Hijacking Bahasa Melayu
By MOHD HAFIZ NOOR SHAMS
Have you read a classic joke about the official language of the European Union?
If you haven’t, you must read it. Because Bahasa Melayu might face a similar fate.
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phase-in plan that would be known as “Euro-English.”
In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c.” Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of the “k.” This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like “fotograf” 20 percent shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent “e”s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v.” During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!
Are you laughing already?
If you are, then you are laughing at the Malaysian national language too. The future of Bahasa Melayu is similar to the hypothetical Euro-English.
I must admit, I haven’t been writing and reading in Malay for quite some time now. For the last four years, despite being Malay, I have blogged in English, done reports in English, read news pieces in English and probably even dreamt in English too. I was in an American school and I had little use for proper written Malay. As of right now, I struggle to write in Malay.
Subsequently, I told myself if I couldn’t write proper Malay, I would be a laughing stock. Not wanting to be known as, if I may, a “Malay Banana,� I set myself upon a mission. My mid-year resolution was to read Malay articles.
Upon rediscovering the Malay world, certain imported words came up. First, it was “previu.” After that, “bajet” came up out of nowhere. Later, the word “polemik” came to surface. As if those words aren’t enough, like rabbits, a whole gamut of them started to jump out from their burrows. One naughty rabbit is called “akauntabiliti.” Another impeccable furball is known as “integriti.” That black rabbit is named “transparensi.” And don’t forget, our little cuties - “profil,” “kontroversi,” “emosi,” “posisi,” “cif,” “propisi,” “kondisi” and “ambisi.” And who knows what else in the store.
An explosion of rabbit population is usually a bad thing. I asked myself, are these legit words? Are these words actually Malay?
The answer seems to be yes, and to me, this is more disturbing than seeing Malaysians freely hugging each other in public.
I do understand that this new stream of imported words is an effort to enrich the language vocabulary. I understand the need for such importation. After all, crude Malay translation for the noun joystick – amusingly, “batang ria” - would not be one of the most well-refined word in the language history. Yet, massive importation is slowing transforming our national language into a kind of pseudo-English.
This evolution is detrimental to our language. It is a path that we as Malaysians - or it could just be me – will regret when it is all too late to turn back.
Hence, I’m appealing to all that are reading this – please, please do not use “bajet” in place of “belanjawan.” Do not reject “cita-cita” in favor of “ambisi.” The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. And please, there is nothing Malay about infotainment as much as there is nothing English about Euro-English.
And if you haven’t realised already, open up your eyes fellow countrymen. Somebody is hijacking our national language. Wake up Malaysians. Rise up!
“Sedarlah kawan-kawan. Sedarlah! Dikala kita menjerit Merdaka jam 12 malam pada 31 Ogos, suatu hari nanti, kita akan bersorak independen! Independen! Independen! Atau mungkin sekali, fridom! Fridom! Fridom! Kemudian, kita mungkin sekali akan menikmati kentang fridom.”
Or, we could just switch to English right now and not bother ourselves with the Malay language any longer.
After all, Hishamuddin Hussein recently said that English is Malaysian, a few days after waving the kris in the name of Malay supremacy.
How Malaysian?
You decide.
—
MOHD HAFIZ NOOR SHAMS is a contributing writer for theCICAK.
He recently graduated with an economics degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Hafiz is one of the founding fathers of ReCom.org, an online network for Malaysian students. Visit his site.
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Comment of the week
I defend my right as a Malaysian to talk about anything that concerns Malaysia.
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Oh I do agree with you.
I was laughing to myself this week after reading a posting by a Malay writer expounding on how it is disloyal of Malaysians to write in any language but Malay (’cos English was imposed by those nasty colonisers) when his writing was peppered with horrible Englishisms.
Malay is a beautiful language. Stop the borrowings becasue you’re not only corrupting
your language, you’re making a mockery of mine! Well done for highlighting this point.
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I guess the issue would be the attempt to update the Malay language to equip with vocabulary sufficient to express concepts and ideas that may, just may, be alien to it. The unfortunate result is the dilution of Malay as a language distinct from others, I suppose.
And no, I don’t mean to insult the Malay language, it’s just that Malay scholars may be actively and consciously doing the very thing English has been doing over the ages, viz. borrowing from other gallic languages, including the anglo-saxon normative.
I don’t mean to be rude, but I believe that’s why English has sometimes been called a ‘b@stardized language’, it was born of many other languages.
