[Some Bahasa Malaysia
words lazily borrowed from the English language may have come from the media,
translations and even politicians.]
PETALING JAYA: Dewan Bahasa
Pustaka (DBP) – the Malay language’s masters – has acknowledged that there are
words that did not need to be borrowed from the English language to fit Bahasa
Malaysia today.
Some of these words include
uniti, sukses, transformasi, respon, kualiti and even rasis.
According to its head
director Dr Awang Sariyan, these words may have come from various sources,
including politicians.
“Some have come from fields
of knowledge, including translations, through the media, and not excluding
certain persons of influence,” he told FMT, before using the term “belanjawan”
(budget) as an example.
“But around 15 years ago,
there were leaders who changed it to ‘bajet’, without discussing this with the
DBP, a government body formed to plan the national language,” he said.
Awang was referring to a recent FMT report where local writers
criticised the lazy borrowing of English words into Malay.
National laureate A Samad Said previously said that a lot
of these words did not come from the Malay language’s literary masters, and
lamented that the tongue was fast becoming a “strange language”.
Writer Uthaya Sankar SB attacked politicians
for their part in this, adding: “Perhaps they are thinking in their broken English, since they
can’t think in Malay.”
It was an opinion that Awang
seemed to share.
“I share the sentiments of those
who are worried about the uncontrolled borrowing or absorption of words, what
more when there are words or terms already in the Malay language.
“There needs to be a process
in which the culture of the language is nurtured according to society … to
prioritise the words and terms in our own language, especially through
education and the mass media,” he said.
However, the DBP head said
that it was still necessary to absorp certain words and terms from other
languages, especially for those that were new to the Malay civilisation.
Various languages in the
past, he said, contributed to the Malay language’s current vocabulary.
These included Sanskrit
(bahasa, kata, syurga, neraka, pahala, puasa, sembahyang), Arabic (fikir,
kitab, surat, kaedah, niat), Chinese, Tamil, Persian, Dutch, Portuguese and
English.
“The important thing is that
the absorption of words and terms from foreign languages have to undergo
modifications according to the Malay language, especially from the point of
sentence construction, word structure, phonetics or its pronunciation,” he
said.
Fitting the
Malay lexicon
Awang also remarked on the
introduction of new words into the Malay vocabulary, especially of that from
certain fields of knowledge.
He said that the masters of
these areas needed to understand the concept and right method to modify these
words to fit the Malay lexicon.
The principle of forming
words, he said, was based on a guideline known as the Pedoman Pembentukan Istilah Bahasa Melayu.
At the same time, he said
that absorbed words from foreign languages that were “steady” enough were
entered into dictionaries.
Those that were not, or
partially so, were added as well but labelled as “speaking language” or
non-standard word forms.
(Patrick
Lee, Free Malaysia Today, 29 August 2012)