statistic: [mediacare] Import their language, export our culture

Sabtu, 26 Januari 2008

[mediacare] Import their language, export our culture

***We can¡¯t be sure that we¡¯ll be able to create geniuses, or pop
stars ¨C who knows, perhaps the Irish get it from their Guinness and
boiled cabbage. But we should at least try to give the youth of
Malaysia the tools to access the global marketplace.

***Make English an official language of Malaysia, and world
domination will be just two decades away.

***Sangat controversial. Jepang, Korea dan Tiongkok tetap maju
sekalipun rakyatnya tidak mahir berbahasa Ingris.

***Bahasa Indonesia yang banyk pinjam dari bahasa Inggris, belum
bisa maju, apalagi targetkan world domination will be just two
decades away.

***Ambisi !

Focus
Sunday January 27, 2008

Import their language, export our culture

Wide Angle
By HUZIR SULAIMAN

Our columnist presents a modest proposal to allow us to rule the
world.

THERE¡¯S an island with just under six million inhabitants that¡¯s
had a pretty difficult history.

U2, one of Ireland¡¯s greatest exports.
At one time wholly a colony of England, ruled with an iron fist and
thoroughly exploited, it has seen hunger, poverty, civil war, and
dreadful communal violence. Untold millions of its people have fled.

For much of the last 800 years, as far as I can tell, it has been a
miserable bloody place.

Yet it has also produced four winners of the Nobel Prize for
Literature, and a musical group that has sold 170 million albums
worldwide.

The group is U2, and the Nobel Laureates are George Bernard Shaw,
William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney; the island
is Ireland, of course.

Its problems have always been immense: when Oliver Cromwell led the
English conquest of Ireland in the 17th century, more than 600,000
inhabitants died in 12 years of war. During the Great Potato Famine
of the mid-19th century, in which disastrous food shortages caused
by diseased crops were compounded by the inefficiency and
callousness of the colonial government, one million people starved
to death in a five year period, and another two million were forced
to migrate to America.

Don¡¯t go complaining to an Irishman about Malaysia¡¯s religious and
ethnic tensions. He¡¯ll tell you all about Northern Ireland¡¯s
history of communal violence and terrorism, about the struggles
between Nationalists and Loyalists, Catholics and Protestants.

Many people from the Republic of Ireland, in the south, will tell
you about the bad old days before their economy took off in the
1990s. It¡¯s now one of the richest places in the world in terms of
per capita income, but it used to be the sort of desperately poor
country that you left as soon as you were old enough to crawl on
board a boat or plane.

And yet this awful area produced one of English literature¡¯s
greatest satirists, Jonathan Swift; its wittiest playwright, Oscar
Wilde; and the most critically acclaimed writer of the 20th century,
James Joyce.

In popular culture, its achievements have been similarly
disproportionate. Last year, the combined wealth of its top six
entertainers (U2, Michael Flatley, Enya, Van Morrison, Bob Geldof,
and Chris de Burgh) was estimated at RM6.8bil.

How is it that this benighted land has managed to spawn so many
cultural titans? And with four times the people and one-tenth the
problems, why can¡¯t Malaysia do the same?

It¡¯s not as though the Irish government or populace have been
particularly supportive of the arts, historically speaking. Most of
the people I¡¯ve mentioned had to go abroad to achieve their
success, to bigger markets or more cosmopolitan environments.

But what equipped these particular citizens of the Third World for
success in the First, was, I would argue, their proficiency in the
English language.

When Independence was won and the Irish Free State created in 1922,
Irish was restored as an official language, satisfying nationalist
sentiments, but crucially, English wasn¡¯t dropped the way it was in
our country. Irish is a compulsory subject for schoolchildren, and
some 40% of the population today say they can speak it, but English
is still predominant. This has allowed post-independence Ireland to
retain and develop their mastery of the language of their former
colonial overlords, to claim English for themselves as a complex,
musical and very creative expression of their national character.

In fact, one could argue that the best literature in English in the
second half of the 20th century came from the pens of the Irish and
the Indians.

(In its Official Languages Act of 1963, India also opted to retain
English as an additional official administrative language, ensuring
that its educated elite ¨C who come from very diverse communities,
and who might resent having to speak Hindi ¨C would be equipped to
deal with each other and with the West.)

English is a Malaysian language, and always has been. If you are
reading this newspaper, you are living proof of that. But I would go
further and say that English is the most useful Malaysian language,
for several reasons.

Symbolically, it¡¯s apolitical: it isn¡¯t the mother tongue of any
particular ethnic group. It may have been necessary at the time of
Independence to call for unity under the umbrella of an indigenous
language, to reject the visible (or rather, audible) signs of
colonialism. But now that we aren¡¯t quite so angry with the British
any more, after 50 years of freedom, there¡¯s much less emotional
baggage attached to speaking English.

It¡¯s a more inclusive language in that respect. It gets us away
from the disturbing dictates of the 1971 National Cultural Policy,
which defines Malaysian culture as Malay culture plus those elements
of other cultures which are suitable ¨C whatever that means. It
allows us to use a neutral linguistic platform to slowly come to
terms with what really constitutes our gloriously pluralistic
national identity.

And from a pragmatic standpoint, if we make sure everybody learns
English, if we truly embrace it and make it our own, we have a shot
at ¡°doing an Ireland¡± ¨C at making a sizeable cultural
contribution to the world, and deriving in return economic benefits
and prestige.

This is not a value judgement; I don¡¯t believe that English is in
any way ¡°better¡± than Malay. It merely reaches a wider global
audience, and allows all Malaysians to feel a sense of ownership.

We are an innately creative nation, and we should be exporting our
cultural products. Tash Aw has made an excellent start, but it
shouldn¡¯t stop there.

We can¡¯t be sure that we¡¯ll be able to create geniuses, or pop
stars ¨C who knows, perhaps the Irish get it from their Guinness and
boiled cabbage. But we should at least try to give the youth of
Malaysia the tools to access the global marketplace.

Make English an official language of Malaysia, and world domination
will be just two decades away.

Huzir Sulaiman writes for theatre, film, television, and newspapers.

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