The Location of English in Malaysia

Abstract

Pramita is a young lecturer of English at a Malaysian university. Her family is of Panjabi origins and she grew up speaking Panjabi and English at home. She is also a very proficient user of Malay, which she learned when she went to school, and understands Hindi very well. Finally, exposure to Mandarin Chinese and Tamil has given her a rudimentary ability to understand these languages too. For a non-Malay Malaysian, Pramita’s rich linguistic repertoire is not atypical. She states that, without doubt, English is the language she feels most comfortable with, as her command of Panjabi is limited by her inability to read or write in it and, generally, lack of regular practice. However, she is very resistant to calling English her mother tongue or admitting that she may be a native speaker of English. In Malaysia, the concept of ‘mother tongue’ is closely linked to ethnicity and ancestry, and therefore someone’s mother tongue is automatically the language associated with the ethnic group he or she is considered to belong to. Hence, even if it is the language that one is brought up with at home, English is very unlikely to be regarded as that person’s mother tongue and, concurrently, people will be very reluctant to consider themselves native speakers of English. A further complication in Pramita’s case is that since most Malaysian Indians are of Tamil ethnico-linguistic origins, the language associated with the Indian section of Malaysian society is Tamil, of which Pramita has only a basic understanding.

English = England!

Get the point?

—undergraduate Malaysian student