I took the liberty of going into You Tube to check recorded speeches of Anwar, past and present, on matters related to Bahasa Melayu and English and found a couple of videos which could be of interest to the public.
Well Anwar stands for the Bahasa Melayu as prime language that's for sure. But it's been spinned out of proportion by The Star headlines. The headline above gives the impression that Anwar is outrightly against the use of English. However in that particluar interview, Anwar gave a more elaborative and balanced explanation of what he meant. Check out the below video and see what I mean.
PPSMI issue suggests that Malaysia is a closed minded society. Forget about defending own race blah blah blah...why not just think of making oneself multi-lingual hence a more valuable human capital?
ReplyDeleteThe simple thing is, why can't we master more than 1 language? Can't we muti-task? I personally can speak and write in 3 languages - for livelihood reasons.
The reason why most Malaysians cannot master more than 2 is because of,a part from ourselves, the infrastructure and delivery systems; facilities are not good enough. The pampered mentality promoted by BN also make people indolent and lazy.
When there is a need, there is a will. I have heard a story about a mainland Chinese student who came to Malaysia, with very little English, strive and pass his ACCA examination in record time
In Malaysia, we have books and newspapaer in 3 languages. If the parents and students are serious about their own learning, our language skills would not have deteriorated to such an extend.
The powers to be also did not plan and excute a proper education system with proper infrastructure to enable tax payers to get proper teaching and good education services.
All in all, Malaysians are too complacent hence do not think and work hard enough hence we have people who are essentially mono-linguist and unable to master a second one.