Kyels has written an interesting piece on the use of English as a medium of communication here.
I responded,
I think it may be a little more complicated than that.
Language is not just a medium of communication, it is a medium through which culture is transfered as well. Nationalists may have had specific agendas by devaluing the language of our former colonial masters.
While there are good reasons to adopt English as a First Language apart from BM, there are socio-political questions involved. Imagine if everyone spoke english, could converse in it well, and english becomes a medium of communication between all parties of all ethnic groups. What would that mean for ethnic dominance of one group over others?
(as a sidenote, consider how having schools that are ethnically segregated and taught in differing languages *aids* in keeping ethnic groups separate).
What about the loss of indigenous culture giving way to, what is often termed, “western culture”? Do words like “justice” or “jurisprudence” or “government” have the same connotations as their Bahasa Melayu counterparts? Do they express the same *meaning*? Per definition, probably yes, but the etymology of those words and their cultural weight in the milieu in which those words are formulated are completey different from the way they have arisen in the context of Bahasa Melayu equivalents.
We may use words like “freedom” everyday, in an unconscious way, but think of the emotions, meanings and ideas that single word evokes.. does it paint a picture of a sense in which the idea, “liberation-from” persists, and not just “no-obstacle-to-act”? One may remark that separating different meanings of a word shouldn’t be read-into so much, but consider *how* these different meanings arose.
Yeah, English is important, but as long as there’s a socio-political agenda involved, don’t count on it being pushed to the forefront without great reluctance.
which still doesn’t solve the problem some would have: how to institute the appreciation of a language that might potentially become the key to breaking down ethnic chauvanism? Thankfully, that’s not a problem for most of us, but it will be a problem for kris-wielding champions like Hishammudin.
What about that other interesting aspect of cultural intertransmission viz. syncretism?
