Congress on future of Malay language
By Rosli Abidin Yahya

Bruneian delegation led by Director Hj Abdul Hakim in a group photo at the airport. Courtesy of DBP

Malay language experts from Brunei Darussalam joined more than three hundred linguists from Malaysia, Singapore and other areas where the dialect is spoken for the Malay Language Congress currently being held in Jakarta.

Director of Language and Literature Bureau Hj Abdul Hakim Hj Mohd Yassin headed a delegation from Brunei Darussalam comprising of Dato Paduka Hj Mahmud Hj Bakyr and Hanafiah Hj Zaini.

They departed for the Indonesian capital yesterday morning.

Hj Abdul Hakim will also be tabling paper work at the three-day congress, which commences from today.

The delegation is set to discuss about the future of Malay Indonesian language and its role in the international scene.

At the last congress two years ago conducted at Macassar of South Celebes in the same country, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders have been urged to show a more proactive stance in response to a campaign by Malay linguists and experts for the language to be made official in their respective states alongside English.

Dustin Cowell of the Centre for Southeast Asia Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said that efforts to make Malay an official Asean language would be pointless without strong backing by its leaders.

Some 250 million people in Asean countries - including Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines - speak Malay.

Language experts believe the total dominance of English in Malay-speaking nations was due to the almost exclusive use of the language for international communication is in the field of education.

They said the 11,625 Indonesians and 7,795 Malaysians studying in US universities not to mention Australia and the UK where some Bruneians study, do represent a continued cultural and economic loss for education systems in their places of origin. Experience from the World Esperanto Association sadly indicates that politicians generally have little understanding in the vital importance of language equality, they said.

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin