DR M: MASTERING ENGLISH WILL NOT ERODE IMPORTANCE OF MALAY LANGUAGE

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 26 (Bernama) -- The fear among some quarters in the country that learning and using English would erode the importance of Malay Language (Bahasa Malaysia is unfounded, said former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Dr Mahathir said he was criticised by nationalists for wanting the
government to continue teaching Science and Mathematics in English, but English
was the only language where Malaysians could gain much knowledge in these two
subjects.

"Before I stepped down as prime minister, I introduced this system because
I
felt it was necessary for us to gain knowledge. If we are going to translate
all the works of Science and Mathematics into Bahasa Malaysia, then it would
take a long time and we would lose out.

"But lately there has been a debate about this and that we need to revert
to
the old system of using Bahasa Malaysia to teach and learn Science and
Maths.

"The Education Ministry is going to decide on this very soon. There are
pros and cons to this and I do worry about it. Our people should know how to
read, write and speak the national language but at the same time to gain
knowledge, they should learn and use English."


He said this in his keynote address at the English and Asia 2008 First
International Conference on Language and Linguistics, organised by the
International Islamic University Malaysia, here, Tuesday.

He said the amount of new knowledge was coming out "fast and furious" and
Malaysians needed to grasp the knowledge, which were mostly in English.

"I hope I can stop the government from going back to using Bahasa Malaysia
to teach Maths and Science but I am no more in power. We have to accept whatever
the decision although it may not be that good for the country."

He said the reason that Malaysia lacked teachers to teach the two subjects
in English should not be an excuse because teachers could be substituted by
computer software, "which is better than teachers sometimes".

-- BERNAMA