got this from daddy (:


The day I wished I knew Malay

Choosing to study French instead of Malay has handicapped this reporter

By Debbie Yong



THE recent push to encourage more young Singaporeans to take up Malay as a third language brings to mind a street poll I had to do for an article some time ago.

As I approached a couple, whom I had overhead chatting in English from afar, they suddenly switched their mode of conversation to Malay.

'Sorry, no English, speak Malay?' they muttered as they slowly backed away, despite my cajoling.

'Alamak, er, tak tahu,' I returned, which only made them chuckle at the cripplingly limited extent of my Malay vocabulary.

Though I was starting to think that months on the job had hardened my hide to rejection from the media-wary, this incident riled me.

It made me rue the day, 10 years ago, when the younger, more Western-oriented version of myself checked the box for French instead of Malay when given a choice to take up a third language in secondary school.

Had I been able to vocalise my thoughts in Malay to my interviewees during the poll, I might have saved myself the frustration.

Better still, I might have won over a greater measure of their trust and a sincere answer by using a language they are more familiar and comfortable with.

Language, after all, is more than a tool for communication. It is an identity marker that bands together the 'in' group from the 'out' group.

I often watch with envy as my parents and grandparents switch easily between Malay, English, Mandarin and Chinese dialects to banter with neighbours and heartland hawkers. They are, to me, truly emblematic of a racially harmonious Singapore.

Although I enjoyed my French classes which enabled me to navigate faraway continents, my grasp of the language has since weakened, mostly due to the lack of cultural context and conversation partners to keep up with here.

Malay conversation partners, on the other hand, are barely an HDB corridor oroffice cubicle away.

Still, while the clarity that age brings lets me see the wisdom in the ministry's push now, I wonder if things will change.

Learning a language requires a committed interest in its related culture, which cannot be induced by dangling a quick-fix carrot of two points off junior-college admission scores.

Even in my time, every student attending the MOE Language Centre already knew that those who chose Malay as a third language were making a wiser choice.

But we still went ahead and took our French, German and Japanese classes anyway.

After all, to be young is to be impulsive, to dream about faraway lands and to passionately pursue our interests - however impractical.

debyong@sph.com.sg