Malay to be taught as Foreign Language rather than Mother Tongue - Your Say?

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Dr Yaacob Ibrahim suggested, to stop the declining fluency of Malay language, the Malay language should be taught as a foreign language method instead of just being mother tongue in schools. This was mentioned in a dialogue held at Ang Mo Kio theatre to 200 Malay muslim pre-university students.

This topic was previously misunderstood by the community thinking that he would want to turn mother tongue Malay language to a Foreign language – i mean if that were to ever happen, then it will be an open door to Lee Kuan Yew to change Singapore’s National Anthem [Link Here] from Malay to other language since Malay is not one of the four national language in Singapore [Wiki Here]. Some Malay activist has already come up with a Facebook Page [Link Here] to go against Dr Yaacob cause.

In particular, some grassroots leaders argued that since the Chinese constitute a majority of the population, a Mandarin version of the anthem should be used.^[31] The Prime Minister’s response was that he would keep the national anthem as it was while ensuring that translations in other mother tongues were more easily available.^[30] The proposal to change the lyrics was also criticized by former Deputy Prime Minister S. Rajaratnam, who felt that the Malay lyrics of the anthem were so simple that “anyone over the age of five, unless mentally retarded, had no difficulty singing the anthem. All Singaporean children of kindergarten age have not only had no difficulty memorising the words but have for decades sung it every morning with ‘strong feelings and emotion’.” He also noted that the anthem had been translated into Singapore’s three other official languages (English, Mandarin and Tamil) for those who cannot understand Malay.^[31]

Yes we misunderstood your phrase but we are still greatly in doubt of your motives …

I still felt something fishy behind this whole topic and agenda that came to light. Someone relatively have good write up [Link Here] of his response over this matter.

Still, Dr Yaacob’s remarks cast some temporary doubt over this matter, and his clarification merely emphasized the fact that he saw nothing wrong in his use of the phrase “foreign language rather than mother tongue” with reference to Malay Language teaching — even if he really meant “methods for teaching foreign languages”.

Dr Yaacob said he is “disappointed by the negative reactions to his remarks on teaching the Malay language”, and described the criticism as coming from “certain elements that continue to stoke the language issue for whatever gains and motives that they might have in mind.”[9]

Meanwhile …

Lately our dear Dr Yaacob Ibrahim seems to be in the spotlight and causing a lot of rage in the other topic – MDA new licensing scheme. I guess MDA is hard at work to start clamping down the sites, see what i meant with screenshots below on Google and Channel News Asia.

When i saw some post about Malay to be taught as a Foreign Language, i googled and found sites below

So i went to Channel News Asia as my first click and choice to read online news

An indexed website by Google. Obviously the site content was remove (maybe due to MDA request to remove the content)

 

To whatever is the intention of Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, i am against to the whole idea in any case. Bahasa Melayu “Baku” sounded like some Chinese who just learn how to speak Malay and that is why i don’t use it. I mean, Malay language has different dialects, yes maybe the effort to standardize the language in terms of official and writing is a good proposition by using Bahasa Melayu “Baku” so as to ease the language gap however that doesn’t meant we lose fluency when we don’t speak Bahasa Melayu “Baku” at home or with friends, it is just simply sounds weird talking to friends / families who we knew and understood our Bahasa Melayu “Pasar” as you scholars named it. As a matter of a fact, even the Chinese Mandarin Singapore and Chinese Mandarin China has difference in terms of usage or pronunciation with help to distinguish your origin. Why can’t we simply accept this fact and stop using that survey data to judge the fluency of the Malay Language …

Malay to be taught as Foreign Language rather than Mother Tongue - Your Say?
Read Complete Post From Source: BLog.CripperZ.SG