No need to mock others because of language

Obnoxious.

That’s the word we ought to use on people who mock and degrade others based on the choice of language.

Last week, a young Malay lady requested help on Facebook to retrieve a stolen bag containing vital medical documents. Not only did some netizens not offer help, they scolded the lady for using English.

While I suspect there must be somebody who print-screened her post and uploaded it with provocative caption and thus inviting the flux of obnoxious comments, I believe this is not an isolated incident.

It is not just the self-righteous, ultra-nationalist that perpetuate this obnoxious bullying.

During the Red Shirt rally, two young Malay adults were interviewed by a foreign reporter. They struggled to express themselves in English and the tape went viral on social media. Netizens inevitably mocked their broken English.

And every so often, we hear people chiding the Chinese for not being able to speak and understand Malay.

It is one thing to try to persuade others on the importance of a certain language, and quite another to chide and mock them for not being able to speak the language.

What we see so far are two sides of the same behaviour. Why do we do this?

Why do some people enjoy being obnoxious to others based on different choice of language? Does some people in our society enjoy a perverse pleasure in making others feel humiliated and degraded?

Language is a medium of expression and understanding. It’s the content (the idea) of what we say that should matter most, not the language in which we express the content.

When I come across such incidents, I remember Jokowi’s interview with Christiane Amanpour.

Here’s the President of the Republic of Indonesia, and the reporter from CNN. She spoke English, and Jokowi answered mostly in Indo, with some broken English.

On the back of my mind, I was thinking “If a Malaysian leader had done this, we would have mocked the leader and feel ashamed that he is not able to speak fluently in English, thus embarrassing us on the international stage.”

This is clearly not the case with many Indonesians. They are proud of their language and of their president using the national language to engage foreigners.

When Jokowi spoke in English at the Apec CEO Summit last year, it was a surprise to many. Of course, there were some obnoxious individuals commented on his slow and grammatically incorrect English, but many locals and foreigners rushed to Jokowi’s defence.

Should we judge Pramoedya Ananta Toer based on his proficiency in English? What a waste it would be! If there is a young kid who could become our Pram, our Orhan Pamuk or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he or she ought to be encouraged to write in the language which they are able to express themselves best.

In fact, be so great at your language that others would consider translating your works into another language.

Dr Irwin Weil, professor emeritus at Northwestern University, said he was so engrossed in Dostoevsky’s novels that he learned the Russian language just so that he is able to read Dostoevsky in the original language.

I’m not saying that a particular language is more important than another, or that it is not important to learn a secondary language.

All I’m saying is that mastery of a particular language is not the be-all and end-all.

If a person is interested in learning a new language, by all means go ahead. There is no need for mocking those who are weak in that language because they are just beginning to learn it.

Some people are really not helping by making fun of our broken English/Malay/Mandarin. Many Chinese suck at Malay; do we then make fun of them? Some people do, but I say, let’s encourage them to learn the Malay language.

You don’t encourage someone by embarrassing him/her. When Malays try to learn English, let us not mock them, but encourage them one step at a time. If people do not want to learn either language, then I say, fine. Just be great at the language you are using.

Sometimes my cousins asked me to help them with their homework. Once, they asked me the meaning of “lever” (it was Physics class I believe). Being the lazy teacher that I am, I Google-translated the word into simplified Chinese.

When I showed it to them, they instantly understand what a lever is (Google Image further cemented the lesson).

That taught me that it’s not that they don’t have capability to absorb the knowledge, but they are not able to access or express knowledge when it’s in another language which they are not good at.

So if you are more comfortable with English, use it. If you are better at Malay or Mandarin, use it.

If you are weak in a particular language but realize its importance in communicating with other Malaysians, learn it.

There’s no need to mock and degrade others just because they use a language which is different from yours. – October 10, 2015.

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