Entry 4 : Different Culture, Different Mother Tongue

By Posy Simmonds, in The Human Conspiracy

Everyone has their own "first language" and most probably inherit from their cultural backgrounds. Mother tongue is not something that an individual would easily forget as it acts like their root of culture. Therefore, it made what Malaysia is today, multilingual communities.

Since every communities has their own language, Malaysian multilingual communities doesn't seems to space from other multilingual communities. Apparently, they communicate where both parties are understandable and yet maintaining some of their mother tongue. As a Malaysian, we tend to use the word "Ta Pao", a Chinese word for take-away, when ordering take-aways whether in a Indian stall or Malay stall and they seem to understand it. 

According to (Ndaruhutse,2011), mother tongue-based multilingual education is a way to maintain and develop their own cultural roots and languages while promoting skills in the curriculum and dialect languages for it is important for taking part of the economic and social opportunities.


"Success of multilingual schemes will be helped massively by finding and developing teachers who can use the children's language confidently. It is imperative to get speakers of minority or local languages into teaching wherever possible, and as soon as possible."      
                                                                                                            -Susy Ndaruhutse, 2011




Bibliography:
Ndaruhutse S. (2011). Speaking up for the mother tongue. [online] The Guardians. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/feb/08/tefl-languages [Accessed: 28 June 2017].