publications series National Language Planning and Edited Volumes 5 Language Shifts in Malaysian Shifts in Malaysian Minority Communities Minority Malaysian in Shifts Language and Planning Language National Minority Communities Malaysia is a melting pot of many different cultures and ethnicities, the three largest being Malay, Chinese and Indian. An analysis of language variation in this polyglot nation will help in understanding the reasons behind the language choices of different ethnic groups and Speaking in Many Tongues gathers the work of researchers study- Speaking in Many Tongues ing language change in Malaysia for over two decades. As there is no book published internationally on language policy in Malaysia and on the effects of language change on urban migrant Edited by Dipika Mukherjee populations, this book is a timely contribution not only to an under- and Maya Khemlani David standing of Malaysian linguistic pluralism and its undercurrents, but also to an understanding of the Indian Diaspora. Dipika Mukherjee is professor of linguistics at the Shanghai Inter- national Studies University. Maya Khemlani David is professor of linguistics at the University of Malaya. › Maya Khemlani David (eds.) Dipika Mukherjee and isbn 978 90 8964 271 4 amsterdam university press www.aup.nl 9 789089 642714 amsterdam university press National Language Planning & Language Shifts in Malaysian Minority Communities Publications Series General Editor Paul van der Velde Publications Officer Martina van den Haak Editorial Board Prasenjit Duara (Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore) / Carol Gluck (Columbia University) / Christophe Jaffrelot (Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationales-Sciences-po) / Victor T. King (University of Leeds) / Yuri Sadoi (Meijo University) / A.B. Shamsul (Institute of Occidental Studies / Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) / Henk Schulte Nordholt (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) / Wim Boot (Leiden University) The IIAS Publications Series consists of Monographs and Edited Volumes. The Series publishes results of research projects conducted at the International Institute for Asian Studies. Furthermore, the aim of the Series is to promote interdisciplinary studies on Asia and comparative research on Asia and Europe. The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a postdoctoral research centre based in Leiden and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Its objective is to encourage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Asia and to promote national and international cooperation. The institute focuses on the humanities and social sciences and, where relevant, on their interaction with other sciences. It stimulates scholarship on Asia and is instrumental in forging research networks among Asia scholars worldwide. IIAS acts as an international mediator, bringing various parties together, working as a clearinghouse of knowledge and information. This entails activities such as providing information services, hosting academic organisations dealing with Asia, constructing international networks, and setting up international cooperative projects and research programmes. In this way, IIAS functions as a window on Europe for non-European scholars and contributes to the cultural rapprochement between Asia and Europe. For further information, please visit www.iias.nl. National Language Planning & Language Shifts in Malaysian Minority Communities Speaking in Many Tongues Edited by Dipika Mukherjee and Maya Khemlani David Publications Series Edited Volumes 5 Cover illustration: Danny Lim, Malaysia Cover design: Maedium, Utrecht Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere ISBN 978 90 8964 271 4 e-ISBN 978 90 4851 338 3 NUR 610 © IIAS / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2011 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright re- served above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or in- troduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book. Contents Acknowledgements 7 Foreword 9 Introduction: Language Policies at Variance with Language Use in Multilingual Malaysia 13 Dipika Mukherjee and Maya Khemlani David 1 The Importance of Ethnic Identity when Language Shift Occurs: A Study of the Malaysian Iyers 23 Lokasundari Vijaya Sankar 2 Ethnic Identity in the Tamil Community of Kuching 43 Maya Khemlani David, Caesar Dealwis and Ponmalar N Alagappar 3 Do Exogamous Marriages Result in Language Shift? Focus on the Sindhis of Kuching, Malaysia 59 Maya Khemlani David and Caesar Dealwis 4 Malaysian-Filipino Couples and Language Choice: Heritage Language or International Language? 71 Francisco Perlas Dumanig and Maya Khemlani David 5 I am not English but my First Language is English: English as a First Language among Portuguese Eurasians in Malaysia 87 Stefanie Pillai and Mahmud Hasan Khan 6 Language and Identity: Children of Indian Bidayuh Mixed Marriages 101 Caesar Dealwis and Maya Khemlani David 7 The Impact of Language Policy on Language Shifts in Minority Communities: Focus on the Malayalee Community in Malaysia 115 Mohana Nambiar 6 NATIONAL LANGUAGE PLANNING & LANGUAGE SHIFTS 8 My Son has to maintain his Language because that is his Culture: The Persistence and Adaptation of the Bengali Community in Malaysia 127 Dipika Mukherjee 9 Intercultural Communication in Sarawak: Language Use of the Chinese-Speaking Communities 151 Su-Hie Ting 10 Malay Javanese Migrants in Malaysia: Contesting or Creating Identity? 163 Jariah Mohd Jan 11 Conclusions: Multilinguality in the Malaysian Context of Nation-Building and Globalisation 173 Renate Kärchner-Ober, Dipika Mukherjee and Maya Khemlani David Contributors 185 Bibliography 189 Index 203 Acknowledgements We owe much gratitude to the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) for encouraging sociolinguistics scholars to research and write on language variation in the polyglot nation of Malaysia, and to advance the knowledge of language varieties and their speakers in this under- represented part of the world. It also graciously offered one of the edi- tors a six-week fellowship in Leiden (February-March) during which we could polish and finish our manuscript. We would like to express our thanks to all the authors who have pro- vided individual chapters (and especially for their patience through the multiple rounds of editing!). We are grateful for the indefatigable ener- gies of Dr Paul van der Velde, the General Editor of the IIAS/ICAS Publications Series and its Publications Officer Martina van den Haak (MA) for supporting the entire project. We also would like to thank the editorial support team at Amsterdam University Press and Danny Lim for the excellent photograph on the cover. Our gratitude also goes to our home institutions: The Shanghai International Studies University and The University of Malaya, for sup- porting our research and providing the resources which make our scho- larly work possible. March 2011 The Editors Foreword For the individual bilingual, languages co-exist in his/her repertoire but, for the multilingual society, languages do in fact compete for registers, for power, for acceptability, for social status. Kaplan & Baldauf (1997: 236) People do not own languages; languages own people. Ruqaiya Hasan (2007) Conference on World Languages, City University of Hong Kong The above statements – the first from the most comprehensive overview of language planning to date, the second from one of the world’s lead- ing proponents of language as a product of social life – serve as sober warnings to anyone tempted to believe that language is just another na- tional resource manageable via top-down controls over supply and de- mand. Language is indeed a resource, as can be seen from the huge in- come that English language teaching and English medium education generate for many anglophone nations or by the explosion in Mandarin studies that has accompanied the rise of the Chinese economy. But it is a uniquely complex resource, bound up not only in economic possibili- ties but also in individual and group identity. Further, it crucially affects the way we approach problems, including language problems. We do not have to accept a strong version of the Whorf-Sapir theory on linguis- tic relativity to accept that our language acquisition constrains our ac- cess to information and shapes our preference for particular sociopoliti- cal discourses. Thus it is no simple task to manipulate language to ef- fect social change. And it is no easy matter to escape the hold our language repertoire has over us. Visitors to Malaysia such as myself – brought up in a mainly mono- lingual environment and struggling to pick up other languages in years well beyond the much debated ‘critical age of acquisition’–cannot fail to be impressed by the ease with which locals mix and switch codes with each other, seeming to know by instinct which language to start with for politeness and which to change to for eliciting information or negotiating a deal. But scratch below the surface and we begin to 10 NATIONAL LANGUAGE PLANNING & LANGUAGE SHIFTS uncover layers of complexity that belie the ease with which multilingu- alism appears to be maintained. Many Malaysian families do indeed switch effortlessly among three or more languages, not necessarily because they need to but because they can. However, a great many youngsters, particularly in rural areas, still