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Friday 22 April 2011

Whither English in Malaysia?

Friday April 22, 2011
Whither English in Malaysia?
Mind Our English Ramblings
By DR LIM CHIN LAM

Pondering over some pointers on the English language and speculating on the future of the language in Malaysia.

THIS rambling article is a mixed bag of recent gleanings from a conference and the local papers, which provide food for thought.

iELT-Con 2011

The Penang English Language Learning & Teaching Association (PELLTA) organised the 5th Biennial International ELT Conference in Penang on April 13 to 15. The conference had an attractive theme, “Going Global: Teaching & Learning English in the 21st Century”. I attended it ... to learn-learn lah!

The conference was truly international, drawing some 120 speakers, presenters, and participants from Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Iran, India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, China, Japan and Malaysia. There were four keynote addresses, 20 papers and 23 workshops spanning the spectrum of the teaching and learning of English, including teacher experiences.

What about local participants? About 50% of the total were from Malaysia. Apart from one keynote speaker (our Lucille Dass) and eight speakers and presenters, there were only 21 participants from Penang. On a Penang basis, the figures work out to roughly one speaker/presenter to an audience of two. Hey, where were the other English language teachers from Penang?

To me, who formerly taught science via lectures and laboratory practicals and seminars, pedagogy – particularly that for English – was a revelation of sorts. A fellow-participant said to me, “Science teachers teach content, English teachers teach content and language.”

Statistics in language use

Professor Anthony Wright, in his keynote address to the conference, presented some noteworthy data on language use, which I reproduce below.

On a worldwide basis, the languages and the number of native speakers (people speaking their own language, in millions) are as follows: Mandarin 1.52 billion, English 375 million, Hindi/Urdu 316 million, Spanish 304 million, Arabic 202 million, Portuguese 190 million. Russia, with 143 million people, is conspicuous by its omission from the list. Where does Bahasa Malaysia, our national language, stand in this list? According to Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, the national language “has proven itself as a language of knowledge since the 13th century ... It is a rich language that was a lingua franca in the region in the 15th century and is now spoken by 300 million people, making it the fifth largest language in the world today.” (Sunday Star, April 24, page F24)

While Mandarin is used by the largest number of people, English is the most widely used language in the world. The following are other data relating to the use of English in different situations: (1) 380 million speak English as a second language; (2) one billion speak English as a foreign language; (3) there are an estimated 1.7 billion users of the language: English dominates the Internet, the print media, business, aviation, conferences, other international events, etc.; (4) approximately one billion are learning English worldwide; (5) over the Internet, about 80% of home pages and 60% of e-mail are in English; (6) English is the medium of higher education in many countries, e.g. India, the Netherlands, Oman, South Africa, Sweden and Turkey; (6) 85% of the world’s knowledge is in English; and (7) 98% of scientific papers are written in English.

Spelling in English

English spelling is the learner’s bane, even in native English-speaking countries – and this point was attested to in the conference. In this connection, I reproduce below an amusing e-message – I propose the term e-message, which is a countable noun, rather than e-mail, which looks like an uncountable noun – which must have been circulating over the Internet for a considerable time but which came into my e-mail inbox only recently.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords containing “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a real sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking Dutch like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

The e-message came anonymous. I regret that due ascription cannot be given to the wise man or woman – or is it wise guy? – who supposedly reported on the proposal. Euro-English – which I suggest be shortened to Eunglish – will no doubt stand out from among the various types of creole English such as Spanglish, Chinglish, Inglish, Singlish and our own Manglish.

Why English, why not Esperanto?

Latin was once the scholarly language of Europe, followed by Arabic, to be superseded by French and then English. The latter has spread worldwide to become the dominant language of diplomacy and international communication, of commerce, and of science and technology. Why so, even when the language is replete with rules and, almost equally, with exceptions to the rules? Think spelling (why got no system one?); nouns (plural why cannot just add “s” one?); verbs (why so many different forms one? Why got no single pattern to form the forms? Verbs some more got singular plural. Verbs also got mood one, boleh naik perangai kah? Some more, verbs got voice, but cannot hear one); gender (nouns, pronouns got sex ah? English crazy about sex ah?); and so on (until blur one).

Despite all the criticisms that one can throw at the language, English remains robust. There must be many reasons for such. It is an alphabetic language, using the widely recognised Latin alphabet of the Romans rather than the other alphabets (Greek, Arabic, Cyrillic, Hindi, Thai, etc.) which are geographically confined. Foreign words per se can be easily fitted into English sentence construction or they can be easily tweaked or anglicised to fit in. English has the facile way of forming new words by combining existing words through conflation or hyphenation. Innumerable words have been formed, and will continue to be formed, by affixation – with prefixes (which are largely Latin and Greek prepositions) and with suffixes (which are largely of Latin, Greek, and native English origins). To sum up, the position of English as a world language and as an academic language may be due in part to its spread during the days of the British Empire, but more cogently due to: (1) the innate flexibility of the language; (2) the enormous corpus of knowledge residing in English; and (3) the awesome facility with which the language can come up with new words and terminology to cope with new advances of knowledge.

English in Malaysia

Certain segments of the Malaysian population seem to have a love-hate relationship with the English language. They harbour a lingering memory of English as the language of the colonial masters – but, arguably, with a grudging acceptance of English as a world language and the language of academe. How come, it is said, that they clamour for the national language to be used in school and university but send (because they can afford to do so) their children to be educated abroad where the medium of instruction is English? They objected even when only two subjects, viz. science and mathematics out of a basket of 30(?) subjects, were to be taught in English!

In 2002, the government of the day took a bold step and introduced PPSMI (the Malay abbreviation for the teaching of science and mathematics in English) in schools. Some years later, there was a re-thinking about the programme. In deference to non-government organisations (NGOs) that claimed that rural students were lagging behind urban students, the new government in 2010 scrapped the ongoing programme – even before it had completed a full cycle – so that the rural students could catch up. The decision was unfortunate, considering that the national vision is to attain developed-country status by 2020. Surely reining back the front-runners cannot be a strategy for advancement?

The SPM (Sijil Persekolahan Malaysia, a school-leaving certification) results which came out this year are revealing. Rural students actually outdid the urban students in science and mathematics. Will PAGE (Parents Action Group for Education), which has been campaigning with a steadfastness born of conviction, finally convince the government to reinstate PPSMI? After all, the campaign of PAGE represents the outcry of anguished parents of school-going children, while the objecting NGOs per se have no children to speak of. To the objectors, I maintain that PPSMI is not a circuitous way of teaching English; rather, it is merely providing students with the best tool for studying S & M.

Signing off

It is hoped that the government with bold leadership continue with PPSMI. To quote a line from Hamlet (Act III Scene i): “... ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wishe’d.”


http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2011/4/22/lifefocus/8507563&sec=lifefocus

2 comments:

Bill Chapman said...

You asked "Why English, why not Esperanto?", but leave the question unanswered. I'm a native speaker of English, but I see a place for wider use of Esperanto as an easy-to-learn lingua franca.

Brian Barker said...

I agree with the comment by Bill Chapman about Esperanto. I live in London and if anyone says to me “everyone speaks English” my answer is “Listen and look around you”. If people in London do not speak English then the whole question of a global language is completely open.

The promulgation of English as the world’s “lingua franca” is impractical and linguistically undemocratic. I say this as a native English speaker!

Impractical because communication should be for all and not only for an educational or political elite. That is how English is used internationally at the moment.

Undemocratic because minority languages are under attack worldwide due to the encroachment of majority ethnic languages. Even Mandarin Chinese is attempting to dominate as well. The long-term solution must be found and a non-national language, which places all ethnic languages on an equal footing is essential.

As a native English speaker, my vote is for Esperanto :)

Your readers may be interested in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LPVcsL2k0

Dr Kvasnak teaches English at Florida Atlantic University.

The Esperanto study course http://www.lernu.net is now receiving 120,000 hits per month. That can't be bad.