Doing the best I can

How a baby boomer is finally coming to grips with something that has long eluded her.

CONFESSION: I don’t speak good Malay, aka Bahasa Malaysia (BM). I think that is typical for most of my generation. We baby boomers studied in English language medium primary and secondary schools. I went on to earn my Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in English degree from Universiti Malaya.

I also grew up in an English-speaking household. We spoke Cantonese as well because that was our illiterate mother’s dialect. Dad’s Fuzhou was too difficult for us to master. Interestingly enough, Dad courted Mum in Hokkien and Malay.

My job as a journalist at The Star newspaper put me in an English-centric environment, but it also forced me to improve my Malay because I had to cover government and Umno general assembly meetings as well as Parliament sittings.

I became quite proficient in translating speeches in BM to English. That included speeches by the then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. I was so good at it that his press secretary once called me to congratulate me for capturing all the nuances and meanings of a particular speech very accurately.

But I never gained true fluency nor am I familiar with the intricacies and nuances of the language because I have functioned in English all my life. It’s my default medium: I think and dream in it.

So if I am stoutly advocating for its wide usage in the face of rising nationalism, I won’t apologise for it.

This is because I have benefited enormously from being highly proficient in this language. I am able to read everything written in English in books, journals, magazines, academic papers, and even ingredients on a cereal box that enriched my understanding and knowledge of the world.

English was important in my growing years in the 1960s and 1970s, and still is in the 2020s. This is in spite of the weakening dominance of the English-speaking Western nations and the impressive meteoric rise of China.

Even so, English is still a much sought-after language, even in China, because it is truly the language for knowledge and communication. Despite their own long established tertiary institutions, the aspiration of many Chinese scholars and researchers is to train at the likes of Harvard and Oxford.

Every country that wants to attract tourists knows how useful it is to have information in English at the airports, trains, buses, signboards, etc., for the convenience of tourists.

South Korea has introduced digital tools in English, like the Seoul Metro and Naver Map apps, that would make it easier for visitors to move around.

YouTube videos by travel vloggers, regardless of where they come from, all cite their delight and appreciation that English is widely spoken and used in Malaysia, especially in the cities, whether it is on billboards, directional signs, buildings or menus on Ramly burger stalls.

So there is no need to try to downgrade English in favour of BM. In today’s super-competitive world, we should use every means that can give us an advantage in attracting tourists and investors. It’s no secret that our command of the language has dropped in the last 30, 40 years, so it is a surprise that we ranked third in Asia in the international 2023 Education First (EF) English Proficiency Index (EPI), after Singapore and the Philippines.

The results have been met with scepticism by local experts, and I concur as they also found that Malaysians aged 26 to 30 showed the highest level of English mastery when we know older Malaysians (like my generation) are definitely more proficient!

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim seems to agree since he recently announced that starting next year, steps would be taken to improve students’ mastery of English.

That is well and good, but we have yet to hear more on how the improvements will be made and how sustained these efforts would be. Education Minister, can you let us know ASAP since 2024 is just 18 days away?

I ask because a very simple way to promote English in schools in the past was to have an English only day in which assemblies and announcements would be conducted in English. That petered out after a while.

I wish Putrajaya would stop flip-flopping and be as steadfast and consistent as Sarawak is about the practical and beneficial usage of English. This is a colonial legacy that is actually worth keeping, and we shouldn’t abandon or denigrate it in the name of national pride.

Still, I do not dispute the fact that as Malaysians we should use BM more in our communications, and an old aunty like me is doing so, even before Anwar’s pronouncement.

I got a parking summons from the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) in September. It was the second one in four years and the compound was RM100. Yikes!

I quickly went online because I remember the fine could be automatically discounted if I paid promptly. But this time the amount remained at RM100 on the website.

I called up the local council to appeal and was told to write in because I had parked in a food truck lot, which was a “bigger” offence. Learned something new there.

In the past, when I had to write to government departments like the Inland Revenue Board, I would do so automatically in English as I felt I would be able to state my case more clearly and eloquently.

I don’t know what made me decide to write in Malay to MBPJ but I did. I apologised, promised not to repeat the offence and pleaded for a lower fine because I was a retiree and a senior citizen.

The council’s compound management unit responded promptly and asked for proof of my age, so I emailed back a photo of my MyKad.

Two weeks later, I checked online and my fine had been reduced to RM20. I am sure my email had grammatical mistakes and was clumsily worded. But the council people presumably didn’t hold that against me, understood my grounds for appeal and gave me consideration as a warga emas.

Of late, I have become more comfortable with Malay, so much so, I now speak it almost instinctively in my everyday dealings with people like shop assistants, even if they are Chinese.

Most young Malaysian Chinese will automatically speak to me in Mandarin, in which I am barely fluent. So if they can’t speak Cantonese or English, I ask them to speak to me in Malay. How about that?

If pro-BM proponents want to see how truly accepted and understood the language is by Malaysians, regardless of race, they should witness what I did two weekends ago.

My moment of epiphany was at the performance by stand-up comedian Achmed Rusli whose stage name, Mad Sabah, reflects his origins. He was an opening act for Douglas Lim’s “Back to Work” show held at the affluent Taman Tun Dr Ismail township.

We, the largely non-Malay audience, expected to watch a show in English. But Mad Sabah decided to perform almost completely in BM and he was utterly brilliant. He might have been from Sabah, but we Semananjung folk had no problem understanding his jokes comparing the difficulties that people in extremely remote areas experience to spoilt urbanites like us.

And he told them in an endearing offhand, droll manner that had the audience howling with laughter.

My BM is still not great, but it has improved to a level where I could grasp most of Mad Sabah’s jokes, which is a far cry from when I watched Cuci, the Musical in 2009 and couldn’t understand why the Malay audience were practically rolling on the floor laughing.

I think my better BM is thanks to the pandemic when I was cooped up at home and spending more time conversing with my Indonesian maid.

We still chat quite a bit and when she can’t understand some words, I tell her to learn them as I am speaking Bahasa Malaysia, my national language!

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.