Singapore wants more non-Malays to speak bahasa
Singapore wants more non-Malays to speak bahasa
Agencies
Singapore
Singapore wants to promote the Indonesian and Malaysian languages
in the predominantly ethnic Chinese city-state to strengthen ties
with its Malay-Muslim neighbors, the country's education ministry
said on Friday.
Singapore wants up to 15 percent of its non-Malay citizens to
master the Malay or Indonesian languages, it said.
The plan would mirror the government's existing campaign to
encourage some Singaporeans to excel in Mandarin and study
Chinese culture and history in depth to enable them to take
advantage of business opportunities in China' s booming economy.
"We must get 10 percent to 15 percent of our non-Malay
population fluent in bahasa," Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said,
according to a report in Friday's Business Times newspaper.
"Bahasa" is word for language in both Malay and Indonesian;
the two languages are very similar.
The affluent island's population of 4.2 million is a polyglot
community of ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians and there are
four official languages -- English, Mandarin Chinese, bahasa
Malay and Tamil.
An Education Ministry spokeswoman said the government was
looking to launch the program in two years.
Singapore's founding premier Lee Kuan Yew said on Thursday the
tiny city-state's language deficiency was highlighted during
Singapore's military deployment to help Indonesia after last
year's tsunami disaster hit its northern Aceh province.
Lee, who as "Minister Mentor" holds the third most powerful
post in the cabinet, said students should learn to understand,
speak and read basic bahasa -- or "mother tongue" in Malaysian
and Indonesian.
"We learnt from our experience in Aceh that we need more
Singaporeans who can speak bahasa, either bahasa Malaysia or
Bahasa Indonesia," he said.
"When Indonesian military commanders briefed our mission in
Banda Aceh, only PM Lee, Defense Minister Teo (Chee Hean) and a
few SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) officers understood them."
Lee, 81, who was the country's first prime minister for 31
years, said some 10-15 percent of Singapore's non-Malay
population should be fluent in bahasa.
Lee is also the founder of the long-ruling People's Action
Party and father of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
About 14 percent of Singapore's population are Malay, while more
than three quarters are Chinese and some eight percent are
Indian.
Relations between Indonesia and Singapore, marked by periodic
friction since Indonesian president Soeharto stepped down in
1998, have warmed after Singaporean troops delivered some of the
first foreign aid to Indonesia's tsunami-hit provinces Aceh and
Meulaboh.
Southeast Asia's two quarrelsome neighbors, Malaysia and
Singapore, have also mended fences to work on resolving long-
standing disputes.