ATHENS (Ohio), Nov 12 -- Ohio University (OU) is now offering Bahasa Malaysia language studies for the first time, said Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

He said that 14 young American and international students were learning the language.

Muhyiddin, who is also the Education Minister, congratulated Prof Dr Habibah Ashari, the current holder of the Tun Abdul Razak Chair at the university, for initiating the course and the Centre for International Studies for supporting the move.

“To these young men and women I have this to say, learning a new language may be hard, but it can only strengthen your grey matter. We hope that OU will continue to offer Bahasa Malaysia to its students,” he said in his keynote speech when launching the ‘Malaysia at Ohio University Outreach: Celebrating Five Decades of Strategic Partnerships’ event at the OU Athens campus, on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Habibah said the language course introduced in August had received encouraging response from OU students compared to several other language courses on offer at the university.

She said learning a language was a good way to glean more knowledge about another country and its people. -- Bernama