UNTAHANABLE! What's that again...

LETTER Untahanable! - that was how my son described a recalcitrant schoolmate recently. I had a good laugh at his impromptu and funny misuse of a BM word to mean "unbearable".

While one may laugh or scorn at this mutilation of our beautiful national language, we ought to lament even louder over the gross mangling of English in our BM science and maths textbooks.

HRH of Kuala Lumpur (Letter, Politics, Malaysia Chronicle 26 November 2011) argued convincingly how inadequate BM has been as a language for Science and Maths, that words like bakteria pendenitrian and sindrom down could not find better equivalents in BM.

Given the rampant use of such words in our textbooks these days, it is probably not necessary for one to master BM in order to understand a sentence such as: "Logam zink di oksidakan” or “ eksperimen ….. kereaktifan oksida dan hydrogen”.

So, we might as well stick to English for Science and Maths.

Let parents decide

While the translators are still finding it convenient to mutilate English when forming BM terms, and the world is running ahead with its scientific research journals in English, I beg the Ministry of Education to allow us parents to decide the language we want for our kids to learn science and maths.

Do not get me wrong. BM is a wonderful language, and I am proud to be able to use it daily with people from all walks of life. It gives us our identity, and it bonds us Malaysians from all races. I even use it to communicate with some workers from my own ethnic group when I cannot speak their dialect.

In fact, last week, I was rather embarrassed when a senior minister used "keseriusan" in describing to the press how serious the government was in its transformation program. He could have use the more elegant and pure BM word - "kesungguhan"

Here, I only propose that we open the doors to our children to master a second language, especially if it is a language vital to stay competitive with the world. It is a known fact that a child from birth to 10 years old can easily learn up to 4 languages. So why constrain them?

Long-term over short-term

To let English take a more prominent role in our schools, while recognising BM as the official language, is a sign of a matured and secured Malaysian society. We need not worry if the rural kids will not fare as well if English is used in the sciences. Let's take the hard road in the short term in order that we may fly in the long term.

As an incentive today, students can be rewarded not based on the A's they score, but on how much they improve over a stipulated period. Soon, a new generation of Malaysian families will evolve where English will be spoken naturally at home and in school, in addition to the mother tongue.

We must be brave and honest to admit that our graduates are not getting employed because of their poor English communication skills. We must be brave to tackle the rot now, and not be shortsightedly concerned about the A’s that will bypass our rural children should they struggle over English in their textbooks.

Here is a concluding example of how our English has deteriorated. About 30 years ago, my Form 3 Ilmu Alam (Geography) textbook had the word "ikan goreng" (fried fish) wrongly but hilariously translated from "fish fries" (baby fish) in the original English text.

The class had a good laugh of course. The translator later went on to become the Education Ministry DG. Given the flip-flop language policies in our education system over the years, I believe the scenario has gotten worse.

Malaysia Chronicle