Looks like someone didn't get the memo by Farouk A Peru about "English as a means of social division" where English speaking Malaysians talking disparagingly of other languages and fellow countrymen who don't speak English as well as they do have tremendously blunted the appeal of what if otherwise the world's most popular language. Because of this English pop culture is now struggling to compete with the likes of Korean pop in Malaysia.

"Yes, that claim is in fact true but languages do not develop because its people ask others to use it. We cannot go to the USA and very well ask them to please start speaking Bahasa!"

This one kinda misses the point. The masses are calling for the business class in Malaysia to use their language yet contracts and likewise important documents may not be available in the national language, the language the masses are most comfortable with. When businesses do something grievous to the public yet is accepted in their non-BM documents, how?

Perhaps the only way to save English in Malaysia is to "reboot" it, start the relationship with the language all over again instead of clinging to the present continuity, let's pretend that we never knew English and all its colonial/elitist baggage. Impossible you say? Well let's put BM in its rightful place in the country, e.g. by requiring all business and govt contracts and tenders to be written in BM to be considered legally binding like what they do in Indonesia, to better protect the locals in the event of disputes, fraud and the like. Pretty simple!

Another thing is for the different races to have deep understanding of each others' *cultures*. With the hinterland Malays and Bumis having the most clout in general elections, I believe victory belongs to politicians and parties who know the culture "from within", those who "score A" in understanding what the hinterland people feel and so on, which I believe is wanting in urban-skewing parties like DAP and PKR.

I saw it!

"However, it was also MPM that had limited the Malay community from understanding this knowledge. Lest we forget, the MPM was one of the coalitions that thought teaching English in Science and Mathematics was a threat to our national language."

The real threat to the national language is of our own doing as urbanites - not using the language enough and not using the language properly. Especially the smatterings of English in dialogues of urban-set Malay dramas since the 90s, asyik ai ai yu yu je... 'pop culture', that's where the hinterland's bad impression of English mainly comes from. Consequently the hinterland feels so distant from the urbanites because they don't speak in the same primary language.

In the early days of the Internet in Malaysia English is the preferred language of most local netizens, as reflected in many websites for locals having only an English interface even to this day, potentially alienating the BM-speaking masses. Any BM users tend to type in some sort of leetspeak which paints a negative picture about the health of the national language.

Now 60% of Internet users primarily use BM (according to Google when they launched AdWords in BM last year) and many of them are even pretty intolerant about the use of mixed language, it's about time for people like Hafidz Baharom to know who the audience really is and start speaking the main audience's language more often.

"Zaman ini juga kalau kita tengok dari segi penggunaan bahasa pula, pendengar lebih suka bahasa pasar yang lebih santai dengan lirik standard sekolah rendah."

Apakah kemerosotan mutu seni hiburan tanah air disebabkan oleh kemerosotan mutu pendidikan negara? Sebenarnya perihal muzik Indonesia membolot pasaran Malaysia ini terlintas dalam fikiran saya bila terbaca berita kementerian pendidikan memilih guru asing untuk mengajar bahasa Inggeris dan Cina baru-baru ini, iaitu sikap tidak yakin kepada bakat tempatan. Syarikat rakaman muzik tak rajin memburu bakat tempatan, pilih kasih ataupun terlalu berkira dengan syarat2 peribadi yg tak terungkap, tak pun harapkan rancangan realiti.

Oh ya, ke mana perginya genre "Irama Malaysia", iaitu Nashville versi kita? Merudumnya irama Malaysia, lenturlah jati diri muzik Malaysia.

Kalau boleh, apa kata mukadimah itu disunting supaya versi BM terletak di atas versi BI. Yang tulis dalam BI itu saya yakin semua sederhana belaka, tapi mereka tertumpu di bandar2 besar saja. Tapi saya inginkan petisyen itu lebih senang menarik suara hati mereka yang lebih selesa berbahasa Malaysia yakni majoriti rakyat negara dan juga majoriti pengguna Internet sekarang. 65% orang Malaysia pakai Internet, tapi yang fasih Inggeris cuma 20%. Tengok sejauh mana kesederhanaan golongan keramaian. Let me see the real Malaysia.

Puas artis2 memperjuangkan industri muzik. Dari cetak rompak ke lambakan artis asing, sekarang ada soal halal haram agama. Tak cerialah Malaysia kalau macam tu.

Looks like UMNO is deliberately trying to disenchant non-Malays from Bahasa - the only effective medium to communicate with the ordinary Malays, and thus a crucial agent of change in Malaysian politics. Like Mandela once said, "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." Mandela didn't throw Afrikaans away just because his oppressors spoke the language; it proved to be the best if not the only way to relay his cause to the oppressor. That's why you see Malaysian Christians hanging on so dearly to BM (and particularly using the A-word and those banned "Islamic" words) in spite of all these religious tensions.