Book Review `Bahasa Melayu: Apa Sudah Jadi?´ (Malay Version)
Uqbah Iqbal*
Researcher, History Programme, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Malaysia
Submission: September 14, 2017; Published: September 18, 2017
*Correspondence author: Uqbah Iqbal, Researcher, History Programme, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, UKM 43650 Bangi Selangor, Malaysia, Email: uqbah@siswa.ukm.edu.my
How to cite this article:Uqbah I. Book Review 'Bahasa Melayu: Apa Sudah Jadi?' (Malay Version). Glob J Add & Rehab Med. 2017; 3(5): 555625. DOI: 10.19080/GJARM.2017.03.555625
Mini Review
Written by Kamal Shukri Abdullah Sani, some things that people in Malaysia need to know, especially the Malays, about the Malay language are; First of all, this language is one of the advanced languages in the world, as well as in other languages such as English and other European languages, Arabic and others, dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries. Since that century the language has become the language of knowledge, language of literature or high literary language, government language, trade language and diplomacy language, not only in Malaya, for example in Malacca and in Johor, but also throughout the region now called the Malaysia-Indonesia-Brunei. Secondly, today Malay language (including its diversity, Indonesian language) is one of the world's fifth largest national language and official language. Third, language is not just a linguistic system but also a system of culture and cognitive system (thinking). When we learn the Malay language we do not learn its only system but also learn how Malays are thinking culturally, intellectually and creatively through the structure and the metaphorical (figurative) words of this language.
For over fifty years from 1951, a great Malay language planning process was launched. The goal is not to build a language that is supposedly to be developed since this date because the language has been developed for hundreds of years as mentioned above, but is to restore and expand the function of this language as a language of government, language of knowledge, high culture language, and the language of national development through the national education system that uses the Malay language (which has been adopted as the national language of Malaysia) as its main medium of instruction and through the policy of restoring Malay language status as the official language of government, replacing English. As a result of corpus design, hundreds of thousands of terms in more than 400 fields and sub-fields of science have been enacted and established in more than 5000 science and general books (in addition to hundreds of high school textbooks from lower to high school) published in Malay language during that period. Over five million students have studied this language at schools and at public universities. Hundreds of thousands of students receive degrees in various disciplines including science, mathematics, medicine, and technology in Malay thousands of masters, professors, lecturers, scientists, medical and technology experts educated in Malay since primary school. Not less than they are comparable to scholars and world-class knowledge educators in other languages.
One of the major mistakes made by the Malays today is, mistakenly assuming the language of the Malays or the country will not be developed if the Malays do not use English as their language of language and language of progress. There are Malay leaders who say 'If people want to go in the field of science, especially in science and technology, they must study it in English, not in Malay.' It is from misguided, distorted and misguided, they change the policy teaching English and mathematics from the Malay language back to English, as in ancient colonial times. In fact, they do not know that since the basis of replacing the English language with Malay as the main medium of instruction in the national education system since the 1970s, the result is as we mentioned above. This is one of the major problems faced by the national language policy in Malaysia over the years. The author discusses the sociological, cultural and political problems of this language and the Malay language itself, from various aspects, such as cultural and sociological aspects of language, learning and teaching aspects of language, language aspect as a national identity marker, language nationalism aspect, language aspect as a tool human progress, and basic language implementation. He also touched the ability of Malay as a language of knowledge. This is because Malay has become the language of knowledge since the 16th and 17th centuries.