Our children, the real victims in language war

Like many of his classmates, Ong struggles to participate in my English lessons. His speech is halting and uncertain, his pronunciation shaky, his writing barely passable at best.

Outside of class however, I have seen him talking nineteen to the dozen in fluent Malay, Tamil and Mandarin – sometimes throwing in all three languages in one conversation.

Is his weakness in the English language a handicap? It sure is – but that shouldn't suggest that Ong is the lesser for it.

I grew up speaking English and Malay. Even though my parents dutifully sent my sister and me to "People's Own Language" classes, we gave up after a few lessons and learnt to get by without being able to string together a decent sentence in Tamil.

"It's going to be fine," we thought; as we went on our merry way, comfortable with English and Malay as our language of choice. And then many years later, along came Ong.

Here's the thing; there are arguments aplenty out there right now about language and learning. Many of these arguments – for English, for Malay, for Mandarin, for Tamil – bear equal merit and each side makes a compelling case to support their struggle to uphold one language or the other.

On the flipside of these arguments are the mud-slinging and accusations... "bahasa penjajah" they say, we are being held back they say, you're a chauvinist, you're an imperialist. And while the battle rages on, we flip one way; when the wind changes, we flop the other way – and so on and so forth.

A saying holds that when war is declared, "Truth" is the first casualty. Where language and learning in Malaysia is concerned, we are at war.

I will, however, add another casualty alongside "Truth" – that is, "our children", and unless we come to our collective senses, this figurative body count is set to soar.

I ask you; why do we frame our discourse on language and learning as a zero sum equation? My own students, proficient in their respective Malay dialects, have challenged me time and again – why bother learning English when they can already speak in Malay. What is this line of argument but nothing more than an ignorant aping of their elders?

My answer is always the same, learning a new language enriches you. Getting intimate with the nuances of another language and the cultures it informs – its eccentricities, its neuroses, its alien worldview – does not necessarily occur only with the erosion of your own identity. If anything, it should strengthen one's sense of self for having now known "the other".

For God's sake, why deny the very diversity that informs the make-up of our nation? Surely our diversity doesn't stop with the trite and tired "tarian tradisional" presentation we trot out with every "This! Is! Malaysia!" promotion?

And why stop at English and Mandarin, if you already speak Malay? Why not French? Why not Japanese? German? Spanish? I should have learnt how to speak Tamil; I probably still can if I put my mind to it.

In the meantime, Ong will continue to strengthen his grasp of the English language.

Maybe one day, he will be as proficient a speaker as I would like him to be. When that day comes, he will then be the master of four languages, while I remain the steward of merely two.

Monolingualism is nothing to be proud of. The sooner we come to our senses and do what is right – rather than what is politically expedient – the better equipped our children will be to take on the world and the many real challenges it has in store for them. – November 5, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.