EVEN as the country works towards developed-nation status, it must not lose sight of its unique multicultural heritage, warn experts.
Malaysia’s indigenous tongues and community dialects, they stress, must continue to be preserved, especially among the young.
The issue has taken on renewed relevance amid recent attention on language mastery in schools (see infographic).
Citing language database Ethnologue, endangered language research expert Prof Dr Stefanie Shamila Pillai said an estimated 75% of Malaysia’s more than 130 languages are in trouble, with most of these being indigenous languages.
“What this means is that there is little or no transmission of heritage languages from older to younger generations.
“The nuances and knowledge that come with heritage languages may be lost, or may not be translated in the same way,” she told StarEdu.
Prof Stefanie, who serves at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics at Universiti Malaya, noted that this could include knowledge
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