KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 18 — Former international trade and industry minister Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz has stressed again the importance of the English language, saying that conversing in the lingua franca did not make her less nationalistic.
She gave an example of how poor civil servants’ English comprehension was back when she was in government, with a typist spelling “warehouse” as “wherehouse” when dictated to.
According to Rafidah, when she made a joke about it to an officer and said it was a good thing the typist did not put an “o” instead of an “e”, the civil servant did not laugh. When Rafidah said “whorehouse” referred to a brothel, the officer still did not understand what the word meant.
“How do we manage interacting with the private sector if we can’t converse in English, let alone write? I had people writing ‘benchmarking’, putting it as ‘benchmaking’,” Rafidah said in a talk at UCSI University here today titled “Staying ahead in the competitive world: How Malaysia should align itself with the 21st century”.
“We should look at equipping the young as assets of the country. When they have full command of English, that can take them anywhere in the world; it doesn’t make them less nationalistic.
“I’m speaking English to you; doesn’t mean I’m less nationalistic, my goodness gracious. Nationalistic means you love your country more, you’ll do whatever it takes to make it grow and develop,” she added.
Singapore broadcaster Channel News Asia reported Monday that a group of Malay academics, activists and politicians have launched a campaign against the Dual Language Programme, Malaysia’s pilot project in 300 primary and secondary schools that gives the option of studying Science, Mathematics, Information Technology and Communication, and Design and Technology in English.
