Kempen Menulis Bahasa Malaysia (Campaign to write in Malay)
I’ve argued against this, on the premise that the language itself represents the thought it embodies, but nevertheless zhiwei‘s writings are always a good read. Enjoy!
Why Should We Write in Malay? – Fill Malay Language Corpus with Our Ideas
During a research on Malaysian languages, language data are all collected to be saved in a language bank. These huge language data banks keep copies of articles, sentences and even phrases written by Malaysians on websites, internet forums, blogs, chat rooms, emails and SMSes in hard drives. The data bank is called language corpus. The linguists keep these data banks (or corpus) to analyze the language used by Malaysians.
When a linguist was extracting data from both Malay language corpus and English language corpus to do Critical Discourse Analysis (analysis of ideology conveyed by writers) on political discourses, the linguist found that he is more likely to encounter conservative discourses and ultra nationalism in the Malay corpus. The ideas of Malay, Islam or even Sultans under siege are widely found in Malay language corpus. (Thanks to Utusan and Berita Harian for being prolific in filling Malay language corpus with ultra-nationalist discourses everyday!) On the other hand, discourses championing human rights, mutual respects, multiculturalism, anti-racism are very likely to be found in English language corpus.
This is a daunting situation. Why? Vast majority of Malaysians are acquiring information through languages other than English, and most likely the Malay language.
Let’s see things in the view point of probability. A Malay kampong boy just has his streamyx installed at home. Then he starts to surf. He is an ordinary kampong boy who isn’t good in English. He reads mostly in Malay. He surfs Malay websites and Malay language blogs and Malay language forums. He will be encountering the same situation similar to the linguist who did Critical Discourse Analysis on Malay language corpus. His eyes and mind will most likely be served with racist, ultra nationalist and conservative ideas.
You know what I mean? Yes. We are linguistically wrong. We are not tactical enough in using the correct language to propagate the right thing. We write, we blog, we spread our ideas. But it seems like we’re still losing out to racism, ultra nationalism and conservatism. We have been using the ineffective language – English, to spread our ideas.
Internet does not help much in spreading ideas if it is not done in a proactive way. Less than 1% of Malaysians speak English as mother tongue, while the other 99% are using Malay, Chinese, Tamil etc in everyday life. We have to bear in mind that, although many Malaysians are at least bilingual but not everyone prefers to use English. English is an ‘elite language’. Only some people in the cities are comfortable using it.
Ordinary people need to overcome digital divide as well as linguistic barriers to be with us. This may have explained why higher internet penetration has not created enough impact in pushing our country further. Ordinary people need to overcome 2 great barriers – digital barrier and language barrier.
We are in a competition to attract listeners and audience. Please do not keep discussions to ourselves. If we are serious in promoting our thoughts to the majority, write blogs, arguments and articles in the majority’s language(s) – Malay (Chinese, Tamil).
None of us is Malay illiterate. What we need to do is to step out from language comfort zone. By writing, blogging and discussing in Malay language, we will be clearing up at least one barrier for the commoners to be part of us. We leave the duty of minimizing digital divide to Streamyx, Maxis and Celcom.
There are many online language tools to help you out. Use them if you have language difficulties. Write in Malay (Chinese, Tamil) today!
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
Regards,
zhiwei
Agree?
Footnote: Please set aside the racism argument when reading this, the same arguments above would apply to dialects within each race.
P/S: This blog is in English (and will continue to be predominantly in English) due to its readership (as told to me by Google Analytics) being primarily Singapore and to a great extend US and UK. Tapi, jika nak I cakap Bahasa Malaysia yang broken-broken pun boleh… just unpalatable right? 🙂