All this is pretty ironic too, since the Malay nationalists who had championed the Malay language since independence may be undermining their own project by allowing this dilution.
I’m sure there are arguments against this dilution, but I for one support it (with the resultant loss of culture? perhaps that’s the price to pay?).
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Last I heard, I think it was back to being called Bahasa Malaysia again, not Bahasa Melayu…
MAJULAH BELOG UNTUK BELOG-SFERA! *sic*
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Pasai tu orang kata bahasa tu hidup!! nasib baik tak jadi macam bahasa Latin yang dah mampuih berpuluh2 tahun dulu,pasai bahasa Latin tak mau terima kata2 & istillah bahasa lain.
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i remember reading something like this simplification of english in a george orwell essay.
As for the bastardising of Bahasa Melaysia (which itself is a bastardisation of Bahasa Melayu with Bahasa Indonesia), it is something the French have been fighting for much longer and they are losing the fight. If it can happen to the French language which is much older, richer in vocabulary and expression; and a vast literature, I am afraid the fate of Bahasa Malaysia is sealed.
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I just got stunned by this fact… I’ll TRY to stop myself from using some words like that in my upcoming essay exam paper in BM…..
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some friends and i have been having a good time typing mass mails in “uber-Malay” and we set up a Jabatan Bahasa Kondem to make popular the sub species of the Malay language which will include words like “mengdestroi” (to destroy), “hukum-hukum punjabi” (bylaws) etc.
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I always make similar comments about the Malay language without ever having more examples to give than “informasi” and “universiti”, so thank you for the ammunition
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“This evolution is detrimental to our language.”
If it is for the good of mankind, then why not sacrifice our own language and become a truely “global” world?
People need to move on and embrace changes that will ensure long term survival.
Bussiness is war. If you cannot fight your enemy with your outdated weapons, at least use their sheild to protect yourself.
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Very true. Personally, I feel it’s rather redundant if everything we are going to write in Malay has to be some word imported from the English language.
Worst still, since I’m studying in Form 4, I know from my classmates that such imported words are considered to be those that impress examiners. And there are actually teachers who agree with this opinion! As a result, they get used really widely - if this continues among the learners of the Malay language today, whatever will happen to it tomorrow? I admit, I’m not quite fond of the language, but still, it’s like killing an entire culture to me, considering the exaggerated usage of imported words.
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I recall this strange habit of throwing in Englicised words into SPM karangans to bring the standard of the discussion up a notch. After all if the politicians were using it, should we not follow suite?
And then I was packed off to Singapore where Malay is spoken… well, very little… and was told with great horror that my Malay was “penuh Ke-Inggerisan” for a Malaysian. Nasty little ego prick that was!
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Borrowing words from a foreign language (or two) is normal. The Japanese language is a good example. Ditto Indonesian. Not to mention the very language we’re using.
HOWEVER, where do we draw the line? I feel that we’re unnecessarily bastardizing a language by adopting a foreign word where there exists a perfect native word to convey the exact same message. The examples given by Hafiz - bajet for belanjawan, ambisi for cita-cita - are indeed cringe-worthy and should be avoided at ALL costs.
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First of all, thank you for the euro-english joke. it really cracked me up. and the ‘independen! independen! independen! ‘ too.
And yes, it is rather disturbing to see imported malay words, especially the fact that some teachers actually think it made a karangan sound better. To tell the truth, i always thought the Malay culture and language is a simple and (as a singaporean malay once said) poetic one. Maybe those who use imported words thought it’ll make the Malay language ‘richer’ but instead, it made others think those who speak the language are ashamed of it.
What I want to say here is, leave the language alone. As you said, there is nothing English about Euro-English.
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how true how true. nevertheless, BM’s vocabulary is not as vast as some other language’s because, Bahasa Melayu has only been around for about 500 years or so while English, Latin or Greek have been around since God-knows-and-only-God-cares how long ago. But in actual fact, these are the kind of words that would make the examiners give you extra marks in essays and it also gives you the impression of being intellectual. what can we do? create more words only to confuse us even more? i think we borrow words from English because of the limitations of BM. i make it a point not to self-translate words unless i really need to. i think it’s time us younger generations be proud of our ‘Bahasa Bangsa’.
