Malay, a Dying Language?

The last full-fledged Malay conversation I had must have been at least a year ago, possibly with someone elderly at a family gathering. Since moving abroad for college, I’ve written maybe ten sentences and spoken less than 100 words of Malay. It isn’t as though I’m horrible at the language — in fact, given my GCSEs, I would be categorised as being highly proficient — but it was simply that there was no one else to speak it to. The number of Malay speakers I know living in London could be counted on one hand and given our crazy school schedules, meeting up for a chat in Malay was hardly a priority.

Interning at EuroTalk as a Malay translator for the new Mathematics app has thankfully brought me back to my roots as a Malay speaker from Singapore. As expected of Asian families, my grandparents have often complained of the lack of association I have had with my mother tongue. Even more so with my move to London, 19 months ago. I am reminded to speak the language and act Malay, whatever that implies, each time I return to Singapore for vacation. Equally embarrassing are the quizzes my parents have decided to now throw me. At a restaurant last Winter break, my father quizzed, ‘What do you call radishes in Malay?’, which took me quite a while to recall. Sitting down for hours translating the Maths app has forced me to recall trivial words like ‘circle’ or ‘triangle’, things I would normally not say out loud—just imagine saying ‘Pass me the triangle-shaped biscuit’.

Malay in Singapore

Mother tongue as a school subject was made compulsory by the Singapore government in the 1980s, and although it is not used as the main language of instruction, it has been used to teach subjects like Social Studies. This policy was adopted by the Ministry of Education to emphasise the growing need to preserve the myriad of languages spoken in the country. However, its effectiveness in getting the younger generation to actively speak the language remains to be seen.

Singapore, a small island in the Malay Archipelago, is one of three countries with a good number of Bahasa speakers. Bahasa is the superset of modern languages such as Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu (or Malay), both of which were derived from Sanksrit. Two other countries that speak Bahasa are our neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia. Unlike these two countries, however, Singapore’s economic position as a leading global city in the region of Southeast Asia has necessarily led to rapid rates of globalisation in the nation-state, resulting in the dilution of traditional languages like Malay, and other Chinese dialects due to the government’s choice of English as the main language of instruction. Malaysians and Indonesians, on the other hand, continue to mainly converse in Bahasa and clearly take more pride in the language.

Aside from globalisation, the ethnic diversity of Singapore could also be to blame for the lack of need to preserve Malay amongst its speakers. As an ethnic minority group in the country, Malays face colleagues, friends and sometimes even family, who don’t speak the language. 4 out of 5 of my closest friends are Chinese and when I worked at an architecture firm last year for my summer break, none of my colleagues were Malay. It is this unique racial make-up of Singapore that I sometimes blame for my lack of use of the Malay language. The only opportunities I got to speak the language were with my grandparents or at school during mother tongue classes. Even my parents were of a generation that experienced the full impacts of globalisation and were brought up to master English so as to be able to contribute to the economic development of the nation. Occasionally, my family would get visitors from Malaysia or Indonesia who I would then have to converse with in Malay, but such opportunities only came once or twice annually.

Unlike Malaysia and Indonesia, Singapore is seeing dwindling numbers of Malay speakers. In my graduating year from high school, not more than fifteen Malay speakers throughout the country went on to study the language at the National University of Singapore, and the numbers are falling. Unfortunately, we are also increasingly relying on these few enthusiasts to spread the interest and use of the language in Singapore, in addition to incoming migrants from neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia to do the same.

The future

Of late, however, Singaporeans of other ethnicities are beginning to pick up the language. Although the numbers aren’t high, it is worthy to note the curiosity many are still having with Malay. Some are picking up the language for academic reasons and others, in the case of inter-racial marriages, to be able to communicate better with their spouses’ elderly relatives at family functions. Whatever their reasons, at least someone is looking after the language and hopefully this phenomenon will continue to build in Singapore.

Even as a younger generation Malay speaker who was forced into taking mother tongue classes at school, it saddens me to see the language dying. Ironically, by being miles away from home, I am driven to take every opportunity possible to speak or write the language. Thankfully, the internship at EuroTalk has enabled me to sit at the desk for hours recalling words I used to speak or only read in textbooks. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined myself using the Malay language in London in this context, but if it will keep me in touch with my roots then I’m not complaining, and neither are my parents.

Atiqa