Bandar Seri Begawan - Malay linguists and experts from Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia gathered in Pekanbaru, Riau last week to promote the vision for Malay language to be adopted as the sixth language of the United Nations within the next 10 years.
Attending the cultural convention was Dr Mataim Bakar, the Director of Language and Literature Bureau (DBP Brunei), Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, who was one the panellists of a forum entitled Academic Manuscript alongside Bambang WasitaAde (Indonesia Language Centre) and Dr Zainal Abidin Borhan (DBP Malaysia).
In a press conference announcing the outcome of the event yesterday at his office, Dr Mataim said the convention agreed for joint cooperation to promote Malay language so that it could become one of the major languages in the world recognised by UN.
"We agreed for Riau to be the secretariat to realise the vision where intellectual activities of culture, language, literature and knowledge will be coordinated.
"The secretariat will develop a network amongst the relevant language authorities in the three countries namely DBP Brunei, DBP Malaysia and Indonesian Language Centre, as well as well as universities offering research on Malay language.
"Each country will form its own working group with various language associations and councils in their countries such as DBP Brunei and Asterawani, DBP Malaysia and Gapena, Asas 50 in Singapore, and Yakis in Thailand," he said.
He said the Riau declaration was made as the Malay language is now the fourth most commonly used language in the world, after Chinese, English and Spanish.
"The most common language is Chinese spoken by 1.19 billion people, English with 456 million people, Spanish spoken by 362 million people and Malay with 300 million speakers.
"However, Malay language is not one of the five languages being used at the UN," he said adding that the five languages of the UN are Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic and French.
He said Malay Studies, as a field of academic studies, was currently conducted in eight institutions in Europe, two in North America and several in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Uzbekistan. Research on the language was done by various ‘communities, including in Britain, France, Germany, Holland and India.
�Malay language has the capacity for being accepted as one of the official languages at United Nations (UN) conferences.
"We must have confidence and not just wishful thinking to make the language one of the world‘s biggest languages.
"The Riau Declaration hopes that there will be a high political support among the leadership in the region to help achieve this target within 10 years from now," he said.
He said Arabic (one of the UN official languages) is used by 70 million people so Malay language users had the right to ask that the language be included as a UN official language as it is currently being spoken by 300 million people.
Source: www.brudirect.com (14 Desember 2007)