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I am in a similar predicament as Hahiz, except that I am Chinese, and during the period of my education in S’pore I have used less and less bahasa Malaysia over the years. It will be good if we can all be competently bilingual (or trilingual) to retain both our local sense of identity (Malaysian) and have a global competitive edge. Tetapi, perkara ini susah dicapai kerana bukan semua orang boleh menggunakan kedua-dua bahasa dengan baik dan kebanyakan orang akan lebih menggunakan salah satu bahasa daripada dua-dua bahasa ini. Situasi ini juga disusahkan lagi dengan kekurangan ‘Melayu/Malaysian cultural products’ (maafkan saya)yang menarik and penting di pentas dunia ini (lagi, dari segi statistik, ada lebih ramai orang yang menggunakan bahasa cina, perancis, rusia dan arab dari orang yang menggunakan bahasa Malaysia).
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How can you bastardize an already bastardized language, like Bahasa Malaysia? It has roots from /many/ languages. (c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_language)
Feel like being patriotic? Switch to English now. Or forever be left behind. Or play catchup (c.f. Japan in the early-90’s; and mind you they’re a superpower playing catchup)
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Bahasa, pustaka,Bangsa, bumiputra, negara, perdana, mentri, waja,satria,ishwara,shurga, meraka, agam,sastera, wisma, bhakti, malaya, raja, and much more are guess what ? Sanskrit!
To the extent higher order spiritual, civilisational and philosophical concepts are invoked Sanskrit is dominant without ‘religosity’ and latter day Islamic ‘intrusion’.
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Whoops meant neraka and agama in above posting. Excuse typos.
Point? Langiage lives and evolves ust like culture.
Etymologies will get you nowhere if you look for ‘purity’.
Languge commnalties should be seen in a more positive light - one of unification and integration of a dynamic youthful Malaysian culture that has proud roots in Asia’s ancient classical history, and still able to assimilate in a modern, global, cosmopolitan and tecnological world.
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Attila, I think you misunderstood the message.
New imported words are necessary when there is no common local substitute to describe an idea. Like “fotosintesis” for instance. Or “televisyen” or “radio”.
But when there are clear and common words like perasaan or kedudukan, why do we need to use emosi or posisi instead?
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Point taken Hafiz, the beauty and perennial elegance of a language should endure with its long
standing origins, be it Malay, Sanksrit or Arabic as they have shaped the unique cultural heritage of Malays. When words are already present we shoudn’t trivialise by superficially tweaking new words. I agree it would render an impression of an artificial and superficial language schema.
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Interesting post. Hate to say it, my friends and I had already begun to make fun of this.. erm, well ‘Assissimilation’.. From a student’s point of view ( i am only form 4 ), i see a line dividing the English Essay and the BM karangan. In English, it is entirely on impression and language mastery, whereas BM karangans we need isi penting in abundance, and go flowery flowery only we can score. Sounds stupid?
Well, here’s the way we make fun with the languages.
In English, we call it ‘insulation’,'population’,'and all the -tion -tion words.
In BM, they translate it into ‘insulasi’,'populasi’ and all the -si -si.
So, we came up with our new word. Translate according to the above method, the word ‘masturbation’
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Attila, in post 20, its not “malays” per se. We’re talking of the bastardisation of Bahasa Malaysia. Culture of the Malays, we’ve got to look far and beyond just Malaysia (/me thinks down the coast, looking at huge Indonesia itself engulfs what little malaysia has)
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what makes a language? after we answer that- why dont we ask ourselves what preserves a language in any one period of time that we live in? evolution baby. A language like anythin else, need to evolve to survive. This has happened long before english came on our shores and will continue to do so long after english (if ever) cease being the dominant global language.
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dude, come to think of it, doesn’t language change from time to time? as sowat said earlier, a language has to evolve in order to survive!
what do you then define as the authentic Malay language? didn’t it borrowed words from Hindi, Arabic and Chinese in the earlier days? if you regard the ‘uncontaminated’ (or unbastardized, in your terms) Malay language as being the language spoken when the ‘Malays’ had not been exposed to outer influences, then may I ask when was that ever the case? would you then suggest that we should take away all the words that the Malay language borrowed from indonesia, phillipines or thailand. well then, you might be left only with a set of primitive vocabulary that won’t be really useful in that sense.
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Angin yang sepoi-sepoi language bisa menjatuhkan seekor kera yang mengantuk, walhal angin taufan yang dahsyat hanya membuatkan sang kera berpaut rapat……hanya jauhari yang kenal maknikan. Tau kah apa itu jauhari? Dari mana asal perkataan itu? Kalau kabur dan tak jelas, itu tandanya “psyche” Melayu sudah hilang lesap dari diri anda - walaupun anda dilahirkan Melayu - sebaliknya, anda tau ya orang seperti Mubin Shepard (orang putih) boleh tebal kemelayuannya kerana apa? Kerana kecintaan dan amalan hidupnya perihal kemelayuan…..
