This is a classic. Yet another demonstration of how various dimensions of language can be tapped to express identity. Reminds me of the German-speaking community - was it in Schleswig-Holstein? - which stopped writing their nouns in capital letters to dissociate themselves from the Prussia-dominated German Empire (all nouns in German always begin with an upper case letter). Or how the Bosnians started using the words and pronunciation of the Sarajevo dialect to create a language that is distinct from Serbo-Croat, a language previously commonly spoken in both Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. So much blood and ink have been spilt over the question of language and identity. And I'm not holding my breath that more won't be.
Our appreciation of the significance of language inevitably reflects our worldview. That remark in the article about "Westerners who pride themselves on the pedantically correct use of the German umlaut, or the French cedilla, and who always put the accent on Chávez and Guantánamo, blithely ignore the crucial diacritical marks in the languages of the new Europe" hit me in the gut. I'm not a Westerner, but this sentence applies to me, word for word. I'm punctilious about my accent aigu, accent circonflexe, umlaut and cedillas when writing French, German, Spanish or Italian names but don't give two hoots about the unfamiliar diacritic marks often present in Polish, Hungarian or Croation names. This behaviour no doubt stems from my deeply held view that Eastern European languages - and by extension, Eastern Europe - are not important enough to bother with. Why? Maybe because Eastern Europe is poor, has limited political influence and has had less impact on popular imagination than Western Europe. It appears that I am as much a victim of this lopsided view as many people.
Closer to home, Malaysians generally take great pains to write, speak and pronounce hypercorrect English to the point of ridiculousness (check that sometimes pretentious and often hyperpedantic column "Mind Our English" in The Star and you'll probably know what I mean) but never bother to be correct in other languages. I still remember the time when a French prime minister was referred to in the printed media as Alain Juppe. Alain Juppé probably did not appreciate that since "juppe" in French means "skirt."
What is my point? To many Malaysians - especially the self-satisfied English-speaking ones - the world outside Malaysia is defined in English, or perhaps more accurately, by the English-speaking world. While my mother only hardly speaks English, a conversation I had with her during one of the 1998 World Cup matches - don't ask what I was doing watching the World Cup! - is illustrative:
My mum: (Looking at the screen) Apa dia tulih tu? What does that say?
(Screen showing "Allemagne: 0, Croatie: 1". The French being French reported the scores in French)
Me: Jerman kosong, Croatia satu. Germany nil, Croatia one.
My mum: Aitt, tak nampak pun tulih Jerman? Where does it say "Germany"?
Me: Dalam bahasa Perancis, Allemagne tu Jerman. "Allemagne" is "Germany" in French.
My mum: Melampau aih! Awat lain sangat dari nama betoi dia? Outrageous! Why is the name (in French) so different from the original name?
"So different from the original"? What's the original anyway? The Germans call themselves "Deutschen", and refer to their country as "Deutschland". "Germany" is a name derived from "Germania", the Latin appelation for the Roman province, parts of which make up modern Germany. The French "Allemagne" is thus no less "different from the original" than the English "Germany". In fact it can be argued that "Allemagne" may be more "correct" than "Germany", since "Allemagne" is derived from "Allemanni", the name of a major alliance of Germanic tribes that inhabited the area and gave the Romans so much trouble.
The names of countries provide a major example of our blind obsession with English. Most of the time, whenever we need to refer to another country - especially the relatively "new" ones - we would run and scramble for its name in English and then adopt it lock, stock and barrel into Malay. This trend not only belies our complete dependence on English and English-centered views of the world, but proves our own lack of spirit of discovery, exploration and international interactions. We Malaysians, are utterly incapable of discovering and defining the world in our own terms, having to rely on English language sources whenever we need to even talk - let alone think - about things from outside Malaysia.
And what I find most irksome is that this obsession with English is beginning to encroach even on countries which we have been exposed to, if not had direct interactions with, for centuries. Why are we abandoning "Mesir" for "Egypt"? "Kaherah" for "Cairo"? "Damsyik" for "Damascus"? "Kemboja" for Cambodia? Why are we saying "Lebanon" when we have always said "Lubnan"? Or "Morocco" when we have always said "Maghribi"? Imagine calling your friend Jamil - whom you've known all your life - "James" simply because some English-speaking guy can't pronounce his name. Yes, that's how silly we look.
(And don't get me started on pronunciation. We take great pains to pronounce English names well, but don't care if we pronounce Indonesian or Thai or Chinese names incorrectly. And worse, some newscasters in Malaysia have taken to anglicising the pronunciation of Malaysian place names. I remember a time when I felt like driving up to the TV station and slapping one newscaster who insisted on referring to Perak as "P-raaque".)
Let us stop this blind obsession with English. Yes, English is a global language. Learn it. Master it by all means. But learn other languages too. Stop seeing the world only from English-tinted glasses. Let's expand our horizons. Explore the world and understand it on our own terms, or at least not just in the way that English-speakers see it. We will all be the richer for it.
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