Learning languages is child’s play

Land of history and languages: Cambodians are taking advantage of their country’s status as a tourist hotspot to learn various languages to communicate with visitors.

SIEM Reap in Cambodia is an amazing place. The temples, ruins, the gigantic moat and the huge Tonle Sap – the largest freshwater lake in South-East Asia – are all breathtaking.

But it’s not just the old things that are amazing; the young ones are, too.

The kids running around and pestering you to buy their trinkets may be a nuisance, but if you stop for a moment and listen, you will be awestruck.

Those kids can switch from one language to another with ease. “Where are you from?” they ask as tourists walk past.

And when the tourist names the country, they then proceed to do their sales pitch in the ­language of that country. French, Spanish, Russian, German, Italian, Thai, Malay, English – they go from one to another with consummate ease, like it’s all the same to them.

One such kid, Thuch Salik, hit world headlines back in 2018. He was just 14 and could speak 16 different languages, including Swahili! He went from poverty to fame when a Chinese tourist filmed him, and he was given a scholarship to study at the Hailiang Educational Institute in China.

The thing is, he isn’t unique. There are many like him in Siem Reap. These are children who are exposed to the many languages of the tourists who come there – and embrace those languages as their own.

Children absorb words and knowledge like sponges. Expose them to a language and they will just pick it up. No problem.

Experts say there is no limit to how many words you can add to your child’s memory bank. But those are international experts. There is a Malaysian expert who thinks otherwise.

Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) Assoc Prof Azizah Zain seriously thinks children can learn only one language at a time. She says teaching English too early could prevent children from fully developing their thinking skills in Malay.

I beg to disagree.

I grew up among children who could pick up languages easily. In fact, I was inspired to pick up Hokkien after a primary school classmate, a Malay boy called Hamid, spoke the dialect fluently in front of class.

In about six months, I could also hold a decent conversation in the dialect even if it was nowhere near as good as Hamid’s.

Azizah knows English is important, but feels children need to develop a solid foundation in Malay first before learning English. Otherwise, she says, they will lose their love for the Malay language.

I think not. We should teach our children as many languages as possible, and simultaneously. The more they learn at an early stage, the wider their scope of thinking will be. And the mother tongue – or the national language – will always be with them.

It’s a bit like mother’s cooking. You can love your nasi kandar at any shop but nothing beats mum’s cooking.

A child’s ability to speak – and think – in Malay does not change just because he has mastered English.

In fact, holding back the teaching of English until later could mean they will struggle with the language then. That would be bad for the country, considering that a large number are already hopeless in the language.

I cannot count the number of times I have seen young people struggling to articulate themselves in English.

Azizah has also urged parents to instil love of the language in children at home by exposing them to traditional literature like pantun, syair and folktales.

Now, that is something I agree with. Anyone who grew up with English nursery rhymes, Aesop’s fables and the Five Find-outers and Dog know these are the things that make you embrace a ­language.

The actual problem, I would say, lies in our educators – why can’t we make the learning of the ­language an enjoyable ­experience?

Then, there’s the language used on social media. I always thought I knew my Bahasa – I was pretty good in my schooldays – but the social media language could well be Sumerian for all that I can understand. That is the Malay ­language we should be ­complaining about.

The people of Sarawak, at least, seem to have their heads screwed on right.

The state Education, Innovation and Talent Development Minister, Datuk Dr Annuar Rapaee, who incidentally is also a Malay, says Malaysia should learn from its neighbours down south and encourage the mastery of both the mother tongue and English.

“Do not blame English for ­causing the erosion in the nation’s cultural identity. The main root is the upbringing and the massive unchecked influences from outside,” he says.

I have to agree with him. Since when has culture been threatened by a language? Look around. English is a global language, ­spoken in almost every corner of the earth. Have those countries lost their culture?

Courtesy, kindness, sharing – all attributes credited to the Malay culture and found in all cultures in Malaysia – remain the same whatever the language you use.

If anything, it is politicians who work to destroy this culture of sharing, forgiving and accepting one another.

Just days ago, a friend sent me a video of a school quiz. It was from the school’s “Minggu Bahasa”.

The questioner asks: Ahmad went to the market to buy some fish. What did Ahmad buy?”

The young female student ­confidently presses the bell and goes: “Car.”

I think instead of holding back on English as Azizah suggests, we should work harder on teaching our children the language that can make them competitive globally, especially in the era of AI.

We don’t have to fear for our culture. Those kids in Siem Reap, including Thuch Salik who spent three years in China, are no less Cambodian even with their ­mastery of so many languages.