joned once wrote that a Malay cendiakawan (intellectual) tried to coined the word `peliriat`, a vulgar-sounding facsimile of playwright. It must been a relief that the coinage failed to get traction.
However, the tragic irony of these unpunished transgressions is that each misappropriated word has a perfectly functional and practical Malay version. These tenuously amoral literary crimes of abducting English words and co-opting it into the Malay language is enthusiastically abetted by Malay newspaper editors who crawl and dither over their command of writing and speaking English, but have no qualms dispersing glaring English-esque words and themes into their publications. At will. A new phrase or word could have been coined this very instant.
So why the lust to “anglicise” Bahasa Melayu? At its core, unrepentant pretentiousness. And at the heart of every member of the Malay intelligentsia is the pervasive desire to be an English proletarian, except for the hassle it takes to learn and study its basic technical proficiency. Why bother when pop culture is a far better short cut.
Then there`s the inane moral outrage that repels learning of English as “yellow culture” profanity - the subservience to the last bastion of Western colonialism. Ask the objectors to the teaching of Maths and Science in English.
The teaching and learning of English in Malaysia is, after all these years, at a confusing crossroad - on one hand the government wants its people to be proficient in English to meet the global demands of competition. But on the other hand, the one-dimensional objectors to this policy crow that the learning of English was pursued at the expense of Bahasa Melayu`s sanctity, a contradiction in terms when these militants are the same pretentious dolts who write Malay filled with so much English idiosyncrasies and characteristics.
At a time when everyone from China and the European eastern bloc are scrambling to learn English and hiring English teachers by the shiploads, Malaysians are indolently practising their English.
Things are slow to change though: DPM and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced in the Dewan Rakyat that the final decision to teach Mathematics and Science in English (PPSMI) is expected to be known early next month although he conceded that the policy did little to make students more proficient in English. He is also fully aware that education groups are opposed to this policy on grounds that the two subjects are better instructed in Bahasa Melayu or in the respective vernacular languages.
In that sense, these objectors may have a point. Khalid Samad (Pas-Shah Alam) claimed students were victimised by the “unprepared” implementation of the policy. “Do not use children as guinea pigs. Now after six years, they admitted that the reports on its effectiveness are not complete but they will still continue with the policy. One whole generation of students has faced the consequences. So we urge the government to do away with the policy,” he told reporters at the Parliament lobby. “We should stress on oral subject as the government`s aim is to produce students who can converse well in English. Do not simply make an `instant noodle` policy.”
As Khalid implored that the teaching of English should be taught on its own accord rather than teaching other subjects in English, Muhyiddin envisaged various probable solutions to stem the deterioration of English: setting up English labs, hiring foreign English teachers and re-introducing English literature.
Responding to Tan Seng Giaw (DAP-Kepong) during Question Time, Muhyiddin also envisaged measures like increasing English school periods, deploying qualified English teachers to rural schools and put greater emphasis on grammar to improve writing and communication skills. That old contentious militant demand - the status of Bahasa Melayu as the national and unity language - will not be affected in the new pursuit of enhancing English competency. Declared Muhyiddin: "Bahasa Melayu will continue to be upheld as the main medium of instruction in the national education system.”
But for those militants with the pretentious twist, they will somehow misappropriate Muhyiddin`s gesture into this: they want English, just as long it is a Malay rendering!
And at the rate English is budgrafted into Bahasa Melayu, in perhaps a generation or so, Malaysians don`t need to learn English to understand English, all they need to do is learn and understand Bahasa Melayu… in all its “anglicised” splendour.
Source: http://www.nst.com.my (23 June 2009)