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I remember being told once that there were only four truly original words in Malay, the rest had origins elsewhere.
How true is that?
A quick search of the web came up with: kayu, batu, babi, padi.
Does anyone know the origin of this suggestion?
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Bahasa Melayu: pertuturan yang betul, seperti kita membaca buku atau akhbar
sebaliknya:
Bahasa Malaysia: adalah bahasa rojak atau campuran disebabkan kepelbagaian etnik dan kaum dalam Malaysia. Macam kita dok cakap hari-hari la..
Cth:
Pembeli:Aiyaa.. apek ini limau apa mcm kira??”
Apek jawab:”Sekilo ampat linggit lo!!”
Pembeli: “Wa angkat 3 kilo lu kasi sepuluh ringgit saja boleh ka?”
Apek: “o.k boss..kautim!!”
Jadi..kalau pada Kementerian Pelajaran…boleh buat dua subjek utk exam Bahasa Melayu (standard) dan Bahasa Malaysia (rojak)…hehehehe!!
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I am a malay and i’m in a school where the chinese to malay ratio are 50:50.. So, whether we like it or not, we have to sit with a chinese. Since chinese more likely to speak english rather than BM, we have no choice but to converse in English. 3 Years had passed and truthfully, i turn into them..i converse more in English…
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The standing of Bahasa Melayu has always been a topic discussed upon especially by Bahasa Melayu scholars (or Bahasa Malaysia, for that matter) and it has always been the opinion of many that it’s not going anywhere and we are better off using and communicating in English. Personal experience made me ponder on this matter; Since primary 4, I had been the Bahasa Melayu “guru” among my peers. This changed immediately (from Malay Language to English “guru”) when I entered boarding school (in a place that’s relatively non-urban)- this (in a way) showed that the your level of Bahasa Melayu differ according to your environment. What’s interesting is that I met a Japanese during my exchange student program in France who has never set foot in Malaysia but still can say a few sentences in Malay. He told me he learned it from his friend who had once stayed on exchange in Malaysia and later (correctly) stated a few grammatical rules in Malay, claiming it was an easy language to master. This of course, impressed me. Sadly, i’ve often heard some of my expat lecturers mention how easy it is to live in Malaysia for english speakers (he still does not converse very well in Bahasa Melayu after almost 10 years living here) while I was FORCED to learn a foreign language to survive in the country I lived in while I was abroad. One of his most memorable jokes to me was that “If population is populasi, then nation is nasi.” Even the chinese in Indonesia speak perfect Indonesian and this fact shocked me when I witnessed it with my own eyes (or heard it) the first time, as I’ve never encountered a Malaysian Chinese who spoke good Malay without a heavy chinese accent unless he/ she is from the east coast or East Malaysia.
I used to find that the Bahasa Melayu we learn in school kept changing their rules, which then drove me to infer that the people in Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka JUST HAD TO DO SOMETHING- setting vocab rules or such and revising them every so often. This later suggests that Bahasa Melayu is a growing language and that it needs time. But at the rate we’re going, I’m not sure if our beloved Bahasa Kebangsaan can survive, even before it is “mature” enough.
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Lol.. love your article and I so totally agree with what you have to say. In fact, before my SPM my teacher was telling me on how important it is to include such words like “integrasi”, “bajet” and some other examples you have written. Simply because to show the examiners that we are up-to-date with the Malay Language.
Also, what’s really making me dislike such borrowed words is the fact that the pronounciation has to be “malay-nized” like “generasi” is pronounce with the “ge-” being like in “ger-gasi” instead of the “j” sound we use in English. “Versatil” will be pronounced as “ver-sa-til” (make it rhyme with katil)
Sounds kinda weird to me.
