Tuesday, July 15, 2008

LANGUAGE AND NATIONAL LANGUAGE

What is language? What is national language?
My first posting which was in respond to TDM's has somehow irked Mr Onlooker. It seems that he does not understand what I was writing about. I was not questioning about the economic importance of English or Chinese language. My argument was and still is, how can you or anyone else for that matters, claim to belong to a nation if you can't even speak the national language?
How can one represent one's nationality? Is just a piece of paper sufficient? If the citizens are of numerous races, how then do all of them represent themselves as belonging to one nation?
Since the national language of Malaysia is Malay, then by right every Malaysian should be able to speak the language. The market value of the language shouldn't even be an issue.
Malay language is known as MALAY language because this language originates from the MALAY archepalago, which includes our beloved country MALAYsia. On the other hand Chinese language is known as CHINESE language because it originates from CHINA, while ENGLISH language originates from ENGLAND.
As far as Malaysia is concerned, MALAY is the language for the Malaysian. Whatever race you might be, if you are a Malaysian, then you should be able to speak Malay.
There seems to be no end to the arguments on this matter. But for now I'd rather go to sleep.
Bye for now.

No comments: