2015年11月14日星期六

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2015年11月4日星期三

Promote Bahasa Melayu as Asean community's common feature

Promote Bahasa Melayu as Asean community's common feature: Salleh

Bahasa Melayu or the Malay language should be promoted as one of the main features in the formation of the Asean Community, said Communications and Multimedia Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak.

He said to emerge as a community, a national Asean nature should be established through the usage of a homogenous language and as chairman of Asean, Malaysia should use the opportunity well.

"Therefore, people in Asean member states should be given an insight into the concept and features of the Asean Community and this is important to ensure that the aim of forging closer relations among the region's nations can be achieved.

"The Asean Community should be viewed as a single, unique entity with its cultural diversity," he said when opening the International Seminar on Malay Linguistics and Culture at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), here, today.

The seminar, themed "Bahasa Melayu As Asean Language", was jointly organised by the Malay Language Department of UPM's Faculty of Modern Languages and Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. It was aimed at gathering the views of experts in efforts to promote Bahasa Melayu as the language of Asean.

Salleh said with about 400 million speakers in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, southern Thailand and southern Philippines, Bahasa Melayu had the potential to be promoted as the Asean Community language.

He hoped that the seminar would yield ideas to mobilise efforts to bring Bahasa Melayu to the pinnacle of the Asean Community, in which each idea and recommendation should be scrutinised and followed by subsequent steps.

Salleh said there were two major aspects that needed to be addressed, namely the status and the corpus construction aspects, which proved that Bahasa Melayu was relevant, dynamic and able to function as the Asean language.

At the same time, he said, the Bahasa Melayu corpus should continue to be fostered with regard to the use of the language in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, southern Thailand and southern Philippines.

He also said that Malaysians should equip themselves with good language skills, as well as relevant and appropriate knowledge in facing competition in all aspects.

~News courtesy of Bernama~