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Recently,my niece whom currently in primary school came to ask me something..Aunty,do you know what ‘position’ means in bahasa melayu? i said “kedudukan”.And she told me that prior that day,she was asked to translate a few english sentences to bahasa melayu.when she look-up in dictionary for the word “position” and placed it with “kedudukan” as what i just told her, however that teacher asked her to change to so called “bombastik” word like “posisi”.Just imagine my 8 years old niece has been tought how to use such word and they even call it as more “bombastik”. What can we as malaysian can do about it?..Im ashamed of what hAd happen to my niece and that was not the end of it….Everyday,she will bring at least 5-10 words for me to explain to her why her teacher use that word as a replacement to english..Malaysian Government now impose new rules to protect bahasa melayu-cannot used “bahasa rojak” in advertisement, electronics media and few more that exposed for public reading.Do you as Malaysian think this new rules can enhance our bahasa melayu since a lot of english word have been utilised and used as our bahasa melayu like posisi,akauntibiliti,variasi and a lot more….Don’t be surprise if one day we can have our “SHUER HEBOH KARNIVAL”
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thank you for ur interesting opinion it really helpful.
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Thank you for making me sputter saliva all over my computer monitor. =)
Have you heard the other transliteration joke? If:
action -> aksi
selection -> seleksi
why isn’t
section -> seksi?
My favourite awful transliteration is still “pengosmokawalaturan” (from SPM bio). Transliterations are necessary where there is no equivalent available, but I agree with you that there are MANY transliterated words that could easily (and more “sedap didengar”) be translated instead.
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[…] ds on how large the park is. And forgot the mention something for the sake of my vanity. I sent something for theCicak. The stuff is essentially a modification of my earlier post. I notice that ther […]
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[…] ate how English words are being imported with impunity into the Malay language (check also Hijacking Bahasa Melayu at theCicak). If George Orwell were a Malay, he would agree with me since he did write that […]
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On September 10th, 2005 at 3:16 am, sowat said:
what makes a language? after we answer that- why dont we ask ourselves what preserves a language in any one period of time that we live in? evolution baby. A language like anythin else, need to evolve to survive. This has happened long before english came on our shores and will continue to do so long after english (if ever) cease being the dominant global language.
Language is religion is culture and you may already know by know that the so-called “Arab” world is not really Arab, but originally Coptic-speaking and Syriac-speaking. However, Islamisation led to Arabisation, and so the Muslim majority in Egypt call themselves Arabs, but the Christian minority in Egypt are called Copts.
A true multi-racial society will be like Singapore, which has 4 official languages, Mandarin, Tamil, English and Bahasa Melayu.
Racism implies cultural assimilation and any political party that advocates one particular language is racist. We should emulate US and EU that have cultural diversity, which is a good thing.
We should promote Bahasa Rojak, which is truly Bahasa Malaysia as it is a mix of Mandarin, Tamil, English and Bahasa Melayu.
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As much as I favour the English language over Malay i do see what you mean.
I think what should be done is that when a new word is added into the Malay language it should not be imported from a different language but instead conjured up from Malay itself. Just like how it’s done in English. For example words such as ‘internet’ and ‘joystick’, are words that didn’t even exist in any language til they were created.
So perhaps in the future, they’ll be new Malay words made from Malay. Like metrosexual could be “bohlurus” - ‘bohjan’ + ‘lurus’.
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oh this was an exceptional article. saya setuju sepenuh hati.
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[…] anyway the said article: Hijacking BMÂ […]
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I m in my research about this and i came to this site. i m called to give my comment because i m so inspired after reading your articles. I was thinking a while why some people got time to think about our nation issue and not me. I think i have to start it now rather than thinking about my study, when I ll get a bf or anything. It is our resposibilty as malays to be proud with our mother tongue and cultural which i never thought of it before.Thanks btw for enlightened me =]
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mm yes. i would have laughed, but then i was reminded of George Orwell’s 1984 and his idea of “newspeak”, which is basically that: shortening words, phrases and sentences to make life easier. at the same time, it robs the language of emotion, feeling, and depth. this fate shouldn’t be one of any language!
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bahasa jiwa bangsa.
BAHASA MELAYU:
1. bahasa ilmu
2. lingua franca
3. alat perpaduan
jom sama2 mendaulatkan bahasa malaysia!!!!
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i guess only the users of the language can claim hijack, but similarly only those who use it can allow it to be hijacked. the issue of Malay language has been a target of politicking and crowd swaying, in a rather familiar, Malaysian manner. society decides the path it takes, just as it decides its civil laws. (indeed, we make our own norms). The infiltration, dissolution and evolution of language shouldn’t be as disturbing as what it is being used for, no matter if the change is tasteful to us or not.
its not wrong to attempt a hold on our own root cultures, just don’t overdo it as malaysians. what’s this about the Holy Roman Empire though? just wondering how it should fit
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