Teo Kok Seong, who teaches at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, acknowledged the right of the Chinese to learn their mother tongue but he lamented that many were doing so at the expense of their obligation to be well versed in the national language.
“Malay is our national language,” he said. “As Malaysians, there is no reason to say we are not able to converse in Malay.”
He urged these parents to recognise that even foreigners had found it easy to learn Malay.
“Malay is not a hard language to learn,” he told FMT. “Foreign students have been able to learn it fast.”
He noted that some foreign students had taken part in the “Pidato Antarabangsa Bahasa Melayu Piala Perdana Menteri”, an annual public speaking competition.
He also said some Bahasa Melayu teachers in Chinese schools who were more proficient in Mandarin than in Malay might not be doing their job competently because they lacked knowledge of the cultural context of the language.
Teo, who heads the history, heritage and socio-culture cluster of the National Professors Council, was responding to a statement made on Tuesday by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
Chinese-language media quoted Zahid as saying it was “embarrassing” that some Malaysians could not speak Malay proficiently even 60 years after the country’s independence from British rule.
Zahid disclosed that he interviewed a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh two weeks ago and found that he spoke fluent Malay. The refugee apparently worked in Malaysia for four years before going back to Myanmar.
Uthaya Sankar SB of the Kayvan Writers activist group also spoke to FMT on the issue. He blamed the weakness of the current Bahasa Melayu school syllabus for the lack of Malay proficiency among young Malaysians.
He alleged that the syllabus made no provision for encouraging appreciation of the beauty of the Malay language.
“The education system still wants to see how many As a student gets,” he said. “They just need to memorise to pass exams.”
He said Kayvan Writers was willing to conduct language and literature appreciation programmes in schools, colleges and villages for non-Malays.
The group has been promoting language, literature and arts appreciation through cultural events for nearly 10 years.